Smartphones have become a part of our daily life. But, there is a fine line between smartphone usage and smartphone addiction. Crossing this line could harm your sleep, eyes, thinking power and ultimately your body. Technology is a blessing but a curse too, and this has been proved by many studies which say that it’s high time we should control our smartphone usage now. The growing concern is the smartphone addiction in children above 5 years. It is been seen that children above 5 years age are more likely to get addictive to smartphones.
Excessive smartphone users, though it be children or adults, here’s a warning – Excessive smartphone usage may lead to poor sleep quality. The poor sleep is linked with health conditions like depression, memory loss, week immunity, diabetes, and obesity.
The smartphones we use these days emits bright blue light which helps you to read and watch things on the smartphone screen even at the sunniest times of the day. But during the nighttime, when the blue light is constantly observed, our brain gets confused by the light if it is the brightness of the sun and causes the brain to stop producing an important hormone, named as melatonin. The melatonin hormone gives the ‘time to sleep’ directions to your body. Hence, the smartphone screen light can disturb the natural sleep cycles of your body and make it harder to fall and stay asleep. A study has claimed that – Women are more obsessed to smartphones then Men.
Recently , A researcher, Matthew Christensen from the University of California, San Francisco along with his colleagues conducted a research to test the hypothesis that the raised screen-time may account with poor sleep via the analysis of the data received from 653 adult individuals residing in the US in the study.
During the study, the participants have installed a smartphone application which is specially designed to record the screen-time of the user based on the number of minutes in each hour. The users were examined over a period of 30 days. They also noted the sleeping hours and sleep quality.
Based on the test, the researchers have found that each of the participants totaled an average of 38.4 hours of screen-time over this period. And, the smartphone was being activated on average for 3.7 minutes in every hour.
The participants who took longer average screen-time were linked with poor sleep quality and a smaller amount sleep, especially when the phones were kept near the participants in bedtime.
Even worse than this, researchers from Cardiff University in the UK have warned that the kids who use smartphones at bedtime are prone to twice the risk of having insufficient sleep. Poor sleep in kids can further associate with obesity and poor diet.
The researchers have comprised a methodical review of 20 existing observation studies. The study involved 1,25,198 children and found that the bedtime smartphone usage leads to poor sleep quality and daytime sleepiness.
The sleep is the most underrated part of health, but it is an important part of children’s physical and mental development. The lack of sleep results in a variety of health problems. The increasing popularity of smartphone and other portable media devices could further worsen the problem.
The findings of the study suggest that the incorporation of parents, teachers, and healthcare professional’s approach is essential to look up the sleep habits near bedtime. At present, 72 percent of children and 89 percent of adolescents keep at least one device near their sleeping area and nearly all are used near bedtime.