Violent Television Hampers Kids' Sleeping Patterns

A new research conducted on the effects of television on the minds of young children has demonstrated that being exposed to TV before bedtime can be linked to disrupted sleep patterns, as well as diminished sleep quality in the young ones.

Violent TV shows and movies were found to have the most severe influence, researchers behind the new investigation say. What makes these conclusions even worse is the fact that the correlation was found to hold true for kids who were between 3 and 5 years old.

According to scientists, these new conclusions should make parents take more interest in the shows their kids are watching, especially now that violent TV programs can be seen at any time of day or night, on dedicated channels.

An additional increase in sleep problems was detected in children who continued to watch TV beyond 7 pm. This correlation held true regardless of whether the TV shows were violent of child-appropriate.

The new investigation is only the last in a long series of study meant to gage the influence of media on children, adolescents and teens. Investigators say that most of these investigations support the idea that kids' sleep is disrupted when heavily exposed to the media.

Due to the fact that they are at a very sensitive age, the effects that media exposure causes in children are very likely to reverberate over the years, translating into more complex health problems later on.

The work was carried out by researchers at the Seattle Children’s Research Institute. They say that some of the most common side-effects of losing sleep include failure at school, obesity and so on.

In a study published in the June 27 online issue of the esteemed medical journal Pediatrics, experts write that exposure to violent TV is causing the children to become emotionally hyped in the hours before sleep, which is not indicated.

Quite the opposite, researchers say. Sleep experts recommend that people take a break from technology about an hour before they go to bed, in order to allow their minds time to revert back to a calmer state.

This helps with the production of sleep -related chemicals in the brain, and ultimately contributes to increasing sleep quality. The hour before going to bed should not be spent doing activities that stimulate the brain heavily, My Health News Daily reports.