When at home, my phone (and my wife’s phone) charges in the kitchen at night. When away from home, the phone is on the nightstand next to the bed - in airplane mode. Its purpose on those occasions is only to serve as a clock and/or alarm.
Oh, hell no. At least most of the time. If I’m expecting weird calls late at night from students right before a major tournament, then the phone goes on the nightstand. Otherwise it’s in another room completely.
It’s my alarm for the morning for one thing. So it sort of makes sense to have it on the night stand.
That, and my mothers medical alert button is tied to it. So if I get a call from the med alert people or the cops or 911 at 2am because my mother has been rushed to the hospital, you can dam well bet I’ll hop in my car and travel the 2 hours to the town where she lives.
No one would dare call or text me at 2am if it wasn’t an emergency that I can help with.
Of course. It’s my (our) alarm, plus It’s my light to find my bathroom when I get up at 2 am to pee. I also check messages, etc anytime I wake up.
Exact same here. I read dead tree books/magazines before going to sleep. For me, music/talk would HINDER me from sleeping, rather than help.
For those of you who can’t imagine why anyone would want their phone in their bedroom or next to their bed…do you/did you have a regular landline in your bedroom? Next to your bed?
My mom has always had a landline phone on her nightstand, and still does. Up until a few years ago, I had one too (although it did usually die). There’s a phone jack in my bedroom and everything.
I use a whitenoise app so my phone is tucked in between the pillow my head is on and the one next to it. If I wake up and can’t go right back to sleep, I’ll watch videos till I doze off.
I don’t understand why you are so confused. I’m pushing 50 and my parents had a landline in the bedroom when I was growing up.
At 2am I might wake to a fire or a break in. My stepdaughter may have been in an accident. Besides, my phone is generally in my pocket so I take it out to charge it as I get undressed for bed. Why would I want the charger set up across the house just so it’s not next to my bed?
When I sleep my phone is on my nightstand charging, in silent mode. It will ring if someone calls but will make no other sounds.
And it wakes me up in the morning. I usually hit snooze 3 or 4 times.
Yes, I’m curious how many of these earnestly baffled people still have a landline phone in their bedroom. I guess that’s the next poll. 
My phone is so far away that I probably wouldn’t even hear it ring. Laptop, same. All those lights and blinks and noises can do their thing somewhere else.
I don’t have a landline, and when I did it was near the bedroom. I have a hard enough time sleeping.
I read on my iPhone before I go to sleep, so, when I turn off the light the phone goes onto my nightstand. I often wake in the middle of the night, and have trouble getting back to sleep, so I often pick it up and read for a half hour before returning to sleep for the rest of the night.
It’s you that I don’t understand. And FTR, I’m 70.
Age has nothing to do with the fact that someone might indeed need to get in touch with you in the middle of the night. Just turn the ringer off, and you can check the phone (or not) as you see fit.
Case in point: when my mother was still in her apartment in California (I’m in Texas), I checked the phone one night about 3 am when I got up to pee. There was a message from her wondering where her caregiver was for their appointment. It was 1 am Pacific time. Mama had gone down to the street, out through the coded gate, and had been sitting on the curb waiting to be picked up. Finally she came back up to her apartment and called me. What could I have done? I could have called one of her neighbors (I had all their numbers) and asked someone to go down and get her. This was one of the events that precipitated my moving her here to Texas. I’m an only child, so there was no one else to call, not even in California.
If you truly have no one who might have a medical emergency in the middle of the night, and you’re sure YOU will never have one, then more power to you. Or that you will never hear someone breaking in and want to call 911 from your bedside. Or smell smoke and you can’t get out of your bedroom. I hope your luck holds. Yes, these are unlikely events, but the one time one of them happens, it could be life and death. So why not just keep the phone nearby with the ringer off during the night?
P.S. I also keep an extra car key fob next to my bed so that if I ever hear or see someone in my driveway (which is right outside my bedroom), I can hit the alarm button.
Every time I turn off the ringer, I forget to turn it back on again, making it more likely to miss calls during the day, when they are more likely to come. This is, of course, my own shortcoming and probably not universal. You make a decent case for emergencies, but I don’t have the mindset of living my life based on the worst case scenario.
Sure, if you have elderly parents or kids who are out or something where immediate contact is actually a possible necessity, by all means keep the phone nearby. I don’t have any of those things. My husband is in the house and he’s not going to call me. My only relative is my sister, and there is no reason to expect her to call; if there were a crisis, she would call after it had passed, and in the daytime.
OP didn’t mention any of those kinds of issues, which is why I don’t understand wanting to not only have the phone nearby but to check it periodically through the night. To each his own, of course, as I made clear in my post.
I have a very difficult time sleeping without some sort of background noise so I admit to launching Netflix on my iPad and then falling asleep to the sweet, sweet sounds of some random drivel. But I leave my phone in another room so I don’t get bothered by random texts or otherwise tempted to engage.
The OP has a bit of a problem. You should definitely not be checking for “breaking news” in the middle of the night. I can see someone keeping their phone out of the bedroom to avoid such addictive behaviour. But for most people, it’s not really prudent to keep your main form of communication on the other side of the house when you sleep. If an emergency does happen, family and friends will call my cell. If there’s an emergency in the house, I want a phone beside me that I can also carry and use wherever I go. If there’s a fire or a tree comes through the roof, I like to know that all my contacts, calender and photos are going with me when I escape.
Used to have phone next to head while sleeping, but since hearing that it can do bad things to the brain, not anymore.
Well, there is that. If someone lived here with me, I might relax my vigilance.
I’m baffled by why a phone would be actually in the bed rather than night table inches away. That’s where mine is, charging. If I wake up during the night I might hit the home button to see what time it is. If I can’t go back to sleep I might look at…stuff you look at on a smart phone, maybe read a book, but then I’d have to turn on the light and more likely disturb my wife. It’s also the alarm clock. I don’t see a reason to bother having other clocks now. Also somebody in the family could need help and call in the middle of the night, so the phone is on. The only landline phone is two floors down and we don’t answer it even in the daytime, nor does anyone we know use that number anymore (~$5/mo for it to be on Ooma so we can give that number to people, usually companies, we don’t want to talk to without giving an outright fake number).
Nothing electronic goes in my bed. I will hold my Kindle over the mattress while I read, but it always get placed back on the nightstand before I fall asleep. I live alone, and – like enipla – I’m generally always in the same room with my phone (and I also rarely use it as a phone).[ul]
[li]My personal phone charges on the nightstand every night, in “Do Not Disturb” mode. I’ve whitelisted everyone I can think of who might need to reach me if there’s an emergency: calls from those numbers will always ring through. Sometimes during the week I use my phone as a backup alarm, but when I’m not using the alarm function I keep it face down on the nightstand so as not to be distracted by a blinking notification light in the middle of the night.[/li][li]My work phone charges in the second bedroom/home office every night, in “Do Not Disturb” mode. Only my boss is whitelisted permanently: when I’m managing an active proposal, I’ll also temporarily whitelist whatever capture manager and proposal coordinator I’m working with.[/li][li]My iPad charges overnight in the second bedroom/home office as needed. I use it every evening while I watch TV, and if there’s still a decent charge left at the end of the night I just turn it off and leave it on the coffee table.[/li][li]My Kindle charges on the nightstand during the day, using the phone charger, whenever the battery gets low.[/li]My smartwatch charges on my dresser every night, with another item blocking the charger’s bright red (“I’M CHARGING”) or green (“I’M CHARGED”) light.[/ul]