>"This is an especially big problem for teens whose circadian rhythms are already shifting naturally, causing them to feel awake later at night. The end result: sleep-deprived or poorly rested kids who have essentially given themselves a mini case of jet lag"
It doesn't seem like a huge problem that teens are getting ~30 minutes less sleep per nights because of technology. Staring at screens is now a major part of our lives and that probably won't change any time soon. I do think we need to consider what time class starts for teenagers who need a solid 8-9 hours of sleep per night. When I was in High School, a 7 am start time required me to be awake at 5 am, which probably contributed to how miserable I felt as a teen.
>When I was in High School, a 7 am start time required me to be awake at 5 am, which probably contributed to how miserable I felt as a teen.
In my region they've shifted school start times later to accommodate teens who have late after-school activities. The problem with this logic is that the younger the child, the more sleep they need. The shift for our local teenagers resulted in even earlier start time for elementary and middle school aged kids. Bus schedules also shifted which required me to wake my young kids even earlier (5:30 AM). Thankfully my work is flexible enough that I can drive them, which gives them an extra 30-45 min of time each morning - other parents not so lucky.
What's your source on "younger children need more sleep"?
Our teen definitely needs much more than his younger sibling. But it seems to be more individual based on my very low n observations, the eldest needed more sleep when he was the age his younger sibling is.
I'd expect there to be a sex-based characteristic to sleep needs to?
The reason I wanted your source was to see the detail - like ranges, breadth of studies, etc..
Many people assume a lot of things that when investigated turn out to be false.
Often assertions don't match their backing: for example you said " The problem with this logic is that the younger the child, the more sleep they need."
However that's not what your first study says. It gives broad ranges, so it concedes that younger children can need less sleep than older children, it's not tied in a simple way to age.
You perhaps meant "on average", which is quite reasonable, and having the source you based you statement on can lead one to assume you were being brief rather than errant.
FWIW those sources look like you quickly googled it; and so weren't really relying on any particular sources.
TL;DR your source supports my observation and contradicts your claim as written.
For parents wondering what the right amount is, the right amount is simply how many hours your children wants to sleep. People on a schedule just don't oversleep. The research only really matters if you have medical concerns about your child, for example, you can't get them on any schedule, they're sleepy when they seem to be getting enough sleep, or there's some other issue.
Make your schedule malleable for your kids and within a few days you'll pretty much know exactly how much sleep they need.
For my kids the trouble is "when" they want this sleep. My oldest goes to bed "early" and rises early. My youngest could stay up until 2-3 AM and sleep until noon (as she did this summer).
This may depend on their chronotype. When we were cave people some of us evolved to stay up later and guard the camp from predators, some of us got up early to hunt. You need to try and support that where possible, but not to overindulge it. If they are staying up until 2:00am to play computer games it may just be because their brain is more sensitive to light and it's actually that that's keeping them awake.
I'm not sure how you could have derived your conclusion based on these results. Are you saying because ranges overlap they aren't valid or shouldn't be used as a guide?
We don't need science to confirm common everyday experiences, which "little kids need lots of sleep" is for a good chunk of the human race. We may need science to filter through the possible reasons why or a variety of other such things, but not the brute fact.
We also don't need to run a scientific study to know that "if the kids are cranky it's likely because they are hungry or thirsty", "it is highly likely that the kid is lying about the fire-breathing goat breaking into the house and breaking the lamp", or "most kids like to eat candy". Again, plenty of interesting science to be done about the reasons for those things, but science does not require us to be that skeptical.
There's a scientific reason for this, too, which is that whatever study you might be interested in conducting on these matters, "the common experience of humanity" has already run a study a billion times larger, and with more statistical power than you could dream of putting into a study. If humanity is wrong about those things, your study is just going to make some of the same errors. It is not productive to run a scientific study with orders of magnitude less statistical power than the data we already all possess.
(And before you go "but what if they're wrong"... I covered that already in the term "statistical power". We are not obligated by science to pretend that nothing not produced in a study has a statistical power of zero. That's a modern perversion of the idea, and causes some serious philosophical bootstrapping problems if you take the idea seriously.)
Younger children may need more sleep in total, but teenagers' circadian rhythm is shifted later relative to adults and younger children. They need 8 hours or so that starts and ends later than younger children.
Or at least that's the argument made in the book Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker.
Teenagers' circadian rhythms are shifted later than adults': they naturally go to bed later and sleep later. For most individuals, trying to sleep at times other than your body's rhythm will make it more difficult to go to sleep (though how severe that is varies from individual to individual).
