Biostatistician Ben Carter of King’s College London and his colleagues recently looked for associations between poor sleep and electronic devices before bed. They found that kids between ages 6 and 19 who used screen-based media around bedtime slept worse and were more tired in the day. Why? Phones, tablets and laptops make noise and emit blue light that can interfere with the sleep-inducing melatonin.
What is even more interesting, is that the researchers found that those kids who didn’t have screens in their bedrooms slept still better than kids who did have devices in their rooms but didn’t use them. Why? Perhaps the distracting presence of the phone is enough to disrupt sleep and instead make a kid think about messaging.
So if we want a good night sleep, we should stop using all electronic devices an hour before and instead do relaxing and calming activities to get us ready for the night.
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