Limit Screen Time at Bedtime

Why Circle’s Bedtime Matters

When the day comes to a close, and everyone in your family should be tucked into bed resting, are they? Or are they on their devices? According to recent studies, 70 percent of kids check their mobile devices within 30 minutes of falling asleep at night. Yikes.

The blue light from our screens can disrupt sleep patterns, and the brain ends up missing out on deep REM sleep. That’s a problem because not getting that deep sleep affects the brain’s process of storing information absorbed during the day into memory. Kids and parents alike shouldn’t be on their phones within an hour of bedtime. Fortunately, there’s a way to make sure that happens.

Circle’s Bedtimes feature is an Internet blocker that helps your family get a full night's sleep by shutting off online access every night until a specified time the next morning.

Benefits of Circle’s Bedtime Feature

At night, when you’ve tucked your kids into bed, if you’ve enabled Circle’s Bedtime feature, you don’t have to worry that your kids have gotten around your web filtering software. Rather than spending time figuring out how to block apps during certain times, just enable Circle’s Bedtime feature. It has the ability to completely shut off the Internet on any device from bedtime until it’s time to wake up.

Of course, you and your kids don’t all go to bed at the same time every night. With Bedtime, you can set up different Bedtimes for each of your family member’s profiles. And you can customize those even further if you want to!

• Set up different Bedtimes for weeknights and weekends.

• Customize “awake” times for each family member.

• Adjust Bedtimes anytime from your Circle app.

• Use the Rewards feature to extend a Bedtime just for the day.

Setting Bedtimes isn't just important for kids. That blue light is affecting your sleep too, mom and dad. Once your kids start seeing you adhere to the same rules they have around screens before bed, you can avoid the whole “do as I say, not as I do” debate.

How Circle’s Bedtime Works

Bedtimes are arguably one of the best Internet filters for families because they create a positive habit for the whole everyone—no more screen time before bed! Plus, Bedtimes are simple to set up.

How to enable Bedtimes

First, tap on a family member’s profile and then on the Bedtime feature. Here, you can set a time you’d like all the devices on this profile to disconnect from the Internet. Then, select the time you’d like them all to wake up and connect back to the Internet. Each family members’ Bedtime can be different.

When bedtime rolls around, all the devices that belong to this family member will automatically disconnect and they’ll get a reminder that they’re past Bedtime.

You can set an earlier time so your family can get a head-start on the nightly routine. If you want your family to have offline time in the morning, just set the wake-up time a bit later. It’s up to you.

And because weekends are a little more relaxed, you can set a separate Bedtime for your family’s devices just for the weekend.

How to disable Bedtimes

It’s easy to quickly disable a Bedtime if the day isn’t shaking out as planned. All you have to do is open the Circle app, select the profile you want to disable Bedtimes on, and toggle “disable” to the turn off position. You can also give a temporary Reward to make Bedtime a little later!

With Circle’s Bedtime feature, everyone at home can have their own Bedtime just for them.