SleepBetter.org

I don’t believe it.

A new study says the amount of time spent on social networking sites like Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn doesn’t affect how much sleep college students get each night.

Like I said, I’m
very skeptical of this study, though I should note that it wasn’t done on American
students.

The very next
day, I read about another study—this one done on US soil by the Kaiser
Family Foundation—that states plainly how connected our kids are these days.
Check out the following facts:

• Those
  ages 8 to 18 spend more than seven and a
  half hours a day with such devices, compared with less than six and a half
  hours five years ago. (This doesn’t count the hour and a half that youths spend
  texting, or the half-hour they talk on their cellphones!)
• Multitasking
  (ahem, texting while listening to music and watching TV) allows youths to pack
  on average nearly 11 hours of media
  content into that seven and a half hours.
• The
  heaviest media users were more likely than the lightest users to report that
  they were bored or sad, or that they got
  into trouble, did not get along well with their parents and were not happy at
  school. They also didn’t score as well on their report cards.
• More
  than 7 in 10 youths have a TV in their
  bedroom, and about a third have a
  computer with Internet access in their bedroom.

A problem?
Social media is here to stay. But that doesn’t mean that parents can’t take
back the power and instill good habits in their kids when it comes to using
social media responsibly. There have been plenty of other studies done to
support the idea that all these digital distraction do, in fact, interfere with
a good night’s sleep.

So with all this
in mind, I hope that parents increasingly consider establishing better ground
rules at home. Think about setting “curfews” for electronic usage in the Power Down Hour before bedtime. This includes
television, computer, cell phones, iPods, and portable players like DVDs. Your
teenager might not like it, but his or her mind and body (and bed!) will.

And if social
media truly doesn’t affect how much our kids sleep at night, then I want more
proof of that—at least when it comes to our over-stimulated and often privileged
American children.

Sweet Dreams,

Michael J. Breus, PhD
The Sleep Doctor™
www.thesleepdoctor.com
Follow me on Twitter:   http://twitter.com/thesleepdoctor

Click here to see Dr. Breus's list of recommended sleep products. Click here to order his book, Beauty Sleep, on Amazon or Kindle, or here to buy it for the Barnes & Noble Nook.