Browsing by Subject "gaming"

Objectives: Adolescence is a crucial time of change on many fronts: sleep is observed to be one that is affected heavily. Sleep is found to change during adolescence, by circadian rhythm shifting to later, homeostatic sleep pressure dispersing more quickly, and adolescents becoming more tolerant to it. Also, other factors related to more independence and rapid growth affect the dynamics of sleep. During this time also the usage of screenbased devices increases. It is proposed that these devices might affect the adolescents’ sleep detrimentally due to cognitive arousal, time displacement, or short-wavelength blue light. Thus, further investigation of the associations between sleep and screen time is needed. Methods: 318 (ages: 16–17 years old, 30% boys) adolescents participated in the study. Their sleep was monitored with actigraph for 7-10 consecutive days. Based on actigraphy data, sleep efficiency, duration, and latency were deduced. In addition, the screen time of the adolescents was followed up with a daily diary where usage of screen-based devices four hours before sleep was inquired. The association between sleep and screen time was studied by using mixed regression model, where screen time was placed as predictor and sleep dependent variable. For each respective sleep metric, a linear model was computed, thus, altogether three models were found. Results: Larger amounts of screen time was found to be negatively associated with sleep efficiency and positively associated with sleep onset latency. No evidence for the relationship between screen time and sleep duration was found. It was specifically found that lack of usage of screen-based devices before sleep was associated with higher sleep efficiency and longer latency. In terms of type of media, social media was found to have adverse effects on sleep efficiency and latency, whereas gaming predicted only worse sleep efficiency. An interaction effect of gaming and sex was found, suggesting that the gaming’s adverse effects are pronounced with boys. Conclusions: Although no relationship between sleep duration and screen time was found, screen time can be seen to affect the quality of sleep and other factors like sleep onset latency. To ensure the adequate levels of sleep during this crucial time of development, monitoring the amount of screen time is important to limit any adverse effects it may cause.