Wed, May 31, 2017 page6

• Late-night phone use affects mental health of teenagers

  • The Guardian
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  Teenagers’ late-night mobile phone use is harming their sleep and potentially their mental health, researchers said, adding that “physical boundaries” should be set over use of such devices in the bedroom.

  A longitudinal study of 1,101 Australian high-school students aged 13 to 15 found poor-quality sleep associated with late-night texting or calling was linked to a decline in mental health, such as depressed moods and declines in self-esteem and coping ability.

  Lead research Lynette Vernon of Murdoch University in Perth said her findings were evidence of the need for curfews for teenagers to be established around use of devices in their bedrooms.

  Adolescents who used their phones as alarms should replace them with clocks in order to maintain “physical boundaries,” the former high-school teacher said.

  Researchers examined teens’ mobile phone use and changes in their well-being over four years of high school from 2010 to 2013, and found increasingly unencumbered access led to increases in psychosocial maladjustment.

  Citing international research that found about 80 percent of teenagers had access to a mobile phone, Vernon said phones had become entrenched in young people’s lives and many did not have their use restricted.

  Vernon said she had observed her own pupils coming into the classroom tired.

  “I noticed it was affecting their performance — that was a few years back, too,” she said.

  Though the link between late-night phone use and sleep, and between sleep and well-being, had been established in previous research, this was the first study to assess all three together, she said.

  “It’s important to have the research to translate to parents and teachers, who probably haven’t experienced to the same extent what kids are doing,” she said. “If you’re finding your son or daughter is more moody and not coping at school, you often put that down to adolescence, but it could be as simple as them not sleeping at night.”

  The study specified sending and receiving messages and/or phone calls, so did not distinguish between mobile phones and smartphones or social media.

  Students in Year 8 who reported higher levels of night-time mobile phone use also reported higher levels of depressed mood and externalizing behavior, and lower self-esteem when surveyed one year later.

  Few teenagers indicated that they never used their phone after lights out, and on average, younger teenagers’ healthy mobile phone habits became more problematic as they advanced through high school.

  “The outcomes of not coping — lower self-esteem, feeling moody, externalizing behaviors and less self-regulation, aggressive and delinquent behaviors — the levels increase as sleep problems increased,” she said.

  Teenagers who reported “constantly texting into the night” said when surveyed a year later, the problem had worsened.

  “Mobile Phones in the Bedroom: Trajectories of Sleep Habits and Subsequent Adolescent Psychosocial Development” was published yesterday in the Society for Research in Child Development’s Child Development Journal.
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