It's an evolutionary thing. Having children, adolescents, adults and the elderly on different sleep schedules affords a family unit with nearly round the clock protection (as there's nearly always someone awake).
"A hypothesis (plural hypotheses) is a proposed explanation for a phenomenon. For a hypothesis to be a scientific hypothesis, the scientific method requires that one can test it. "
In context, it appears like you're stating that "yes of course it's a hypothesis, here is the definition". But the post you're replying to suggested it wasn't because he/she did not see any way to effectively test it (the falsifiable comment), which would exclude it from the definition.
According to Wikipedia "A hypothesis (plural hypotheses) is a proposed explanation for a phenomenon." The same article also states that "In common usage in the 21st century, a hypothesis refers to a provisional idea whose merit requires evaluation". Thus what I called "hypothesis" is indeed one by Wikipedia's usage.
I also quoted the sentence "For a hypothesis to be a scientific hypothesis, the scientific method requires that one can test it." (my emphasis) in order to point out that what pbhjpbhj called "hypothesis" seems to be normally called "scientific hypothesis".
1. Its clearly testable whether or not the phase of the circadian rhythm of humans shifts with age.
2. Having a range of circadian rhythm phases in your pack is useful for a 24-hour watch by definition, but in order for it to have been an evolutionary factor, watches that take advantage of this would have to actually happen in the wild. Finding wild packs of humans is a tall order, but if #1 holds for other primates or even other pack mammals, you could measure to what extent packs operate their 24-hour watch with different age groups at different times of the day.
3. The final price needed is to show that having a more alert watch gives a better survival rate. That seems self-evident, but it could also be tested by monitoring wild packs of humans or other primates.
>It's an evolutionary thing. Having children, adolescents, adults and the elderly on different sleep schedules affords a family unit with nearly round the clock protection
Erm. No.
If you look at modern primitive groups of people, you don't sleep all night. You wake up several times throughout the night and are, generally, considerably lighter sleepers.
Some people in 'civilized' societies still do this. I wake up a handful of times a night, the vast majority of the time, and always have. It's not a medical issue, I'm getting quality sleep and I'm back asleep in a couple of minutes tops.
Same goes for a lot of career soldiers/warriors throughout history including modern times, they can be out cold in a couple of minutes any time of the day with minimal effort and can be fully functional within seconds of being woken up.
If think people put way too much importance into clock time. It doesn't really matter what number the clock shows when you wake up. The problem is to sleep early enough to be able to wake up. If you sleep too late you will have a hard time waking up, whether you are trying to wake up at 6am or at 11am. Unless you are particularly sensitive to sunlight, in which case you will wake up with the sun... so certainly quite a bit earlier than most teens would like to.
Maybe I'm completely wrong, but it certainly wouldn't have helped me. At my very worst (around 19 or 20) I had a hard time waking up to attend classes at 1:30pm... Which makes sense given that I was going to sleep at 5~6am (CS, Warcraft III, etc.) and I'm a big sleeper (still need a solid 8 to 8:30 hours per night at 35).
Clock time doesn't matter, you're right, but it very does matter what time school starts in relation to when the Sun goes up and down - at least if teens spend a good amount of time outside or in rooms with windows.
Most of school year it is dark long before they go to sleep regardless of when they go to sleep. Half the time it is dark when they are leaving activities and it is going to be worst if they stop DST. How much difference makes 4 hours of dark before sleeping vs 5 hours of dark? It also changes constantly. Over year there is hours of difference for when sun goes away, with sun being available longest in summer.
Right? Sunrise today was 7:21 AM, sunset is 5:38 PM. So in Indiana in the winter school should be from what? 9 AM to 3 PM so kids have time to have an early dinner, do their homework and hit the rack by 6 PM?
Then what about on June 1st? Sunrise is at 6:20 AM and sunset is at 9:07 PM.
It isn't a matter of time since you were exposed to sunlight that causes sleepiness. Rather, you body has its own 24 our cycle called the Circadian rhythm that is phase locked to the solar cycle. If you go into a cave far away from the sun you'll still have a roughly 24 hour sleep/wake cycle but over time it will drift away from the actual day cycle. As far as I'm aware the duty cycle of 24 our sunlight input doesn't have any effect on the ability of the Circadian rhythm to phase match with it. If you're interested in learning more I'd recommend the book Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker.
So basically, regularly going to sleep sooner and waking up sooner is impossible, because sun light dock it. But actually, it has nothing to do with sun light and is regular cycle that is magically tied to clock number? And it also all works the same regardless of where within time zone you are located despite there being over an hour difference between sun times.
