Why You Should Turn Off WiFi At Night [3 Simple Ways]

In most homes, WiFi is one of the single largest sources of EMF radiation.

The WiFi from your home router that keeps all your devices connected does so through a form of EMF radiation called Radio Frequency.

This radio frequency that keeps you connected to the internet is incredibly helpful (and almost mandatory these days) but also is potentially quite dangerous in large doses.

One of the absolute best ways to dramatically reduce your exposure, improve your health, and get better sleep, is to turn off your WiFi at night.

Turning off, or disabling, your WiFi at night really won’t affect anything, as you are usually sleeping. Your phone will automatically connect to your cell network, and so you’ll still get all the notifications you require (although I’d encourage you to not sleep next to your cell phone.)

In this article, I want to talk about the actual reasons that WiFi radiation is dangerous, why turning your WiFi off at night helps protect you, and then outline a few ways you can do this very simply.

I also just want to mention that you may be looking to turn your WiFi off at night just to keep your children from watching YouTube late into the evening. If this is the case, click here to skip straight down to the “How To” portion of this article!

Let’s jump right in!

Is WiFi Even Dangerous?

In large doses over prolonged periods: Absolutely, but there are plenty of ways to reduce our exposure to it.

First of all, to clarify, when we’re talking about “WiFi Radiation” what we’re talking about is radio frequency radiation, a form of Electromagnetic Frequency radiation (EMF).

This type of radiation can easily be measured with an EMF meter, is perfectly capable of penetrating the walls of your home or office, and can travel great distances.

Radiofrequency radiation is the same type that your cell phones use to communicate with nearby cell towers and is the same type of radiation that causes so much damage to our brains and bodies from the use of our cell phones and other wireless devices.

I won’t go into too much depth in this post about the wealth of research available on the health impacts of EMF radiation exposure in this post, as I’ve already covered this extensively in other posts (check out the Knowledge section for these).

However, I do want to talk specifically about some of the ways that the WiFi from your home router can affect you and your family.

This will provide the context we need to understand why turning your WiFi off at night is such a worthwhile thing to do.

Also, if you want a product that will block 90% of the radiation from your WiFi router, without affecting your connection or speed, I use this WiFi router guard, which you can read more about in my full guide here.

WiFi Affects Our Sleep

This is probably one of the best reasons to consider disabling your WiFi at night, and for the same reason, you shouldn’t sleep next to your cell phone.

In 2013, the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at The University Of Melbourne completed an extensive study on how EMF radiation affects the quality of our sleep, especially concerning the pineal gland.

What they found was that our bodies sense EMF radiation very similar to how we perceive light.

As our bodies since this radiation, the pineal gland (the gland responsible for producing melatonin, the hormone that regulates our sleep and circadian rhythm) slows down production.

When we’re unable to get proper sleep, our ability to fight disease, repair damage, grow muscle, and expel toxins is diminished.

Sleep is one of the most important parts of a healthy lifestyle, and EMF radiation dramatically affects our ability to get that sleep.

This is one of the reasons that EMF protection products have become so popular. For the products I use and recommend, check out my recommended products page.

WiFi Affects Our Bodies’ Ability To Produce Healthy Cells

Next let’s talk a little bit about how EMF radiation actually causes harm to the body, a topic that many articles ignore.

Our body is constantly producing new red blood cells, a little over 2 million every second in fact.

This rapid production of healthy blood cells leaves it vulnerable to disruption, including stress on the body, like that from EMF radiation.

Inside the cell membrane of each one of those red blood cells is a receptor, sort of like a microscopic antenna.

This receptor has a huge responsibility, as it’s the primary method through which our body communicates messages through chemical signals. The trouble is that this tiny has also been shown to receive signals from EMF radiation.

They sense this radiation as a danger and take steps to protect the body which ultimately ends up hurting it. When the cells sense radio frequency radiation from things like the WiFi in your home, three things happen almost immediately:

1. Impacts our body’s ability to create round, complete, and healthy cells (see dark field microscopy videos for examples)
2. Reduces our cell’s ability to absorb healthy and crucial nutrients
3. Impacts our cell’s ability to shed toxins and free radicals.

The combination of these things causes a domino effect that impacts the health of your entire body.

Your body is unable to get the nutrients it needs, free radicals build up in your cells, and improperly formed cells are not able to carry as much oxygen as your body desires.

Now, I’m not saying any of this to scare you, and it may be a little bit less dramatic than the research sounds.

However, the main point is that radio frequency EMF radiation from your home WiFi router isn’t good for you, and the less of it you’re exposed to, the healthier you’ll be.

Possible Increased Risk Of Certain Cancers

In my article on cell phone radiation (also a form of radiofrequency radiation similar to WiFi) I go in-depth about the hundreds of studies that have been conducted related to EMF radiation and increased risk of certain cancers.

For that reason, I won’t go too in-depth in this article on those specific studies. However, just know that there have been numerous studies related to increased brain tumor risks from the use of cell phones.

As well, there have been more general studies that show the increased risk of cancer from the radio frequency of any source, including the WiFi from your router.

