The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends parents limit children's "screen time" -- including online entertainment, texting and TV -- to no more than two hours per day. CNET
Kids who regularly plugged into social networking sites before bedtime reported sleeping nearly an hour less on school nights than those who rarely connected online, a new study shows.
"Using technology in the bedroom may result in sleep loss, delays in initiating sleep, daytime sleepiness and more," the study's lead author, Teresa Arora, told Reuters Health in an email.
"In turn, this may affect daytime performance, particularly at school," Arora, from Weill Cornell Medical College in Doha, Qatar, said.
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Social networking was associated with the biggest loss of sleep. Those who said they usually connected to friends online before getting into bed reported sleeping the least - an average of 8 hours and 10 minutes a night - compared with 9 hours and 2 minutes among those who never connected.
Earlier studies have linked sleep deprivation to obesity, depression, difficulty regulating emotions and lower grades. A Chinese study published last month found staying up late may raise teens' blood pressure.
For the current study, the researchers analyzed surveys on sleep and technology habits completed by 738 students at seven randomly selected schools in the Midlands region of England in 2010.
Kids who frequently viewed TV before bed were four times more likely to report waking up several times during the night than non-viewers, and frequent social networkers were three times more likely to wake up a lot. Kids who regularly played video games or listened to music at bedtime had significantly more difficulty falling asleep, the researchers reported in Sleep Medicine.
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Kids should unplug before sleep, study suggests