Before you fell asleep last night did you make sure to turn off your lights and the TV glow from across the room? I always have liked to sleep in the dark, but I know many people that cannot fall asleep without a light or a TV in the background. Evidence is showing us that this may not be healthy for us at all.
A study in England found that out of the 738 students studied at random, teens that frequently watched TV before bed were four times more likely to wake up several times during the night. The results were very similar when it came to playing video games and listening to music right before bed. Dr. Nanci Yuan, of the Sleep Center at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital in Palo Alto, California said, “The advent of technology has made every age group, but especially teenagers, have difficulties with their sleep.” Overall there is an increase in the lack of sleep throughout the society, but prominently with teenagers as a direct result of technology.
This study must open our eyes to the truth and I believe it starts with the parents. It is the parents job make sure that their children are in a dark room and are not exposed to technology before they go to bed because they must understand the importance of a goodnight sleep. If an even bigger study was done with a bigger sample size then, people would be most aware and convinced that this is a problem facing or society today.
There are some things that each on of us can do before we go to bed to make sure that we are doing the best that we can to help solve this problem. This includes making it as dark as we can and blocking out all of the light possible. Also having a set routine to go off of can help tremendously.
Jared, I found your post interesting and relatable. My current roommate is convinced that she can’t fall asleep without the television on. I try to encourage her to turn it off and in fact I may encourage her to read your post. Having the television on personally irritates me because just like you, I enjoy to sleep in the dark. Its hard for me to understand why anyone would enjoy the television on in the background while sleeping, and I would be curious to see how many of us in this class actually enjoy this. If you are curious and want to explore more about this topic check out this site http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/02/19/why-you-should-never-sleep-with-tv-or-dim-lights-on.aspx. This just again stresses the importance of sleeping in darkness and gives more reasons and examples to do so!
I definitely agree with this article because I can relate to it myself. I found that using my phone right before I go to sleep, causes me to have a difficult time actually falling asleep. I discovered this because one night I purposely did not check my phone (or any technology for that matter) before going to bed, and I fell asleep fairly quickly- much quicker than usual. I wonder if this has any correlation to the fact that our generation seems to be more sleep deprived. In looking into, I found an article that emphasizes the fact that avid cell phone users are most sleep deprived
Meta-analysis could definitely help understand the results of this study because I sleep with my TV on and usually have no issues. Most of the time I also use my phone right before going to sleep. These are just personal experiences, but based on this study having more access to light during hours when it is dark out, offsets are internal clock and that is major reason for falling asleep later. Although TV before bed may be a huge factor, the amount of access to light during the evening should be factored in.
This reminds me of a blog I did for the First Blogging period about cell phones and sleep. It seems that there are the same results on all light. One of the things in my blog that I also thing would be pertinent to yours is this article about long exposure to light and how it can disrupt circadian rhythms due to melatonin suppression. This might be something you could look into if you ever want to expand on this topic.
We are usually swayed to not comment on purely personal experience, but I believe this will contribute to the conversation as a whole. I am one of those people that have always fallen asleep with the TV on from a young age because when I was little I was scared to sleep in silence (mainly because my house expanded a lot at night and made weird noises) but as I got old I found the TV comforting in a different way. It lulls me to sleep. From my own experiences I’d have to disagree with your post, just like our pop quizzes in class, cases like this are completely relative and based on opinions. Ask anyone who knows me…I sleep like a rock and I hardly ever wake up in the middle of the night and I have really vivid dreams. In my case falling asleep with the TV on or some light has not effected me whatsoever. I believe there needs to be more of a study on this topic before we can generalize to a population what is completely best for all of us, at this point I would not be turning off my tv as I haven’t seen convincing evidence to make me.
After reading these results I can completely get behind the concept of light before bed not being a good thing. I recently did a blog post on using your phone before bed, and the light that comes from your phone tricks your brain into thinking it’s morning (light outside) and you have trouble falling sleep. This might also pertain to using your TV or laptop before bed. Like you said, there should be a study with a lot more people to get a true read on if we should be concerned with this problem.
I really appreciate your article. Your blog reminds me of the first pop quiz that we had which also illustrates the idea of turn of light at night. I basically agree with your idea that modern technology does affect people’s daily life and even bothers us in some aspects. However, the experiment you mentioned is an observational one which seems a bit lack of convincing to me. Maybe more data provided will be better, but over roll it is a great blog!
I know scientists put a lot of time into their research, but I don’t know if I believe all that they have to say on this theory that technology before bed hinders a good nights sleep. Every night before I go to bed I am checking every single app, making sure I am up to date with worldly and social news before I sign off for at least 8 hours. After doing this, I’ve never really had restless nights. I can sleep soundly all the time. Maybe this is just me and it could be different for everybody, but the only hiccup I’ve ever had at night is maybe it takes a little long for me to actually fall asleep. I was interested in hearing my facts on the matter that technology should not be used before bedtime and I found this cool article on the matter. It made me realize that I should put my phone on “do not disturb” at night, so no glow can come from it and delay the release of the much needed hormone, melatonin.
This study is definitely pertinent to all of us college students who stay up late, and fall asleep with the TV on, but i think the study had to be a randomized control trial. I understand it can affect people’s daily sleep pattern but at the same time I fall asleep with my television on every night, and it is easier said than done to put a timer on, and fall asleep. I usually do not wake up during the night even after having it on unless I am sick or I have a bad dream. There could also be third variables in this study of which effected those being tested in this study, so i think it is definitely a study I would go over again.