Plus irony: And it is also completely different for adult programmers who totally need to work evenings (never ever mornings) and night to be crunch effective unlike administration adults who are morning people.
I was only talking about one process above. There are others too, like sleep debt. Night shift workers can train themselves to sleep in the day and remain awake through the night but at a pretty steep psychological and physiological toll. Scientists have been studying the whole area pretty intensely for the last half-century or so leading to wonderful things like malatonin pills. If you want to know more but don't want to read a whole book there's always Wikipedia.
Reverse this. I had no alarm for 5 years and did what my body said: when I was asleep I would sleep. When I felt like waking up I would.
My body immediately shifted to what I already knew: going to bed at 5-6 am, waking up at 1-2pm (I roughly sleep 8.5 hours, sometimes 9).
Never felt more rested.
I now wake up at 10 am. It's ok, but I always feel SO rested when I sleep until I needed. Just having an alarm SET puts me on a bad path, even if I have 10 hours.
There was an economic study looking at the economic benefits of sleep. 30 minutes may not sound like much, but it has some serious long term repercussions in lifetime earning.
I know economic studies can be kind of gross, and should always be taken with a grain of salt, but Dubner is pretty good at finding really gross flaws in papers (or at least is really good at pointing out potential problems in a study's methods).
>GIBSON: We find that permanently increasing sleep by an hour per week for everybody in a city, increases the wages in that location by about 4.5 percent.
Teenagers need 8-10 hours, not 7-9, but it's not just about the total time spent asleep (although this is super critical for teenagers as they need much more) it's about the quality of sleep.
Devices close to bed time stimulate the mind with a range of hormones and thought patterns. while teenagers might be able to fall asleep in the same way, they don't sleep as well. This being defined and less regular cycles and fewer and shorter phases of deep sleep, especially in the last phase of deep sleep (the most critical).
Without doubt making teenagers get up early to study has a detrimental affect of their learning and it's only our arcane societal norms around sleep that continue to compound this problem.
That's interesting. Do you have a link to a study stating this? I also thought nearsightedness increased dramatically mostly due to lack of outdoor time.
Lately I find that I'm growing suspicious of this blue light link to sleep. Not in principle, just something in the way blue light has gained so much traction as a significant factor in sleep quality. Intuitively it feels off, or maybe over-magnified. I'd like to research it some more; do you know of any studies that are worth checking out?
I think blue light is important, but I think addiction to phones is even more important. I have students who'll stay up late to answer messages, even though they use the modes that filter blue light. They just have to constantly be checking their phone...Now, if you couple that with blue light not being filtered, then you're facing even more problems.
>There have been many links between increased blue light and reduced REM/restful sleep
The only decent study I know of about blue light and sleep, was done before the LEDs in phones/tablets/kindles even existed. Which means they were using more traditional light sources that were likely putting out an order of magnitude more luminosity.
Everything that suggests tablets/phones/kindles interferes with sleep are woo-woo blogs trying to affiliate link sell you orange safety glasses and similar nonsense.
If these devices ARE affecting sleep, it's likely the level of mental stimulation they are providing and the fact that when most people get into bed, they don't shut their mind off and instead start thinking about how Sally post pictures of her 13th fancy meal in her 13th country this month and how John's abs pop way more than theirs and it's just not fair because they count their macros and train and train and just can't get abs like that or they're mad that SniperLulz127 fragged them 4 times this evening in Overwatch Fortress 7 Call of Defeated Zombies.
Comnputer light (which is white, including more blue than other light sources in a home) does interfere with sleep more than normal indoor bedroom lighting (which is usually red), but it does not cause blindness during the daytime.
I went to a camp for a month and had no access to computers and phones. I can vouch that I slept much better during that month than any other time. And every time I tested by not having electronics around my pillow I sleep better. I am not a kid and this is just one data point, but it would take a lot to convince me that screen time doesn't affect sleep. In my experience at least, it has an effect and not a good one.
it could very well that what you did to replace that screen time was what affected your sleep and not the actual lack of screen time: more excercise, more reading, etc. I think screen time on its own is not the issue, it's what other things you do/do not. Everything in excess is (very likely) going to produce a negative effect.
That seems like a "pedestrians don't die 'crossing the road without looking', they die getting hit by cars" type distinction. The removal of 'crossing the road without looking' is still the solution.
Sure. but the argument I (poorly) made was that screen time on its own might not be the only thing affecting sleep time/quality. Think about it this way: if you keep the same amount of screen time, but also do the other things (time playing outside, reading books/comics, playing with in person with friends, etc) then you would prob get the same quality sleep. The thing is that people tend to use screen time as a replacement of those activities. That's IMHO the biggest problem.
