14 DAY TRIAL // It’s a known fact that having a television set in a child or a teenager’s room is the first thing that parents should not do, unless they want their son or daughter to be constantly distracted and not get enough sleep to make it through the day. A recent study comes to show now that it’s not only TVs that should be banished from the bedroom, since all gadgets are closely connected to how many hours of sleep a teen gets, WebMD says.
Whether it’s watching TV, playing computer games, chatting with friends online, texting or talking on the phone, or simply watching a movie or listening to music, the time teens spend with gadgets turned on after nine o’clock in the evening ultimately has a say in the amount of time they sleep and, implicitly, in their caffeine consumption throughout the day. Further studies in this sense should determine how these two also impact the teen’s participation in class, as well as their overall behavior in school, the same publication explains.
“On average, participants engaged in four technology activities. The average multitasking rating was the equivalent of a teen doing one activity for 5.3 hours or doing four activities for one hour and 20 minutes each. Researchers found a significant correlation between the multitasking index and sleep. Teens getting eight to 10 hours of sleep per night tended to have a lower multitasking index. Teens with a high multitasking index also drank more caffeine. Of the 85% of adolescents who reported drinking caffeine, 11% reported drinking the equivalent of four espressos a day.” WebMD says.
Of the 100 participants in the study (aged 12-18, whose answers were compared to those of their parents), only an incredibly small 20 percent got the recommended 8 to 10 hours of sleep at night. Also in this group, the caffeine intake was considered lower than in those teens who slept less than 8 hours a night, although, WebMD points out, the correlation was not clear enough to be presented as an irrefutable fact.
The other findings of the survey also showed that an overwhelming 82 percent of teens watch television after nine o’clock in the evening (which goes against doctors’ recommendations), 55 percent are to be found in front of their computers online after the same hour, 44 percent are chatting on the phone, 42 percent listen to music on an MP3 player, 36 percent watch movies, 34 percent are texting their friends, while a considerably lower percentage of 24 play computer games.
The bottom line to the study would be that, in order for teens to get enough sleep, the kind they need to develop into healthy adults, use of gadgets after 9 o’clock in the evening should be limited as much as possible. Further studies will show the exact connection between the two.