Excessive screen-time do not affect children’s sleep, new study finds

Where many people blame smartphone usage for their children’s sleep deprivation, new study suggests otherwise, claiming that screen-time barely affects their sleep.

A study conducted by University of Oxford asserted that children’s sleep is barely affected by the amount of time they spend staring at screens. This study puts other previous studies in doubt that blamed excessive gadget usage for their children not getting enough sleep.

The study published in the Journal of Pediatrics stated that that there is an ‘extremely modest’ link between screen-time and sleep. It was discovered that every hour of screen time was linked to 3-8 fewer minutes of sleep a night. This number, as per scientists, was so small to make a huge difference on their sleep, reported Telegraph.

The author of study Andrew Przybylski instead suggested parents to look at other things, like what their children do before bedtime, in order to improve their sleeping patterns.

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“Focusing on bedtime routines and regular patterns of sleep, such as consistent wake-up times, are much more effective strategies for helping young people sleep than thinking screens themselves play a significant role.”

The scientists used data from the United States’ 2016 National Survey of Children’s Health, where parents in the US did surveys about sleep patterns of children in their own households. Przybylski criticized the small sample sizes of previous studies that have blamed excessive screen-time for poor sleep, wrote BBC.

“While a relationship between screens and sleep is there, we need to look at research from the lens of what is practically significant. Because the effects of screens are so modest, it is possible that many studies with smaller sample sizes could be false positives, results that support an effect that in reality does not exist,” he said.

Przybylski said that the next step is to conduct research on exact mechanisms that link digital screens to sleep. “Though technologies and tools relating to so-called ‘blue light’ have been implicated in sleep problems, it is not clear whether it plays a significant causal role.

“Screens are here to stay, so transparent, reproducible, and robust research is needed to figure out how tech effects us and how we best intervene to limit its negative effects,” he concluded.