Burning the Midnight…Gadgets?
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Joyce Edelstein -- School Library Journal, 04/14/2006
Parents used to tell their teens to "turn off the lights and go to bed." Nowadays it's the gadgets that need to be turned off.
Nearly all U.S. teens (97 percent) have at least one electronic device—computer, TV, phone, MP3 player—in their bedroom, according to the National Sleep Foundation (NSF). NSF's 2006 Sleep in America poll, released last week, found that adolescents (ages 11–17) with four or more devices in their bedrooms are much more likely than their peers to suffer from sleep deprivation and almost twice as likely to fall asleep in school and while doing homework.
"Many teens have a technological playground in their bedrooms that offers a variety of ways to stay stimulated and delay sleep," says Mary Carskadon, Ph.D., who chairs the NSF's 2006 poll task force. "Teens need to give the brain better signals about when nighttime starts…turning off the lights—computer screens and TV, too—is the very best signal." Dr. Carskadon is the director of the E.P. Bradley Hospital Sleep and Chronobiology Research Lab at Brown University.
Along with other sleep obstacles—the tendency to stay up late (due to a natural shift in teens' circadian rhythms or internal clocks), early school start times, busy days, and too much caffeine—it's no surprise the national survey found only 20 percent of adolescents get an optimal nine hours of sleep on school nights, and nearly half (45 percent) sleep less than eight hours on school nights.
The poll results also reveal serious consequences: Sleep-deprived teens get lower grades, experience health problems, and drive drowsy. The NSF Web site offers schools advocacy tools, including case studies of "sleep friendly" schools that have adopted later start times, and downloadable resources, such as parent tips, a sleep diary, quizzes, and a list of sleep centers that partner with schools. Young children will benefit from www.sleepforkids.org.
"At a time of heightened concerns about the quality of this next generation's health and education," says Richard L. Gelula, NSF's chief executive officer, "we call on parents, educators, and teenagers themselves to take an active role in making sleep a priority."
