How Social Media Robs Kids of Essential Sleep
October 18, 2022
Here is yet another way social media is bad for kids. A brief write-up at Insider informs us, “Kids Are Waking Up in the Night to Check their Notifications and Are Losing About 1 Night’s Worth of Sleep a Week, Study Suggests.” The study from De Montfort University Leicester is a wake-up call for parents and guardians. See the university’s post for its methodology. Writer Beatrice Nolan tells us:
“Almost 70% of the 60 children under 12 surveyed by De Montfort University in Leicester, UK, said they used social media for four hours a day or more. Two thirds said they used social media apps in the two hours before going to bed. The study also found that 12.5% of the children surveyed were waking up in the night to check their notifications. Psychology lecturer John Shaw, who headed up the study, said children were supposed to sleep for between nine to 11 hours a night, per NHS guidelines, but those surveyed reported sleeping an average of 8.7 hours nightly. He said: ‘The fear of missing out, which is driven by social media, is directly affecting their sleep. They want to know what their friends are doing, and if you’re not online when something is happening, it means you’re not taking part in it. And it can be a feedback loop. If you are anxious you are more likely to be on social media, you are more anxious as a result of that. And you’re looking at something, that’s stimulating and delaying sleep.'”
Surprising no one, the study found TikTok was the most-used app, followed closely by Snapchat and more distantly by Instagram. The study found almost 70% of its young respondents spend over four hours a day online, most of them just before bedtime. Dr. Shaw emphasizes the importance of sleep routines for children and other humans, sharing his personal policy to turn off his phone an hour before bed. When he does make an exception, he at least turns on his blue-light filter.
Nolan mentions California’s recent law that seeks to shield kids from harm by social media, but the provisions apply more to issues like data collection and privacy than promoting a compulsion to wake up and check one’s phone. That leaves the ball, once again, in the parents’ court. A good practice is to enforce a rule that kids turn off the device an hour before bed and leave it off overnight. Maybe even store it in our own nightstands. Yes, they may fight us on it. But even if we cannot convince them, we know getting adequate sleep is even more important than checking that feed overnight.
Cynthia Murrell, October 18, 2022
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