As a parent of a 2.5yo toddler, I'm not restricting screen time to my son at all, because I want him to get used to them: screens and computers will inevitably be in his life. But I also make sure to play board games with him, read books and let him have actual play time outside in the park with other kids.
It's a solution, not the solution, and I think that's an important distinction to make.
Screens could be causing sleeplessness, or it could be that sitting bored without anything to keep your attention is the key to getting to sleep more easily.
And that's important to think about, as without that information, people might try to solve sleep issues by listening to podcasts, which if the root cause isn't the screen, might not help much.
Are you sure it's not simply because not having access to computers and phones you slept more. Also on a camp you might do more physical exercise during the day which helps sleeping better.
I'm not sure why people are downvoting you. It's a documented fact that blue light from the screens of electronic devices inhibits melatonin production.
I think your statement is one data point, but I can certainly concur with it. I have had the same experience. When I disconnect from the internet, I tend to sleep much, much better. Also, if sleep wasn't affected by technology, why would Google and Apple be making efforts on "Digital Wellbeing" in their respective operating systems to help limit our use, especially late at night.
>I went to a camp for a month and had no access to computers and phones. I can vouch that I slept much better during that month than any other time.
Because you weren't wondering if Sally posted her latest mirror selfie or if John had replied to your comment on his sportsball statement or if that person you're interested in liked your last status post.
Sure, that's partially the fault of devices but it's mostly just not having the ability to silence your mind when you get in bed. A lot of people get in bed then immediately start thinking about their day or tomorrow instead of, you know, going to sleep. A lot of this is simply a byproduct of having fast-paced, give it to me now, I can stream 1523412 television shows and movies, oh my god if I sleep for 6 hours it'll take forever to scroll through the 731 Instagram accounts I follow's new posts tomorrow and just not knowing how to shut that chatter off in your mind.
Some people can shut it off, some people can't and shouldn't use tech within an hour or two of bed, some people should largely abandon such technology period.
I have spent the last year building sleep tech and I have read 100's of papers on the subject, been to conferences and spent lots of time with academics and experts on the subject of sleep.
Screen time matters massively. It really matters for children and every single piece of evidence, bar this poorly written study (two questions), say so.
It's a real issue for adults too, and blue light issue aside, the disturbance of your wind down routine is a massive health issue that needs to be adressed. It affects not only how you fall asleep (the marker for which people judge sleep quality) but also staying asleep and the quality of it (a far more important measure).
(Also if anyone is building sleep apps/tech I'm looking for work)
If you've stumbled in your reading upon any hints on what to do with a two year old that barely sleeps more than 6 hours a day (including naptime) i'd kill for it.
We're having a neurologist appointment coming up because of it, but I can't shake the feeling we're just the worst parents. :/
We've taken away all screens from him a month ago, but he won't stop waking up at night, trying to breastfeed as much as possible and not falling asleep before 1 AM.
My sister-in-law only needed 4 hours of sleep a day growing up. Very frustrating for my in-laws. She is in her late 40's now. All this to say, its probably not something you are doing to your son. He might just be that way! :)
This is not strictly accurate. There is some daily mail science about “super humans” who need less than 7-8 hours. And while some people survive like this, your body needs sleep for 7-8 no exceptions. Deep sleep (as important as light sleep) only occurs during long uninterrupted phases. During those phases your body does some amazing things. Amongst other things the production of things like cancer fighting cells and repairing all the physical and mental streses of the day. While not fully understood exactly what, we know the why and lots of good studies prove the correlation between regular quality sleep and better mental and physical well being.
Just another parent here... Does he fall asleep easily? What's the room environment like? White noise? Disposable diapers or cloth? Does he have a healthy appetite and diet? Are you still in the room when he falls asleep?
I suppose with a neurologist in the picture, none of the usual things are suspicious though.
Maybe get him on some real food. I apparently was an unholy terror that never slept and wanted to feed every hour; my poor mother was probably about ready to smother me with a pillow before my grandmother who had raised ten children convinced her to add in some apple sauce and cottage cheese and oatmeal and that sort of thing.
Is he waking up near the same time every night? If so, wake him up and re-comfort him before he wakes himself up. Breaks his body's habits, and resets after a week or two (YMMV on the length of time). That was the advice from our (general) doctor.
We also tried gas drops, as we noticed sometimes he just burped and went back to sleep after half an hour of extreme crankiness.
