The Impact of Screen Time on Sleep
As the Internet develops rapidly in today’s dynamic world, it is extremely hard to imagine how our lives would be without electronic devices. In 2014, an investigation from The National Sleep Foundation found that 89 percent of adults and 75 percent of children have at least one electronic device in their bedroom (Scutti). An child health survey in Australia conducted by the Royal Children’s Hospital Melbourne reveals that almost half of all children (43%) use digital devices before bedtime and one in four of these children (26%) report having sleep problems (Goodwin).
Therefore, how screen time affects sleep has become an attractive research topic. As a result, it discloses that immoderate screen time can significantly impact sleep in our lives. It is because not only excessive screen time can shorten sleep duration, but also it can make people take longer time to fall into sleep as well as can impact the quality of sleep.
Firstly, excessive usage of electronic devices before bed results in shrinking of normal sleep duration, or reducing time in bed. It is easy to understand, because the nature of using these devices is to consume time. More time is taken by …show more content…
They took 12 volunteers and put them into two groups, one group reads through electronic devices and one group reads by paper books. Both groups read for 4 hours before 10 p.m. for 2 weeks. After first week, they switched over two groups to continue. That is, those who had e-readers now read paper books, and the paper readers now read from electronic devices. The result shows that the melatonin in those who read with electronic devices was reduced by 50 percent, and their circadian rhythms had been delayed about an hour and a half. In other words, their SOLs increased about one hour and half (“How Electronic Devices Affect
As the Internet develops rapidly in today’s dynamic world, it is extremely hard to imagine how our lives would be without electronic devices. In 2014, an investigation from The National Sleep Foundation found that 89 percent of adults and 75 percent of children have at least one electronic device in their bedroom (Scutti). An child health survey in Australia conducted by the Royal Children’s Hospital Melbourne reveals that almost half of all children (43%) use digital devices before bedtime and one in four of these children (26%) report having sleep problems (Goodwin).
Therefore, how screen time affects sleep has become an attractive research topic. As a result, it discloses that immoderate screen time can significantly impact sleep in our lives. It is because not only excessive screen time can shorten sleep duration, but also it can make people take longer time to fall into sleep as well as can impact the quality of sleep.
Firstly, excessive usage of electronic devices before bed results in shrinking of normal sleep duration, or reducing time in bed. It is easy to understand, because the nature of using these devices is to consume time. More time is taken by …show more content…
They took 12 volunteers and put them into two groups, one group reads through electronic devices and one group reads by paper books. Both groups read for 4 hours before 10 p.m. for 2 weeks. After first week, they switched over two groups to continue. That is, those who had e-readers now read paper books, and the paper readers now read from electronic devices. The result shows that the melatonin in those who read with electronic devices was reduced by 50 percent, and their circadian rhythms had been delayed about an hour and a half. In other words, their SOLs increased about one hour and half (“How Electronic Devices Affect