ISSUES
: The Internet of Things
Chapter 1: Digital issues
12
Want to get a good night’s sleep, kids?
T
he impact of social media
on young people’s lives is
underlined today as a new
study by researchers from the
University-based Wales Institute of
Social and Economic Research Data
(WISERD) reports that more than one
in five teenagers say they “almost
always” wake up during the night to
look at or post messages.
In a paper being presented to
the British Educational Research
Association (BERA) by researchers at
WISERD, the report also reveals that
more than a third of 12- to 15-year-
olds say they do so at least once a
week.
Unsurprisingly, this is revealed to be
having knock-on effects on how tired
the youngsters feel at school: among
some children it may even be more
important than having a late bedtime
in creating feelings of fatigue.
The sleep-disrupting use of social
media at night also seems to
be impacting on pupils’ overall
happiness, with lower levels of well-
being reported by those who wake to
use social networks.
Meanwhile, the study also has
implications for the debate on whether
teenagers should be allowed to start
school later, to give them more time
to sleep in the morning. The research
team say their data suggest such a
change could do more harm than
good.
The team’s findings on teenage sleep
patterns are drawn from statistical
analysis of a survey of 412 pupils
in year eight (aged 12 and 13) and
436 pupils in year ten (aged 14 and
15), educated in secondary schools
across Wales.
The adolescents were asked how
often they wake at night to use social
media. Some 22 per cent of year eight
pupils, and 23 per cent among those
in year ten, answered “almost always”.
A further 14 per cent of the younger
group, and 15 per cent of the older,
said they did so at least once a week.
Those surveyed were also asked
how often they felt tired at school.
More than half of those who reported
“almost always” waking to use social
media also said they “almost always”
go to school feeling tired.
This was much higher than the overall
percentage of respondents saying
they “almost always” feel tired at
school, which was 32 per cent among
year eight pupils and 39 per cent
among year tens.
The
study
found
substantial
proportions of pupils reporting going
to bed very late: 17 per cent of year
eight and 28 per cent of year tens said
they put their heads down at midnight
or later on a school night. Among
these, six per cent of the younger
group and eight per cent of the older
claimed to go to bed later than one
am.
However, the study found that, in the
case of the younger group, the amount
of time spent in bed actually seemed
less important, in terms of whether
the child then reported feeling tired
at school, than whether they woke up
during the night to use social media.
This was not the case among the
older group. However, even among
this group, those saying they woke up
to use social media every night were
still twice as likely to say they were
constantly tired than those who never
did so.
The researchers also found a strong
association between pupils reporting
having a regular time when they woke
up in the morning and not feeling tired.
WISERD’s Dr Kimberly Horton, who is
presenting research on Wednesday,
said: “Having a regular waketime
and using social media during the
night appear to be more important in
determining whether a young person
is always tired during the day than the
time they go to bed, how long they
spend in bed and having a regular
bedtime.
“It seems [very] important to
discourage adolescents from using
social media during the night. No
amount of effort to develop regular
bedtimes or to lengthen the time inbed
would seem to be able to compensate
for the disruption that this can cause.”
Last week, Paul Kelley, a former
headteacher now working at Oxford
University’s Sleep and Circadian
Neuroscience Institute, told the British
Science Festival that school start
times should be put back to combat
sleep-deprivation among pupils.
But the WISERD paper argues against
later school start times. It says that
pupils would be less likely to have
regular waking times as a result,
reiterating that routine waking times
seemed from the survey data to be
very important in terms of making a
child less likely to feel tired.
The paper says: “Having a regular
morning routine may actually prove to
be a very important feature in helping
adolescents concentrate and enjoy
their learning, something that may
actually be undermined by changes
to the school day.”
Sleep patterns also seem to have
a clear impact on pupils’ overall
reported level of wellbeing. The pupils
were asked how happy they were, on
a scale of one to seven. Among the
younger pupils, those who reported
nearly always feeling tired were
nearly a point less happy on average,
while among the older group, those
reporting as nearly always tired were
half a point less happy.
Routinesandrest:thesleepbehaviours
of 12 to 15 year olds
, a paper by Dr
Kimberley Horton, Professor Chris
Taylor and Professor Sally Power,
all of the Wales Institute of Social
and Economic Research, Data and
Methods and Cardiff University, was
presented to BERA on Wednesday,
16 September.
15 September 2015
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The above information is
reprinted with kind permission
from Cardiff University. Please
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for
further information.
© Cardiff University 2016
