Night texting may ‘disrupt sleep and memory’ – report

Friday 8th June 2012

Using mobile phones late at night may damage children’s memory and sleep quality, according to a neuroscientist reported by the BBC. Dr Paul Howard-Jones from Bristol University, who will be speaking at the Bristol Festival of Education, claims that research suggests night-time texting and other interactions on mobiles can be more disruptive to sleep than watching television before bedtime.

The findings that Dr Howard-Jones will discuss, drawn from several studies, centre around the fact that exposure to bright lights – typical in most modern smartphones – represses the body’s production of melatonin, and that the effects of sleep deprivation include a dramatically-reduced ability to function normally during the day, which for school-age children of course directly equates to learning and memorising new information.

Dr Howard-Jones will stress that parents should be discouraging mobile use in the evening in the same way as other distractions, in order to ensure good sleep hygiene in children.

Tags: sleep memory foam

Category: Sleep Research

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