How to Not Get Caught on Your Phone at Night

Dim the light. If you're sharing a room with someone, you should make the light as dim as possible so they can't see you using your phone. Do this by lowering the brightness on the device itself. If this isn't sufficient, create a cave shape with a thick blanket and sit your phone in there so you can't see the screen light from above or the sides. You may also want to stick to apps with dark colours, since white screens are the brightest. You could also put the device under your bed to prevent someone spotting it. ^[1]

Turn down the volume. Preferably, don't listen to anything. If you are watching a video, then you can turn on captions. If you must, however, use headphones on a low setting- high enough to hear the audio, but low enough to hear footsteps coming down the hallway or a knock on the bedroom door. Avoid noise-canceling headphones, since it's easy to ignore warning signs of interruption.^[2]

Avoid getting up and making noise late at night. People may wonder why you're awake so late and jump to conclusions. Before you sleep, make sure you have all the chargers you need, have a big glass of water, go to the bathroom and even bring a small snack if you tend to get hungry at night. This will allow you to stay in bed all night and avoid waking people up.

Switch off the lights. Your room needs to look normal from the outside, which means that you can't leave the lights on, since the light will show through the cracks in your doorway. Also, keep in mind that while closing your door will mean less people peering in, it also creates suspicion, so leave it as you normally would.

Note who's going to be where and when. For example, if your sibling is going to a sleepover and your parents are seeing a movie, you can have a good few hours of uninhibited alone time where you don't have to worry about being caught. However, it's important to note when they will arrive home and if they usually check on you before they go to bed, because those are times you'll be most likely to get caught.

Practice quickly hiding your phone. Get in to a position where you can quickly shut your phone off, slide it under your pillow/blankets so its hidden, and pretend to be asleep. This means it's better to be lying in bed than sitting up in a chair or on the floor.^[3]