Media & sleep

Abstract

Media has become fundamentally integrated into the everyday lives of children and adolescents. Despite this, the consequences of media use on child and adolescent sleep remain incompletely understood. This chapter summarizes the current literature on four main mechanisms through which media consumption affects sleep health. (1) Increased media use is associated with decreased sleep duration secondary to sleep time displacement and delayed sleep onset. (2) Increased media use is associated with decreased sleep quality as a result of heightened arousal and greater sleep fragmentation. (3) Nighttime media use is associated with dysregulation of the circadian rhythm via blue light re-entrainment. (4) Mental health modulates both sleep and media use. Sleep and media use in-turn affect mental health, forming a bidirectional relationship. A biopsychosocial approach is taken to analyze each pathway. Key considerations such as age, sex, type of device used, passive vs. active use, and content of media are considered. Finally, evidence-based recommendations for clinicians, parents and policymakers are offered.