Screen-Time Has Little Effect On How Much Sleep Children Really Get

MessageToEagle.com – Screen-time has very little practical  impact on how much sleep children really get, according to new Oxford University research.

“The findings suggest that the relationship between sleep and screen use in children is extremely modest,” says Professor Andrew Przybylski, author of the study published in the Journal of Pediatrics.

“Every hour of screen time was related to 3 to 8 fewer minutes of sleep a night.”

In practical terms, while the correlation between screen time and sleep in children exists, it might be too small to make a significant difference to a child’s sleep.

For example, when you compare the average nightly sleep of a tech-abstaining teenager (at 8 hours, 51 minutes) with a teenager who devotes 8 hours a day to screens (at 8 hours, 21 minutes), the difference is overall inconsequential.

Other known factors, such as early starts to the school day, have a larger effect on childhood sleep and further research have to focus on these factors.

“Focusing on bedtime routines and regular patterns of sleep, such as consistent wake-up times, are much more effective strategies for helping young people sleep than thinking screens themselves play a significant role,” Professor Przybylski said in a press release.

The aim of this study was to provide parents and practitioners with a realistic foundation for looking at screen versus the impact of other interventions on sleep.

“While a relationship between screens and sleep is there, we need to look at research from the lens of what is practically significant,” says Przybylski.

“Because the effects of screens are so modest, it is possible that many studies with smaller sample sizes could be false positives — results that support an effect that in reality does not exist.”

“The next step from here is research on the precise mechanisms that link digital screens to sleep. Though technologies and tools relating to so-called ‘blue light’ have been implicated in sleep problems, it is not clear whether play a significant causal role,” says Przybylski.

“Screens are here to stay, so transparent, reproducible, and robust research is needed to figure out how tech effects us and how we best intervene to limit its negative effects.”

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