Have you (assuming you are the mother) had your breast milk examined? The baby should be getting plenty of melatonin and tryptophan from your milk, but it is possible for some mothers to have nutrient underproduction issues. Even if they are properly nourished themselves.
I'm no expert, but my daughter is about to be weaned off the bottle at 1 year. 2 years seems an awful long time for breastfeeding. The key was to get her to bed when she's tired around 6:30 to 7:00 pm with a set routine. Also, I've weaned her off of night feedings by giving progressively smaller quantities at night.
The world health organization recommends to breastfeed only up to 6 months and to keep breastfeeding (foods allowed too) until 2 years old, to give maximum benefits.
How quick are you to go comfort him when he cries in bed? We did the thing where we let him sort him self out unless he was crying for more then 15-30 min. After a couple weeks they learn to self-soothe. It can be hard emotionally for the parents. Also getting him off the boob and on the food helped. A belly full of babyfood seems to last longer then a belly of milk.
I don't have advice for your kids sleep problem, but the fact that you noticed this problem and care about it means you're not the worst parents. Parenting is hard, and it sounds like you're trying your best.
Sounded pretty like my daughter at 2. She's much better now though still breast feeds at night a lot - but she's happy and healthy and we are OK - so hang in there - it will get better.
Do you drink a lot of coffee? Anecdotally I was noticing restlessness/sleeplessless with my child when I was caffienated and breast feeding. Going cold turkey there helped a lot. Also if your child is slightly older, feeding him/her with some solid food might be useful. I gave my child mashed avocados, which was a huge hit.
Well I’m sure you’re not terrible parents.
I don’t have children but what I do know about all sleepers is that it’s about routine. Same things every night, in the same order. No screens or other stimulus 2 hours before bed. Exercise or any physical activity close to sleep too, but running around and playing football etc. before meal timed helps, and as for meal times light non carb based meals well before bed.
Reading is a great way to unwind and helps the mind.
Children have been less of a focus for me but before a neurologist I’d suggest a sleep specialist. They can come to your home and give you some tips. There are even ones focused for children. If you’re in the UK I can help with contacts. I hope that was in some way useful, as sleep experts have said to me regularly, it’s not rocket science it’s dicipline.
Some kids are routine like that, but others not. Mine was good sleeper, but totally irregular.
Also, advice like this underestimate how frustrating and sucking boring killing all joy strict routine can be for parents. You may decide that sleep is not worth it.
Plus there are hard to determine health issues with small ones. Sometime a kid can't sleep and then you figure it is certain food before night or something of the sort.
1. Yes. But not to close to bed time (1-2 hours before you need to sleep)
2. More like 1-2 hours, hard but do it and you’ll notice the difference. Also leave your phone in the kitchen. Even having it in your bedroom stimulates your mind. “I won’t look at it” isn’t enough to convince your brain you won’t.
3. Absolutely. No noise above 36db though and you can train yourself off white noise machines. Ear plugs are good if you live in the city. Generally any noise is bad.
4. Diet. If you do drink alcohol you won’t sleep well, which is a trade off you may make on a Friday. No caffeine after 13:00 (it takes 12 hours to metabolise)
5. Regular routine. Same things. Every day and in the same order. Make a wind down routine and stick to it. This is the biggest one by far.
And if you can’t fall asleep, get out of bed and do something else (nothing involving bright lights) but saying in bed while you can’t sleep breaks the accociative behaviour of bed being for sleep.
Don’t watch TV in bed. Don’t eat in bed. Your bed is for sleep and sex.
If you still struggle to fall back asleep you can try creative free form writing. Sounds like sudo science but it’s proven to work. Get up. Get a pen and paper and write down a narrative. What ever comes into your mind for 30mins, or, until you feel sleepy. Then go back to bed. Often we fail to fall asleep because we are thinking about work, our partners, friends, a cute dog we saw. Creative writing is a technique used by sleep experts for chronic sleep disorders and has shown its self to work in multiple studies. Sleep.io is great if you really struggle with sleep. It’s a CBT based programme to hell yok sleep and it genuinely works.
What's next? "Children's diet has little effect on their health, says study"?
How do they publish things like this with a straight face? This is not tied to the reality that I'm experiencing--you? We don't need peer-reviewed studies to tell us things that are easy to study empirically.
Please run an experiment on yourself and make up your mind.
Well, to be fair, it could be that is has an effect on your children's sleep, and they're anomalous - but that doesn't mean the study is baseless, just that it isn't useful to you specifically.
> This is not tied to the reality that I'm experiencing--you?
Certainly in terms of short-term variations in quantity of screen time having little effect, and much smaller than other factors, on sleep time it matches my current experience with my son. Not that I give that experience much weight in general predictions.
