Teenagers should steer clear of prolonged video gaming before going to bed if they want a good night’s sleep, new research from Flinders University show. The study – conducted by Daniel King – found that prolonged video gaming immediately before bed caused significant sleep disruptions in a group of teenage boys, even when they fell asleep at their usual bedtime. The 17 participants played a violent video game for either 50 or 150 minutes on two different nights in a lab.
Child sleep psychologist Michael Gradisar, who supervised the study, said there was a 27-minutes loss in total sleep time after 150 minutes of gamong based on the polysomnography tests and a 39-minute delay in sleep onset according to the participants’ sleep diaries. “The REM sleep, was reduced by 12 minutes among the teens whoplayed for over two hours,” he said.
“This may not seem like a significant reduction but REM plays an important part in helping us remember content we learnt that day so for adolescents in their final years of school who are revising for exams, winding down at night with a video game might not be the best idea.”
Gradisar said the teens who played for 50minutes had almost no trouble falling or staying asleep, yet significant disruptions were reported after 150 minutes of game time.
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