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6 November 2012

Violent Evening Media Cause Sleeping Problems

Keywords: health, intervention, interview, kids, media, parents, sleeping, North America, experiment, preschoolers, television, unconscious effects,

Many scientific studies have found a relation between media use and sleeping difficulties among young children. A study in Pediatrics comes to a similar conclusion, but also offers a solution. The solution for sleeping difficulties among children seems to lie in changing their media use. The researchers replaced all violent media content by more age-appropriate media content, and sleeping difficulties diminished. 

Take aways

  • (Excessive) media use does indeed cause sleeping problems among young children.
  • Therefore, parents and caregivers, but also psychiatrists, should focus on changing media use, and decrease children's exposure to violent media and to media at evening hours. 
  • When both children and parents make healthy media choices, this could be a proper strategy to resolve sleeping difficulties. 

Study information

  • The question?

    Does excessive media use among children cause sleeping problems, and if so, how can we help?

  • Who?

    565 children (and their parents) between the ages of 3 and 5 years old, who at least watched some media each week. Parents/caregivers all spoke English.

  • Where?

    Seattle, United States

  • How?

    Children were divided into two groups. One group was exposed to the healthy media intervention (see below). The other group received an intervention that was not related to media use, that is a nutrition intervention that encouraged families to decrease unhealthy food choices.

    The healthy media intervention focused on replacing violent media content with age-appropriate media content. The researchers achieved this through a home visit and follow-up telephone interviews over 6 months. Parents were also asked to fill out a questionnaire about the sleeping pattern of their child at 6, 12, and 18 months after the start of the study.

Facts and findings

  • Of all different sleeping problems, the most common sleeping difficulty among the children was actually falling asleep:
    • 26% of all kids needed over 20 minutes to fall asleep, during 2 to 4 nights a week.
    • 12% of all kids needed over 20 minutes to fall asleep during 5 to 7 nights a week. 
  • Sleeping difficulties were regularly caused by watching violent media and evening media use.
  • The healthy media intervention improved the sleeping behavior of children, which means that healthy media choices reduced sleeping difficulties.
  • Children who participated in the healthy media intervention had less sleeping problems than children who were exposed to the healthy nutrition intervention.