> We don't need peer-reviewed studies to tell us things that are easy to study empirically.
I think you've confused “empirically” with “anecdotally”. N=1 testing has, in the best case, very large error bars in predicting broad population generalities. (And , in most cases, makes it very hard to isolate confounding factors.)
This is based off a study as reported by parents of teens "caregiver estimates", not the teens themselves or something potentially even more accurate like Fitbit data.
Just because a parent counts their kid as asleep because they're in their room with the lights off doesn't mean they actually are. From personal observation, I randomly see phone screens floating around in the dark while I'm getting up to go to the restroom in the middle of the night all the time.
Parents are also less likely to report in ways that make their kids out to be addicts, or themselves out to be bad parents. And there may be a correlation between excessive digital-lives for youths and neglectful parenting. Not to mention that "teens" are generally one of the hardest demographics to study because it's pretty much impossible to get a good control group as it's essentially their first time exercising freedom from control in general.
And yeah, 8.5 hours average for teens seems like prima facie BS. Kids wouldn't be "jet-lagged" if they slept that much. I think I was sleeping between 5-7 hours a night depending on how late I was up with friends or on the net when I was a teen (early thirties now).
I'm not saying one way or another as to whether or not screen time for youth is a problem or should be a topic of concern, but this article seems like nonsense.
Also, reading the study further: despite the fact that the author of the article may have been paraphrasing a statement in the abstract conclusion, the study seems to mostly undermine that premise as it shows an inverse relationship between screen time and sleep.
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[ 0.36 ms ] story [ 52.7 ms ] threadIt doesn't seem like a huge problem that teens are getting ~30 minutes less sleep per nights because of technology. Staring at screens is now a major part of our lives and that probably won't change any time soon. I do think we need to consider what time class starts for teenagers who need a solid 8-9 hours of sleep per night. When I was in High School, a 7 am start time required me to be awake at 5 am, which probably contributed to how miserable I felt as a teen.
In my region they've shifted school start times later to accommodate teens who have late after-school activities. The problem with this logic is that the younger the child, the more sleep they need. The shift for our local teenagers resulted in even earlier start time for elementary and middle school aged kids. Bus schedules also shifted which required me to wake my young kids even earlier (5:30 AM). Thankfully my work is flexible enough that I can drive them, which gives them an extra 30-45 min of time each morning - other parents not so lucky.
Our teen definitely needs much more than his younger sibling. But it seems to be more individual based on my very low n observations, the eldest needed more sleep when he was the age his younger sibling is.
I'd expect there to be a sex-based characteristic to sleep needs to?
Two more in case you need some more:
https://www.webmd.com/parenting/guide/sleep-children#1
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/new-sleep-guidelines-for-babies...
Many people assume a lot of things that when investigated turn out to be false.
Often assertions don't match their backing: for example you said " The problem with this logic is that the younger the child, the more sleep they need."
However that's not what your first study says. It gives broad ranges, so it concedes that younger children can need less sleep than older children, it's not tied in a simple way to age.
You perhaps meant "on average", which is quite reasonable, and having the source you based you statement on can lead one to assume you were being brief rather than errant.
FWIW those sources look like you quickly googled it; and so weren't really relying on any particular sources.
TL;DR your source supports my observation and contradicts your claim as written.
Make your schedule malleable for your kids and within a few days you'll pretty much know exactly how much sleep they need.
For my kids the trouble is "when" they want this sleep. My oldest goes to bed "early" and rises early. My youngest could stay up until 2-3 AM and sleep until noon (as she did this summer).
You can see both the min and max of all ranges go down with age.
I'm not sure how you could have derived your conclusion based on these results. Are you saying because ranges overlap they aren't valid or shouldn't be used as a guide?
We also don't need to run a scientific study to know that "if the kids are cranky it's likely because they are hungry or thirsty", "it is highly likely that the kid is lying about the fire-breathing goat breaking into the house and breaking the lamp", or "most kids like to eat candy". Again, plenty of interesting science to be done about the reasons for those things, but science does not require us to be that skeptical.
There's a scientific reason for this, too, which is that whatever study you might be interested in conducting on these matters, "the common experience of humanity" has already run a study a billion times larger, and with more statistical power than you could dream of putting into a study. If humanity is wrong about those things, your study is just going to make some of the same errors. It is not productive to run a scientific study with orders of magnitude less statistical power than the data we already all possess.
