There’s a lot of research around that suggests too much TV watching could be impacting people’s sleep in a negative way, based on the idea that the “blue light” emitted by many televisions has an adverse impact on our circadian rhythms, which govern our sleeping patterns.
However, if you happen to own an OLED TV, you’re a lot less likely to be at risk of getting a poor night’s rest, according to a study by LG Display and researchers from Kookmin University in Seoul, South Korea.
The study looked into the effects of TV panel exposure on various groups of men and women and how it impacted on people’s ability to get a restful night’s sleep. In particular, the researchers were looking at the effects of TVs on melatonin production. Melatonin is the hormone that helps us to feel sleepy, and a lack of it is believed to be at least one of the causes of several sleep disorders.
In the study, researchers found that melatonin production fell by 2.7% in a group of adults that typically watched LCD TVs. On the other hand, it increased by 8.1% in the group that only watched LG OLED televisions. More melatonin should, in theory, help people to get to sleep more easily and also ensure better quality of sleep, so the suggestion is that LG’s OLED TVs can have a positive impact.
LG loves to showcase the “health” impacts of its OLED televisions, and last year announced that the technology was the first in the display industry to be certified as "circadian friendly" by the global testing body TUV Rheinland. That certification is based on factors relating to the OLED TVs, such as colour temperature, light intensity and their similarity to natural light.
LG Display said the reason that OLED enables better melatonin production is that, unlike LCD TVs, they don’t emit lots of blue light. The average LCD television emits around 70% to 80% blue light, due to the technology’s reliance on a powerful backlight. OLED, on the other hand, uses self-emissive pixels that eliminate the need for a strong backlight, and its blue light levels are rated at just 36%.
However, it’s worth noting that for everything LG says, it has a vested interest in promoting the “health benefits” of OLED displays, as it’s the world’s largest manufacturer of TV-sized OLED panels.
In fact, there has been some recent controversy over the claims of blue light’s negative impact on sleep. Blue light was at one time widely regarded as being bad for sleep, but other research suggests that merely going outside at lunchtime will have a much bigger impact on your sleep patterns than your evening screen viewing habits.
According to the Guardian, the point is that blue light’s impact is rather minimal and that if you want a good sleep, you’d be much better off getting a dog and taking it for a walk each day to ensure you get plenty of natural light, rather than worrying about your TV viewing habits. Some experts say that light intensity is a bigger factor than the colour temperature anyway, and that brighter lights in any colour will have a more negative impact on sleep than those who watch content in dimmer, bluer light.
In addition to the controversy over blue light’s real impact on our sleep patterns, it’s notable that LG’s study didn’t look at how well the participants actually slept. It was also quite a small sample, and only took place over a short, two-week period.
