Young People Accessing Electronic Devices Are Sleep Deprived

The Washington Post (10/31, Cha) reports young people with access to mobile devices around bedtime “are more than twice as likely to sleep less than nine hours a night” than their peers who do not have access to such devices, according to a review published in JAMA Pediatrics. The researchers also found that young people who keep such devices in their rooms “are 50 percent more likely to get poor sleep and 200 percent more likely to be excessively sleepy during the day.”

CNN (10/31, Scutti) reports Dr. Ben Carter, the review’s lead author, said that the researchers found “a consistent pattern” in many “countries and settings.”

Reuters (10/31, Doyle) reports researchers reviewed 20 previous studies and found that “kids using portable media devices around bedtime were more than twice as likely as kids who didn’t use them to have short sleep times, but so were kids who had access to such devices at night but didn’t use them.”

Related Links:

— “Children’s sleeplessness may be linked to bedtime use of electronic gadgets,” Ariana Eunjung Cha, Washington Post, October 31, 2016.

Posted in In The News.