(And before you go "but what if they're wrong"... I covered that already in the term "statistical power". We are not obligated by science to pretend that nothing not produced in a study has a statistical power of zero. That's a modern perversion of the idea, and causes some serious philosophical bootstrapping problems if you take the idea seriously.)
Or at least that's the argument made in the book Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypothesis
According to Wikipedia "A hypothesis (plural hypotheses) is a proposed explanation for a phenomenon." The same article also states that "In common usage in the 21st century, a hypothesis refers to a provisional idea whose merit requires evaluation". Thus what I called "hypothesis" is indeed one by Wikipedia's usage.
I also quoted the sentence "For a hypothesis to be a scientific hypothesis, the scientific method requires that one can test it." (my emphasis) in order to point out that what pbhjpbhj called "hypothesis" seems to be normally called "scientific hypothesis".
1. Its clearly testable whether or not the phase of the circadian rhythm of humans shifts with age.
2. Having a range of circadian rhythm phases in your pack is useful for a 24-hour watch by definition, but in order for it to have been an evolutionary factor, watches that take advantage of this would have to actually happen in the wild. Finding wild packs of humans is a tall order, but if #1 holds for other primates or even other pack mammals, you could measure to what extent packs operate their 24-hour watch with different age groups at different times of the day.
3. The final price needed is to show that having a more alert watch gives a better survival rate. That seems self-evident, but it could also be tested by monitoring wild packs of humans or other primates.
Erm. No.
If you look at modern primitive groups of people, you don't sleep all night. You wake up several times throughout the night and are, generally, considerably lighter sleepers.
Some people in 'civilized' societies still do this. I wake up a handful of times a night, the vast majority of the time, and always have. It's not a medical issue, I'm getting quality sleep and I'm back asleep in a couple of minutes tops.
Same goes for a lot of career soldiers/warriors throughout history including modern times, they can be out cold in a couple of minutes any time of the day with minimal effort and can be fully functional within seconds of being woken up.
Eight hours of school cut into my programming and computer time, so I had to make it up by staying up until midnight as a teen.
Maybe I'm completely wrong, but it certainly wouldn't have helped me. At my very worst (around 19 or 20) I had a hard time waking up to attend classes at 1:30pm... Which makes sense given that I was going to sleep at 5~6am (CS, Warcraft III, etc.) and I'm a big sleeper (still need a solid 8 to 8:30 hours per night at 35).
Then what about on June 1st? Sunrise is at 6:20 AM and sunset is at 9:07 PM.
Plus irony: And it is also completely different for adult programmers who totally need to work evenings (never ever mornings) and night to be crunch effective unlike administration adults who are morning people.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep
My body immediately shifted to what I already knew: going to bed at 5-6 am, waking up at 1-2pm (I roughly sleep 8.5 hours, sometimes 9).
Never felt more rested.
I now wake up at 10 am. It's ok, but I always feel SO rested when I sleep until I needed. Just having an alarm SET puts me on a bad path, even if I have 10 hours.
I know economic studies can be kind of gross, and should always be taken with a grain of salt, but Dubner is pretty good at finding really gross flaws in papers (or at least is really good at pointing out potential problems in a study's methods).
http://freakonomics.com/2015/07/16/the-economics-of-sleep-pa...
>GIBSON: We find that permanently increasing sleep by an hour per week for everybody in a city, increases the wages in that location by about 4.5 percent.
Without doubt making teenagers get up early to study has a detrimental affect of their learning and it's only our arcane societal norms around sleep that continue to compound this problem.
Since the seventies nearsightedness has become an epedemic because we are reading more and more.
So it does not only apply to screen time but more general: reading time.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5233810/
There have been many links between increased blue light and reduced REM/restful sleep
The only decent study I know of about blue light and sleep, was done before the LEDs in phones/tablets/kindles even existed. Which means they were using more traditional light sources that were likely putting out an order of magnitude more luminosity.
Everything that suggests tablets/phones/kindles interferes with sleep are woo-woo blogs trying to affiliate link sell you orange safety glasses and similar nonsense.
If these devices ARE affecting sleep, it's likely the level of mental stimulation they are providing and the fact that when most people get into bed, they don't shut their mind off and instead start thinking about how Sally post pictures of her 13th fancy meal in her 13th country this month and how John's abs pop way more than theirs and it's just not fair because they count their macros and train and train and just can't get abs like that or they're mad that SniperLulz127 fragged them 4 times this evening in Overwatch Fortress 7 Call of Defeated Zombies.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25535358
This shouldn't be suprising or controversial -- compare the color fo your idoor light to the color of the outdoor light at different times of day.
