Impact of night-time device use on teens
Overview
The most important thing to think about here is that most of the research you're likely to find is about physical wellbeing because sleep is important to our physical, emotional and academic wellbeing. However, staying up at night to use devices, still has all the same impacts of the use of devices during the day - social connection, work/life balance, cyberbullying, mental health, marketing, peer pressure, obesity, lack of active 'play', self-esteem etc. You can read about some of these impacts at The Yale Tribune, Dove Self Esteem Project and The Impacts of Social Media and Screen Use on Young People. any of these points may be a topic for you to explore in your IRP (If you do this, just pick one - you don't have a whole year!). Some of these topics have been explored on otyher pages on this site. See me if you'd like me to add a page.
Because device use has both positive and negative effects on users, sociologists are now starting to talk about 'responsible use' of devices, including limiting time spent on social media and not having them in your room at night, in contrast to 'excessive use' or even 'social media addiction'. These terms are especially important in defining the way teens relate to their devices, as it appears that excessive use is a much bigger problem than late night use (not least because they usually go together).
Because device use has both positive and negative effects on users, sociologists are now starting to talk about 'responsible use' of devices, including limiting time spent on social media and not having them in your room at night, in contrast to 'excessive use' or even 'social media addiction'. These terms are especially important in defining the way teens relate to their devices, as it appears that excessive use is a much bigger problem than late night use (not least because they usually go together).
- Technology and Adolescent Mental Health - book written for doctors, outlines some key health issues, has some great chapters about health, but stupidly expensive and hard to get hold of in libraries. Look through the contents and abstracts to see what they're about. If you think this is very useful let me know - when I have enough requests, we'll get it.
Arguments for mobile devices
- Your smartphone could be good for your mental health - identifies key positive impacts of smartphone use
- Smartphones are bad for some teens, not all - this researcher thinks she has a representative sample (which may be true) but she makes some assumptions about income levels, mental health and device use which create problematic cause-effect relationships on which she bases her data. I would question why her high income research subjects are using their devices less (eg lots of timetabled activities, having stay-at-home parent, access to mental health services etc) and whether these factors may correlate with better mental health and less screen time. Perhaps the increased screen time is a result rather than the cause of mental health issues associated with entirely different factors? If this were the case, then her conclusions would not stack up.
Arguments against mobile devices:
- 11 Reasons to Stop Looking at Your Smartphone - identifies key issues with smartphone use. this is not an authoritative source, so you need to research any of these topics further, but it does provide a quick and easy overview as a starting point.
- The impact of smartphones and mobile devices on human health and life - identifies physical problems associated with mobile phone use.
- Biphasic sleep - Is texting at night really a problem or just part of our genetic make-up? Research shows that our natural sleeping pattern may be two 4 hours shift with a long gap in the middle. What if the real problem is a society (and school day) that revolves around a single 8-9 hours sleep period? Or that different people's biphasic sleep patterns dont match up so they keep each other awke?
- You can read more about bi/polyphasic sleep patterns at What Is Biphasic Sleep and How Might It Benefit You? or the myth of the eight hour sleep. Academic studeis include: Polyphasic sleep strategies improve prolonged sustained performance: A field study on 99 sailors, A Biphasic Daily Pattern of Slow Wave Activity During a Two Day 90 Minute Sleep-Wake Schedule, and Interactions between sleep, stress, and metabolism: From physiological to pathological conditions.
- How television affects sleep - author is not qualified for research in the area, but she is an academic and the article is supported by an extensive bibliography
- "...unlike the use of passive technological devices (such as music players), the use of interactive technological devices (such as computers/laptops, mobile phones, video game consoles) made the onset of sleep difficult (β=9.4, p <0.0001) and had a hindering effect on refreshing sleep "unlike the use of passive technological devices (such as music players), the use of interactive technological devices (such as computers/laptops, mobile phones, video game consoles) made the onset of sleep difficult (β=9.4, p <0.0001) and had a hindering effect on refreshing sleep" (The influence of media on the sleep quality in adolescents, p.261)
- Mobile Phones in the Bedroom: Trajectories of Sleep Habits and Subsequent Adolescent Psychosocial Development - Australian study should be accessible through your local library. You can read a good summary here.
- Adolescent Sleep Patterns and Night-Time Technology Use: Results of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Big Sleep Survey - Australian study was less conclusive. "We observed dose-response relationships between adolescents' use of computers, cellphones and TVs in bed prior to sleep and delayed sleep/wake patterns, including wake lag (waking later on weekends relative to weekdays). Effects of device use on sleep duration and catch up sleep were less consistent".
- Screens and sleep: The New Normal: Parents, teens, screens and sleep in the US. - a well referenced paper from a leading parental support organisation (which, however, often tends toward conservative scare tactic reporting - check alternative viewpoints). You can read more about their latest survey here.
- Digital Media and Sleep in Childhood and Adolescence - identifies three key problems with media technology use in the hour before sleep, but also draws attention to the flaws in current research about device use and sleep patterns.
- Night-time screen-based media device use and adolescents' sleep and health-related quality of life - "Night-time use of mobile phones in a room with the light on is associated with some adverse sleep outcomes but the magnitude of the association is larger if use occurs in the dark."
- Investigating the Effects of Social Media Usage on Sleep Quality - small sample shed little impact of social media use on sleep quality.
