Back in the day, the 1980s to be specific, there was a brief fad around amber-on-black computer screens (as opposed to green-on-black or white-on-black) for supposed ergonomic reasons. My computer had one, along with its 5 ¼” floppy drives (remember those?).

More recently, with kids texting at night and people logging late hours on computers and devices, there’s been a recognition that artificial light at night is bad for sleep and disruptive to physiology overall, with blue light increasingly recognized as the culprit.

That’s given birth to some new fads. You can now download programs to eliminate blue light from your computer screen at night or buy amber-tinted glasses for computing and gaming to “filter the harsh spectra” of light. Airlines are using “mood” lighting to mimic sunrises and sunsets, which supposedly reduces jetlag.

In a paper in Neuron last week, Alan Emanuel and Michael Do, PhD, of the F.M. Kirby Neurobiology Center at Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School provide some science to support and inform these fads, as well as the use of light therapy for conditions like seasonal affective disorder. …