As a parent of a 2.5yo toddler, I'm not restricting screen time to my son at all, because I want him to get used to them: screens and computers will inevitably be in his life. But I also make sure to play board games with him, read books and let him have actual play time outside in the park with other kids.
Screens could be causing sleeplessness, or it could be that sitting bored without anything to keep your attention is the key to getting to sleep more easily.
And that's important to think about, as without that information, people might try to solve sleep issues by listening to podcasts, which if the root cause isn't the screen, might not help much.
Because you weren't wondering if Sally posted her latest mirror selfie or if John had replied to your comment on his sportsball statement or if that person you're interested in liked your last status post.
Sure, that's partially the fault of devices but it's mostly just not having the ability to silence your mind when you get in bed. A lot of people get in bed then immediately start thinking about their day or tomorrow instead of, you know, going to sleep. A lot of this is simply a byproduct of having fast-paced, give it to me now, I can stream 1523412 television shows and movies, oh my god if I sleep for 6 hours it'll take forever to scroll through the 731 Instagram accounts I follow's new posts tomorrow and just not knowing how to shut that chatter off in your mind.
Some people can shut it off, some people can't and shouldn't use tech within an hour or two of bed, some people should largely abandon such technology period.
(Also if anyone is building sleep apps/tech I'm looking for work)
We're having a neurologist appointment coming up because of it, but I can't shake the feeling we're just the worst parents. :/
We've taken away all screens from him a month ago, but he won't stop waking up at night, trying to breastfeed as much as possible and not falling asleep before 1 AM.
I suppose with a neurologist in the picture, none of the usual things are suspicious though.
We also tried gas drops, as we noticed sometimes he just burped and went back to sleep after half an hour of extreme crankiness.
So no, 2 years is not necessarily too much.
Also, advice like this underestimate how frustrating and sucking boring killing all joy strict routine can be for parents. You may decide that sleep is not worth it.
Plus there are hard to determine health issues with small ones. Sometime a kid can't sleep and then you figure it is certain food before night or something of the sort.
1. Sufficient exercise.
2. Calm, non-screen activity before (reading for 30 mins)
3. Good environment (dark, quiet/constant background noise, good temp)
4. Not moving at all when trying to fall asleep.
And if you can’t fall asleep, get out of bed and do something else (nothing involving bright lights) but saying in bed while you can’t sleep breaks the accociative behaviour of bed being for sleep. Don’t watch TV in bed. Don’t eat in bed. Your bed is for sleep and sex. If you still struggle to fall back asleep you can try creative free form writing. Sounds like sudo science but it’s proven to work. Get up. Get a pen and paper and write down a narrative. What ever comes into your mind for 30mins, or, until you feel sleepy. Then go back to bed. Often we fail to fall asleep because we are thinking about work, our partners, friends, a cute dog we saw. Creative writing is a technique used by sleep experts for chronic sleep disorders and has shown its self to work in multiple studies. Sleep.io is great if you really struggle with sleep. It’s a CBT based programme to hell yok sleep and it genuinely works.
How do they publish things like this with a straight face? This is not tied to the reality that I'm experiencing--you? We don't need peer-reviewed studies to tell us things that are easy to study empirically.
Please run an experiment on yourself and make up your mind.
Certainly in terms of short-term variations in quantity of screen time having little effect, and much smaller than other factors, on sleep time it matches my current experience with my son. Not that I give that experience much weight in general predictions.
> We don't need peer-reviewed studies to tell us things that are easy to study empirically.
I think you've confused “empirically” with “anecdotally”. N=1 testing has, in the best case, very large error bars in predicting broad population generalities. (And , in most cases, makes it very hard to isolate confounding factors.)
Just because a parent counts their kid as asleep because they're in their room with the lights off doesn't mean they actually are. From personal observation, I randomly see phone screens floating around in the dark while I'm getting up to go to the restroom in the middle of the night all the time.
Parents are also less likely to report in ways that make their kids out to be addicts, or themselves out to be bad parents. And there may be a correlation between excessive digital-lives for youths and neglectful parenting. Not to mention that "teens" are generally one of the hardest demographics to study because it's pretty much impossible to get a good control group as it's essentially their first time exercising freedom from control in general.
And yeah, 8.5 hours average for teens seems like prima facie BS. Kids wouldn't be "jet-lagged" if they slept that much. I think I was sleeping between 5-7 hours a night depending on how late I was up with friends or on the net when I was a teen (early thirties now).
I'm not saying one way or another as to whether or not screen time for youth is a problem or should be a topic of concern, but this article seems like nonsense.
https://www.jpeds.com/article/S0022-3476(18)31384-2/fulltext...