The American Academy of Pediatrics has recommended that children not use screens in the hour before bed to ensure they sleep well. But for parents and guardians.
It can be near impossible to win this battle. The end of the day when school, extracurricular activities, and homework are (hopefully) finally done is the window that many kids have for downtime. They often won’t give up their phones without a fight.
Thankfully, phone use before bed might not be as bad for kids’ sleep as previously feared, a study published September 3 in the journal JAMA Pediatrics found. But the research indicates that kids using their phones once they are under the covers is a bad idea.
The small study of children in New Zealand ages 11 to 14 found that using phones in the two hours before they went to bed didn’t interfere with how much sleep they got; they simply went to bed later and got up later.
However, being on their phones once they were in bed was detrimental to their sleep. Using phones in interactive ways under the covers for things such as gaming and multitasking was worse for kids’ sleep than using it more passively for things such as watching movies. But all of the activity interfered.
“What we found is that screens and sleep are vying for the same slice of time streaming or dreaming, but you can’t do both,” said lead study author Bradley Brosnan, a researcher in the department of medicine at the University of Otago in New Zealand.
One limitation of the study is that it focused on younger teenagers, said Brosnan, who is also director of Screenwise, a nonprofit that promotes digital wellness. The effects of using phones before bed could be different in younger children or older teens.
The importance of sleep
Sleep is critical to children’s health. Not getting enough shut-eye increases a child’s risk of accidents and injuries as well as health problems, including depression and obesity, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics. Sleep deprivation is also associated with having problems learning, paying attention, and behaving.
The new research suggests parents should insist that kids not use their phones in bed. Yet it’s often not realistic to ask children not to look at their phones. Social apps are designed to keep people hooked, with features such as regular notifications and feeds that never stop showing more content.
Instead, parents might consider taking kids’ phones away before bed and returning them in the morning.
It’s also important for parents to remember that lost sleep isn’t the only risk phone use poses to young people. In that hour or two before bed, teens could still be cyberbullied, fall for scams or unknowingly connect with predators online. That’s why, in my talks to parents about how to handle their kids’ use of social media, I suggest coming up with rules that make sense given their family’s circumstances.
Setting the rules for smartphone use
Just as it’s important to make sure phones don’t interfere with sleep, parents also need to ensure they don’t interfere with kids’ education, extracurricular activities and face-to-face time with family and friends. One policy is having kids leave their phones at home when they go to school. Children might also be required to put their phones away while they are doing their homework and at the dinner table.
Yet exceptions will almost always be called for. In my own home, my phone is often on our dinner table because, as an ER doctor, my husband works a lot of evenings. My daughters and I like to chat with him briefly via FaceTime (when he can) during dinner so he can get a download on their days.
AMANI Nesta