Increased media use is linked to preschoolers getting less sleep at night and more sleep during the day, report researchers.
How Kids Take in Media
The researchers assessed TV, DVD, VCR, video games, computer, and internet usage among 278 preschoolers, with an average age of 4 years old. Parents and guardians completed an online or paper questionnaire about their child’s bedtime behavior. They reported the hours of nightly sleep, daily naps, quantity, and times of media usage.In addition to providing demographic information, parents responded to questions about sneaky media use—a new measure representing the frequency children are caught using media when they should be sleeping.
On average, respondents reported their children got close to 11 hours of sleep per day. Most of the children’s media use occurred on weekdays after preschool, in the evening before bedtime, and over weekend days.
About 19 percent of the children had televisions in their bedroom and 17 percent had two TVs in their room. More than 23 percent had a DVD or VCR and 9 percent had one video gaming system.
‘Sleep Consolidation’
Harrison, professor of communication studies and study co-author, said that heaviest media users in the study likely have parents who are also heavy media users. This suggests that families should address these sleep concerns as a unit, not just for the youngest children in the household.The bottom line: Although the kids are getting more than 10 hours of sleep daily, it’s the timing of that sleep over the day that raises some cause for concern, the researchers say.
“As kids age, they typically grow out of the need for a daily nap, and this process is called ‘sleep consolidation,'” Moorman said.
This can be observed in the differences between the sleep behavior of young infants who sleep at all hours of the day for longer periods of time, and seven-year-olds who can go all day without a nap, getting their 10 hours of sleep in at one shot at night.
“Although these children may be meeting their required hours of sleep during any given 24-hour period, a longer daytime nap suggests a disruption to a child’s process of sleep consolidation,” Moorman said.
The longer naps by the heavy and sneaky media users could be one seemingly innocent yet impactful health-harming behavior in preschool-age children, the researchers say.