It’s 1:07am and you’re watching a stranger make pani puri. Let’s talk about that.

Somewhere in India right now, it is 1:07am. Someone who has to be up at 7 is watching a man in a market make his four-hundredth pani puri of the day.

They don’t even like pani puri.

Next up: a dog who is scared of a cucumber, a 90-second summary of a film they’ve already seen, and a stranger explaining their skincare routine in a language they don’t speak. Each one feels like the last one. None of them are.

If this sounds familiar, you are in a very large club. Here’s why it happens, and how to leave the club early.

A nation of night owls (by accident)

Every year the mattress company Wakefit surveys thousands of Indians about how they sleep. The 2025 edition reads less like a report and more like a confession.

It gets more extreme the younger and more urban you look. 90% of 25–30 year olds use their phone just before bed. In Kolkata, the survey’s latest-sleeping city, nearly 73% go to bed after 11pm. And 59% of people said they feel sleepy at work, which explains a lot about post-lunch meetings.

Reason 1: The feed has no last episode

Older readers will remember when television simply ended. The channel signed off, the screen turned to a test pattern, and there was nothing left to do but go to bed. Even a binge-worthy series eventually runs out of episodes.

A feed never does. There is no final reel, no credits, no natural moment to stop. Every stopping point has to be one you create, at midnight, when your willpower is at its lowest of the day.

In 2017, Netflix’s CEO said on an earnings call that they were “competing with sleep.” He was being funny. He was also right.

Reason 2: Revenge bedtime procrastination

In 2014, researchers at Utrecht University gave a name to something everyone already did: bedtime procrastination, staying up later than you meant to, with nothing actually stopping you from going to bed, while knowing full well you’ll regret it.

Then the internet added a word. A Chinese phrase usually translated as “revenge bedtime procrastination” went viral in English around 2020, and it landed because it named the why. When your day belongs to your boss, your commute, your college and your family, the hours after 11pm are the only ones that feel like yours. So you steal them back. From your own sleep.

The tragedy is what we spend them on. We win back two hours of freedom, and then hand them straight to an algorithm.

Reason 3: Your screen tells your body it’s still daytime

In a Harvard sleep-lab study, people read for four hours before bed on either an iPad or a printed book. After the iPad, they took longer to fall asleep, produced less melatonin (the hormone that makes you sleepy), had their body clocks pushed later, and felt groggier the next morning.

Worth knowing, though: that was four hours of reading on a bright tablet. Night mode helps with the light a little, but it does nothing about the bigger problem, which is that the content is designed to keep you awake and watching. A warm-tinted infinite feed is still an infinite feed.

So how do you actually get to bed?

Not with willpower, clearly. The 11pm version of you has had a long day and zero interest in your self-improvement plans. You need to make decisions for them, earlier, while you’re still sensible.

• Give your phone a bedtime, not yourself. Set Android’s Bedtime mode to kick in at 10:30pm with grayscale and Do Not Disturb. A black-and-white feed at midnight is remarkably easy to put down. (Our Android screen-time guide has the settings.)
• Charge it outside the bedroom. The single most effective move, and the most resisted. Buy a ₹200 alarm clock and remove the excuse.
• Pick a last thing. A chapter of a book, a cup of haldi doodh, tomorrow’s to-do list on paper. Your brain likes an ending. Give it one the feed never will.
• Put the off switch across the room. Physical distance does what willpower can’t at midnight.

That last one is exactly what we built Offline for. You choose the apps that keep you up. Before bed, tap your phone on the Offline Anchor, which lives by the door or in the living room, and protection switches on for those apps. Changing your mind at 1am means getting out of a warm bed and walking over to it. For a pani puri you don’t even like?

Goodnight. Actually go this time.