- Teenagers 'checking mobile phones in night' -
- "...students who turned off their devices or who messaged for less than 30 minutes after lights out performed significantly better in school than those who messaged for more than 30 minutes after lights out. Students who texted longer in the dark also slept fewer hours ... Texting before lights out did not affect academic performance" [Texting at night affects teens' sleep, academic performance].
Specific Issues: Depression and anxiety
- #Sleepyteens: Social media use in adolescence is associated with poor sleep quality, anxiety, depression and low self-esteem - notes that "emotional investment in social media is more strongly associated with anxiety, depression and low self-esteem than overall or nighttime-specific social media use." This article has an excellent hyperlinked bibliography.
- Teenagers' sleep quality and mental health at risk over late-night mobile phone use - Australian study links late night phone use with mental health issues - but which is the cause and which the effect?
- "It is fair to say that there is an ‘association’ between social media use and mental health problems, on the basis that this means a socially constructed reality. But this is not necessarily scientifically valid. Objective researchers investigate correlations rather than accepting socially assumed truths. Correlation is statistical, not phenomenal. Thirdly, there is causation, which requires directional evidence. The latter has not been adequately investigated in this topic, and we must, therefore, state that the relationship is correlational but not conclusively causative." (A systematic review: the influence of social media on depression, anxiety and psychological distress in adolescents). This means that some of the problems that correlate with social media use might actually be die to other factors such as sleep deprivation, Socio-Economic Status etc.)
Specific Issues: Privacy
- Teens and Mobile Apps Privacy - Identifies specific concerns regarding aps, focusing especially on teenage girls disabling location function on installed aps.
Specific Issues: Exercise
- The Impact of Cell Phone Use on the Intensity and Liking of a Bout of Treadmill Exercise - identifies device use for music listening as having a positive effect on treadmill exercise
- The association of sleep and late-night cell phone use among adolescents "Late-night cell phone use by adolescents was associated with poorer sleep quality. Participants who were physically active had better sleep quality and quantity." this suggests that the lack of exercise is a bigger problem than cell phone use.
Methodology
If you are after a band 5 or 6 for your IRP, you should pay particular attention to the methodologies you use in your research, especially your measurement tools. These issues are especially important for you to discuss in your evaluation, but should also influence the way you conduct your research:
You should also be aware that most research on mobile device use discovers 'links', 'associations' or 'correlations' - this just means that they both happen to the same research subjects; not that there is a cause and effect relationship. A link or correlation does not mean that the device use is the main cause of poor sleep, depression or poor academic results. Be careful to notice which words are used in your sources and use the correct words in your own research.
- "Handheld media is used in such brief, intermittent ways that it can be hard for parents to estimate duration of use over the course of a day; devices can now be used in any room, during any activity, from car rides to dinner time. Novel approaches for providing media guidance are therefore needed." (The Elephant in the Examination Room: Addressing Parent and Child Mobile Device Use as a Teachable Moment) What are the implications of this statement for identifying the amount of time people spend on devices? How reliable do you think self-reporting is? How might this affect your methodology?
- "Clinicians must discover the underlying factors (e.g., social or family stress) which drive the patient to use the screens in the late hours. Addressing such factors directly may be essential to motivating families to achieve healthier screen habits." (Youth screen media habits and sleep: sleep-friendly screen-behavior recommendations for clinicians, educators, and parents) What factors might influence your research subjects? How might this influence your research?
- "The sleep and mental health research literatures have made recent advances towards a more nuanced understanding of social media use: moving beyond a focus on simply duration of use, towards new insights into the role of content, context and experience of these online interactions." (Understanding Links Between Social Media Use, Sleep and Mental Health: Recent Progress and Current Challenges). What factors could you examine in your IRP? What kinds of contexts would you need to account for in your research? How might you include them in your methodology? [Suggestions: specific aps or topics used/researched at night, family size and relationships, privacy while using device at night, nature of social interactions at night, times these interactions occur, context of other people's interactions (eg. catching up with international friends/games, watching film/TV releases, discussing homework), quality of online friendships, passive consumption or active content creation on devices, amount and type of parental control over device use, time using devices at night vs time using devices during the day...]
- he best research on this topic includes specialised sleep studies that measure how well people sleep and what their brains are doing while they sleep. Because you're not a scientist, you don't have access to technology that can accurate measure the amount and quality of sleeping patterns. this will affect the reliability of your results (eg: I sometimes get up in the middle of the night to research something that's affecting my quality of sleep. On that night I might sleep less hours but have a deeper, more restful sleep than if I let the question keep bumbling around in my dreams). How might you measure the sleep patterns of your research subjects?
You should also be aware that most research on mobile device use discovers 'links', 'associations' or 'correlations' - this just means that they both happen to the same research subjects; not that there is a cause and effect relationship. A link or correlation does not mean that the device use is the main cause of poor sleep, depression or poor academic results. Be careful to notice which words are used in your sources and use the correct words in your own research.
Phones in schools
Against
Schools are banning smartphones. Here’s an argument for why they shouldn’t — and what they should do instead.
Mobile phones in the classroom – what does the research say? - a quick overview of pluses and minuses, as well as a teacher's opinion. The opinions are backed up by links to academic studies.