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 These technology-related behaviors were tied to shorter and poorer
sleep for teens on school days and even on vacation, while kids who
stuck to non-tech behaviors like spending time with family before
bed tended to get more sleep.
“The effects of technology and video gaming on sleep have previously
been reported, so we were not surprised to see that video gaming
before bed was associated with later bedtime and shorter sleep
duration,” said senior author Bei Bei, of Monash University and the
University of Melbourne in Australia.
But this study also accounted for kids’ “chronotype” - whether they
tend to be more alert at night or in the morning - Bei said.
“We were able to see whether some behaviors had an effect on
adolescents' sleep beyond their chronotype,” she told Reuters Health
by email. “The only technology that had such an effect was video
gaming.”
Teens may be engaging in some activities because they are not yet
sleepy, and they do so to pass time until they feel like going to
sleep, she noted.
“This highlights that biological factors such as natural delay in
body clock, and having to get up early for school, have much
stronger effects on adolescents' sleep than technology itself,” Bei
said.
The researchers recruited 146 adolescents in Melbourne who wore
activity monitors for the last week of a school term and for two
weeks of vacation time.
The teens completed pre-bedtime behavior questionnaires that
assessed 25 activities like reading a book or web browsing.
On vacation days, the teens spent less time doing school work,
listening to music, performing personal hygiene, web browsing and
using social media before bedtime, according to their questionnaire
results. They also watched more television and DVDs and spent more
time with friends on vacation days.
On school days, spending time with family was tied to earlier
bedtimes and longer sleep duration, while snacking predicted later
bedtimes and video games predicted less total sleep, as reported
online February 11 in the Journal of Adolescent Health.
“We speculate that the addictive nature of video gaming might make
adolescents (keep) playing even though they might be sleepy and in
need of sleep,” Bei said.
On vacation days, online social media use was tied to taking longer
to fall asleep, as teens were more awake and stimulated later at
night.
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“During vacation, none of the technology was associated with shorter
sleep time, because adolescents were able to sleep in later,” Bei
said. “However, we found that social media was associated with
somewhat longer time to fall asleep, and this might be due to social
media being mentally alerting and emotionally engaging, so it's
harder for adolescents to wind down quickly afterwards.”
For teens who routinely do not get enough sleep on school days,
sleeping later on weekends and vacation days doesn’t truly “make up
for it,” said Dr. Shahrad Taheri of Weill Cornell Medicine – Qatar
in Doha, who was not part of the new study.
“People don’t make up their lost sleep,” Taheri told Reuters Health.
Social media use in particular, which comes in discrete packets like
texts, can interrupt the winding-down process before falling asleep
and keep teens awake longer, he said. Spending time with family in
person tends not to come in packets or to interrupt falling asleep,
he said.
“The key to help adolescents get better sleep is to help them get
sufficient sleep during school days,” Bei said.
“So with the constraint of early school start time, what adolescents
could do is set reasonably early bedtime, and avoid staying up
late,” she said. “If they feel that they are getting reasonable
amount of sleep during school days (e.g., waking up feeling
refreshed, alert during the day), it would be helpful to stick to
the same schedule on non-school days too, and this includes both
weekends and vacation.”
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/21GoeBy
J Adolesc Health 2016.
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