We’ve all heard how important sleep is, especially for children and teens.  One issue that has been popping up recently in our clinic has been families complaining of excessive sleepiness in their child.  They are appropriately concerned about why their child is dozing off at the dinner table or seems “kind of out of it”.  Often things are so bad that their child falls asleep in class daily resulting in an unhappy phone call or email from their school teacher.  

In clinical practice we would find that many children would be playing video games right up until the moment that they go to sleep.  Some of the nights the child would fall asleep playing games or play late into the night after their parents had gone to sleep.  When some of the children are asked they would tell you “Oh I’m not sleepy when my parents go to sleep”.  Sometimes parents would come to our office and ask “Doctor do you have anything to give to my child to help them sleep at night?”

In a few of the cases there would be children who got into the habit of getting into bed when they were told, waiting a few minutes after the lights go out and their parents are asleep, only to get up and out of bed to play video games late into the night.  In the most extreme cases the child would continue playing all-night until right before bed time so that his/her parents would think they slept through the night.  The child would then “catch-up” on sleep by sleeping in class.

Here is a list of reasons why sleep is important: 

• Sleep disruption created from playing games/checking social media/watching youtube can have the most noticeable/negative effects on many aspects of your child’s life
  • Mood problems: behavioral outbursts, Irritability, temper tantrums, depression, aggression, and in some cases suicidal thoughts
  • Poor performance at school: falling asleep in class, limited attention and focus, decreased memory
  • May develop circadian rhythm dysfunction (Read on for more information)
  • Poor sleep is known to be correlated with obesity later in life (earlier in life in more and more cases)
  • Increased risk of injuries

Guidelines from the American Academy of Pediatrics: 

• Infants 4 months to 12 months should sleep 12 to 16 hours per 24 hours (including naps) on a regular basis to promote optimal health.
• Children 1 to 2 years of age should sleep 11 to 14 hours per 24 hours (including naps) on a regular basis to promote optimal health.
• Children 3 to 5 years of age should sleep 10 to 13 hours per 24 hours (including naps) on a regular basis to promote optimal health.
• Children 6 to 12 years of age should sleep 9 to 12 hours per 24 hours on a regular basis to promote optimal health.
• Teenagers 13 to 18 years of age should sleep 8 to 10 hours per 24 hours on a regular basis to promote optimal health.

In my opinion the above guidelines are very strict, so I would look at lower number and consider +/-1 hour to be in the normal range because everyone is different. 

Why does this keep my child awake?

• Blue spectrum light: This form of light is prominent in our LCD/LED type screen devices.  Blue light deactivates a gland in our brains called the Pineal Gland which creates the sleep driving hormone, Melatonin.  Usually this glands starts turning up the production of melatonin when the sun goes down until a few hours later when we are (supposed to be) sleeping.  An easy way to remember that blue spectrum light keeps you awake is to just look outside during the day and notice the color of the sky.
• Going to sleep later aka “circadian rhythm dysfunction”: Typically what happens, Child stays up late playing games because they are stimulated by device/light, when they wake up they go to school, they might do alright in school but by the time they come back from school they are exhausted and think “Wow I’m really tired from “school” I should take a nap”. They then take a 2,3 even 4 hour nap before dinner. This does a few things (1) they delay starting homework (2) they are set up to repeat the cycle the next day .  Child will feel sleep deprived by the weekend (the parent may also feel this way) and attempt to sleep in to “catch up on sleep”.  I will discuss naps in a future post.

What to look out for:

When excessive gaming begins to be an issue, sleep is one of the first things that children will start to cut back on to give themselves more time to play games.  Voluntarily decreasing sleep is one of the earliest compensatory behaviors that children will start to rely on when their video gaming and electronic media use start to become “problematic”.  As a parent you can look out signs of sleep dysfunction as an early warning sign to excessive electronic use.

What you can do:

1. Keep video game consoles, PC’s, mobile phones and tablets out of the child’s bedroom
2. If your child starts falling asleep in class, make sure they are getting enough sleep (see Pediatric guidelines)
3. Communicate to them that staying awake at night time after bedtime is against the house rules
4. Stop screen use 2 hours before bed