- Mobile phones, computers and other such gadgets in the
bedroom are seriously disrupting the sleeping patterns of a growing number
of children, a study has found.
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- Reading a book under the bedclothes with a torch has
now been replaced by insidious distractions such as video games and mobile
phones used for late-night text messages. A survey of more than 2,500 teenagers
found that many of them were losing sleep, particularly as a result of
the boom in the popularity of "texting" with mobile phones.
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- Jan Van den Bulck, a senior lecturer in psychology at
the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium, found that text messages
interrupted the sleep of most adolescents and that up to one in five said
they were awakened regularly by friends texting late at night.
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- Dr Van den Bulck said: "These preliminary findings
suggest that mobile telephones may be having a major impact on the quality
of sleep of a growing number of adolescents. The threat to healthy sleep
patterns is potentially more important than the threat posed by entertainment
media. The latter mainly appear to influence time to bed, while mobile
phones actually seem to lead to interrupted sleep.
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- "It's not so much whether they are disturbed in
their sleep by being awakened. If they take their phone with them and leave
it switched on, they sleep at a different level because they are constantly
aware of the phone."
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- Dr Van den Bulck has conducted extensive research into
how gadgets in the bedroom affect the sleeping patterns of children and
found that it was not only television that had an impact. He said: "People
have always been concerned about television and more and more children
have their own TV sets in their room. I started to think that we have to
look at more things than just television.
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- "I get the impression that parents think that anything
to do with computers means that their child is probably learning something,
even if they are actually only using computer games."
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- In his survey of 2,546 children from a random sample
of 15 schools in Flanders, Dr Van den Bulck found that children with televisions
and game computers in their rooms went to bed significantly later on weekdays
than those without such gadgets. Other leisure activities involving a more
structured use of time - such as evening sport sessions - had little or
no influence on the amount of sleep a child received.
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- Children can, to some extent, compensate for sleep lost
during the week by sleeping in during the weekend. But this did not appear
to happen with children kept awake by hi-tech gadgets.
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- "If you lose sleep because you play too many computer
games or you sleep more lightly because you get too many phone messages
I cannot really see the positive side to it," Dr Van den Bulck said.
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- "Sleep patterns change and develop constantly during
adolescence. Changes in sleep patterns have been linked to numerous problems
including daytime sleepiness, behaviour problems and even accidents."
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- © 2003 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd
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- http://news.independent.co.uk/world/science_medical/story.jsp?story=4781
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