It’s important to note here that the damage from EMF radiation is cumulative in nature, so any way we can reduce our exposure will really help protect our health. This is also a reason that WiFi can really be dangerous because we’re exposed to it all the time.

These are some of the reasons that even doing something as simple as disabling your WiFi at night can really go a long way in reducing your exposure to EMF radiation.

Other Things To Note About WiFi

Just a few things I wanted to note. First of all, if you live in the United States like I do, talk of the dangers of WiFi and EMF radiation probably isn’t as familiar to you.

This is primarily because the telecom industry employs powerful lobbyists to fight against regulations and changes that would impact their ability to sell cell phones and data plans.

However, as more and more science and research come out, these changes will become unavoidable. In fact, in many other countries changes are already being made.

In fact, in 2015, France passed national laws banning and limiting the use of WiFi in schools, including:

• Banning the use of WiFi in nurseries
• Limiting the use of WiFi in primary schools to only be used when it is absolutely necessary for educational purposes.
• Mandating signs for areas with WiFi such as coffee shops etc.
• And much more…

Ok, enough about the dangers of radio frequency radiation, let’s talk about turning your router off at night

Turning Your WiFi Off At Night

Alright, now we get to talk about turning our WiFi off at night.

So for most homes, your WiFi either comes from your router, or it comes from the modem that your internet company provided.

The modem is a small (usually black) box that has a large co-ax cable attached to it. This box is what takes the internet connection and translates it in a way that can connect you to the internet.

Typically you’ll then have a simple ethernet cable that runs from that modem to a router. The router is what usually pushes the WiFi in the home, and is what you connect your devices to.

Turning off or disabling this WiFi can go a long way in reducing your radiation exposure, so let’s take a look at some of the best ways to do this.

3 Ways To Disable Your WiFi At Night

1. Use A Mechanical Outlet Timer

This is one of my favorite tips in general for reducing EMF radiation because it is so inexpensive and so effective.

The concept is simple. Have you ever been told by your internet company when things aren’t working to “power cycle” your router?

Essentially this is just unplugging it, waiting about 30 seconds, and plugging it back in.

This clears things out and just generally helps it work better. It also proves that your WiFi will just kick right back on after you plug it back in without problems.

So, you can purchase a simple mechanical outlet timer on Amazon that will do this for you automatically!

These timers are completely mechanical, so they use no electricity and produce no EMF radiation on their own.

You just set the time of day that you want the router to be off for, say from Midnight to 6 AM, and it will disconnect power from your router during that time, and reconnect it in the morning.

This is a really simple, inexpensive way to turn your WiFi off at night, which is why I wanted to mention it first.

You could of course also just do this manually each night and each morning, but I find that with time people get lazy and forget to keep doing this.

The mechanical outlet timer will do this for you, and as long as you set the times correctly, you’ll hardly even know the WiFi was ever off.

2. Set A Timer On Your Router

This is another good option but takes just a little bit more tech-savvy than the previous idea.

Most home routers come with the functionality to disable WiFi based on a schedule already built into the firmware.

Essentially all you need to do is log into the software of the router using your browser, and depending on the brand of the router, navigate the software to find the scheduler and set it up.

This is a good way to turn your WiFi off at night if you have children who will be upset by this because you can set a password.

With the mechanical timer option, your children can just unplug it from the timer and plug it directly into the wall. However, if you’ve set a password to log in to the router itself, they won’t be able to disrupt this schedule.

Since we all have different computers and different routers, I won’t go into the details of how to do this, instead, you can check out the video below. Or, just simply look up “how to set schedule on (your router name here)” on Google, and you should find a helpful tutorial.

3. Go Wired!

Ok, this one is kind of cheating, but it’s a great long-term option! The idea here is that you primarily use ethernet cables to hardwire your devices to your router and save WiFi only for when you need it or guests are in town etc.

The concept is really simple:

1. The first thing you need to do is jump on Amazon, or wherever, and purchase some ethernet cable. You’ll need enough to go from the router to each of your computers, ideally, you’d wire this in a way that you won’t see the wires, such as going through your walls.
2. Next, just plug one end of each ethernet cable into a computer and the other end into one of the four ports on the back of the router.
3. The image below will give you a nice general image for how this works.

Obviously, I oversimplified this a bit, and it does require some work, but this is a great long-term solution if you’re looking to limit your exposure to EMF radiation.

This helps if that is the case, but if you’re just trying to keep your kids off the internet at night, you can always just steal the power cord in the evening 🙂

You can read my full guide to hardwiring your internet connection here.

Bonus Option (And Perhaps The Best): Get A Wifi Router Guard

When I first wrote this post, I didn’t include this because I hadn’t had a chance to test it out for myself. I recently purchased a router guard and was able to test and confirm that it works extremely well. I wrote up a full guide on how they work, and my experience, that you can read about here.

Essentially, it’s just a small Faraday cage that you put your router inside of, and it blocks around 90% of the radiation emitted from the device, at just the cost of a little range.

So, if you aren’t up to trying any of the options I outlined above, I would give this a try!

If you want to pick one up, you can get them here, or on Amazon. Or, you can read my full article on router guards!

Alright, well I really hope you enjoyed my post on Turning Your WiFi Off At Night, if you did, please consider sharing!