Mobile phones and screens keep your child awake

CNN
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These days, teachers are often faced with classrooms full of yawning students staying up late taking selfies or playing online games.

For children and teens, use of cell phones, tablets and computers at night is associated with lost sleep time and quality, new research finds. Even kids who don’t use their phones or other technologies that make their rooms dirty at night lose sleep and become prone to daytime sleepiness, analysis published today in JAMA Pediatrics finds

The analysis found “a consistent pattern of effect across a wide range of countries and settings,” said Dr. Ben Carter, lead author and senior professor of biostatistics at King’s College London.

Carter and her colleagues reviewed the medical literature to identify hundreds of applicable studies conducted between January 1, 2011, and June 15, 2015. They chose 20 research reports involving a total of 125,198 children, evenly divided by gender, with an average age of 14 and a half years. After extracting the relevant data, Carter and her co-authors conducted their own meta-analysis.

Few parents will be surprised by the results: The team found a “strong and consistent relationship” between media device use at bedtime and inadequate sleep, poor sleep quality, and excessive daytime sleepiness.

Surprisingly, however, Carter and her team found that children who didn’t use their devices in their bedrooms still had interrupted sleep and were likely to suffer from the same problems. The lights and sounds emitted by the technology, as well as the content itself, can be too stimulating.

Although Carter admits that one weakness of the analysis was “how the data was collected in the primary studies: self-reported by parents and children,” many of us will probably recognize the habits of our own families reflected in the statistics.

A large-scale survey conducted in the United States by the National Sleep Foundation (PDF) reported in 2013 that 72% of all children and 89% of adolescents have at least one device in their sleep environment. Most of this technology is used close to bedtime, that same report found.

According to Carter and her co-authors, this ubiquitous technology negatively influences children’s sleep by delaying their bedtime, while they finish watching a movie or play one more game.

The light emitted by these devices can also affect the circadian rhythm, the internal clock that times biological processes, including body temperature and hormone release, the researchers explain. A specific hormone, melatonin, induces tiredness and contributes to the synchronization of our sleep-wake cycles. Electronic lights can slow the release of melatonin, disrupting this cycle and making it difficult to fall asleep.

Carter and her co-authors also suggest that online content can be psychologically stimulating and keep children and adolescents awake well past the time they turn off their devices and try to sleep.

“Sleep is vital for children,” said Dr. Sujay Kansagra, director of the pediatric neurology sleep medicine program at Duke University Medical Center, who was not involved in the new analysis. “We know that sleep plays a crucial role in brain development, memory, self-regulation, attention, immune function, cardiovascular health, and much more.”

Kansagra, author of “My son does not sleep”, pointed out that the period of greatest brain development is in our first three years of life, which corresponds to when we need and sleep the most. “It’s hard to believe that this would be a coincidence.”

Kansagra said that parents may not have reported children using devices at night, but the technology is most likely simply interfering with sleep hygiene. “For example, children who are allowed to have devices in their bedroom are more likely to avoid a good sleep routine, which we know is helpful for sleep,” she said.

Dr. Neil Kline, representative of the American Sleep Association, agrees that sleep plays an integral role in a child’s healthy development, although “we don’t know all the science behind it. There is even some research showing an association between ADHD and some sleep disorders.”

In many respects, the new study’s findings are not surprising. “Sleep hygiene is significantly affected by technology, especially in adolescence,” said Kline, who bases her opinion not only on research but on her own “personal experience and also anecdotes from many other sleep experts.” .

sleep hygiene – tips that help facilitate good, continuous and adequate sleep – include having a quiet room. “And that would mean removing items that interfere with sleep, including electronics, the TV, and even pets if they interfere with sleep,” Kline said.

Another important piece of advice comes from National Sleep Foundation, which recommends at least 30 minutes of “device-free transition time” before bed. Turn off for better sleep.

Other recommendations for good sleep hygiene include not exercising (physically or mentally) too close to bedtime; establish a regular sleep schedule; limit exposure to light before bed; avoiding stimulants such as alcohol, caffeine, and nicotine in the hours before bedtime; and create a dark, comfortable and quiet sleep environment.