Study: Frequent social media use linked to sleep disturbance

A recent study links frequent social media use is linked to sleep disturbances.

Young adults who spend a lot of time on social media during the day or check it frequently throughout the week are more likely to suffer sleep disturbances than their peers who use social media less, according to new research from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.

Published online and scheduled for the April issue of the journal Preventive Medicine, the study indicates that physicians should consider asking young adult patients about social media habits when assessing sleep issues. The research was supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

"This is one of the first pieces of evidence that social media use really can impact your sleep," said lead author Jessica C. Levenson, Ph.D., a postdoctoral researcher in Pitt's Department of Psychiatry. "And it uniquely examines the association between social media use and sleep among young adults who are, arguably, the first generation to grow up with social media."

In 2014, Dr. Levenson and her colleagues sampled 1,788 U.S. adults ages 19 through 32, using questionnaires to determine social media use and an established measurement system to assess sleep disturbances.

The questionnaires asked about the 11 most popular social media platforms at the time: Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Google Plus, Instagram, Snapchat, Reddit, Tumblr, Pinterest, Vine and LinkedIn.

On average, the participants used social media a total of 61 minutes per day and visited various social media accounts 30 times per week. The assessment showed that nearly 30 percent of the participants had high levels of sleep disturbance.

The participants who reported most frequently checking social media throughout the week had three times the likelihood of sleep disturbances, compared with those who checked least frequently. And participants who spent the most total time on social media throughout the day had twice the risk of sleep disturbance, compared to peers who spent less time on social media.

"This may indicate that frequency of social media visits is a better predictor of sleep difficulty than overall time spent on social media," Dr. Levenson explained. "If this is the case, then interventions that counter obsessive 'checking' behavior may be most effective."

Senior author Brian A. Primack, M.D., Ph.D., assistant vice chancellor for health and society in Pitt's Schools of the Health Sciences, emphasized that more study is needed, particularly to determine whether social media use contributes to sleep disturbance, whether sleep disturbance contributes to social media use -- or both.

For example, social media may disturb sleep if it is:

• Displacing sleep, such as when a user stays up late posting photos on Instagram.
• Promoting emotional, cognitive or physiological arousal, such as when engaging in a contentious discussion on Facebook.
• Disrupting circadian rhythms through the bright light emitted by the devices used to access social media accounts.

Alternatively, young adults who have difficulty sleeping may subsequently use social media as a pleasurable way to pass the time when they can't fall asleep or return to sleep.

"It also may be that both of these hypotheses are true," said Dr. Primack, also director of Pitt's Center for Research on Media, Technology and Health. "Difficulty sleeping may lead to increased use of social media, which may in turn lead to more problems sleeping. This cycle may be particularly problematic with social media because many forms involve interactive screen time that is stimulating and rewarding and, therefore, potentially detrimental to sleep."

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Twitter helps assess migraine trends

A study looked into how migraine sufferers discuss their migraine attacks on twitter and analyzed gender of the person, day of the week, and country the person lives in to assess trends about migraines.

Someone's drilling an icicle into your temple, you're throwing up, and light and sound are unbearable.

Yes, it's another migraine attack. But now in 140 characters on Twitter, you can share your agony with other sufferers. It indicates a trend toward the cathartic sharing of physical pain, as well as emotional pain on social media.

"As technology and language evolve, so does the way we share our suffering," said principal investigator Alexandre DaSilva, assistant professor and director of the Headache and Orofacial Pain Effort at University of Michigan School of Dentistry. "It's the first known study to show the instant and broad impact of migraine attacks on modern patients' lives by decoding manually each one of their individual attack-related tweets."

DaSilva's team, including research fellows Thiago Nascimento and Marcos DosSantos, worked with 50 students and residents to categorize 21,741 tweets. They eliminated advertising, metaphor and nonrelated migraine tweets, which has not been done in previous studies. Further, they analyzed the meaning of each individual migraine tweet.

"We sought to evaluate the instant expression of actual self-reported migraine attacks in social media," DaSilva said.

Results generated unique information about who suffers from migraines and what, how, where and when they use social media to describe their pain. The findings overlapped significantly with other traditional epidemiologic migraine studies, DaSilva and colleagues said.

Among other things, they examined the most common descriptors for migraines, including profanities, tweet times and locations, and impact on productivity and mood. Only 65 percent of the migraine tweets were from actual sufferers of migraines posting in real-time. Other tweets were advertising, general discussion, retweets, etc., indicating that not everything in social media is meaningful to the patient, DaSilva said.

Among the findings: Females accounted for about 74 percent of migraine tweets; males accounted for 17 percent. The higher global peak of migraine tweets occurred Mondays at 14:00 GMT, or 10 a.m Eastern Daylight Saving Time. The U.S. accounted for 58 percent of migraine tweets, followed by Europe at 20 percent. In the U.S., migraine tweets peaked at 9 a.m. and 8 p.m. on weekdays. The morning tweets peaked later on weekends. Roughly 44 percent of tweets reported that migraine attacks immediately impacted mood. The most common migraine descriptors were "worst" at nearly 15 percent and "massive" at 8 percent.

Migraines pose a huge public health problem, harming mood, productivity and overall quality of life. An estimated 12 percent of the Western world population suffer migraine attacks, and of those, 75 percent see reduced functionality and 30 percent require bed rest.

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Study Claims Preschool Children Who Can Pay Attention More Likely to Finish College

New study about how the attention span of preschool children can help predict if they complete college or not. Also, the study goes into how early learning of reading and math may not indicate if a child finishes college or not.

Young children who are able to pay attention and persist with a task have a 50 percent greater chance of completing college, according to a new study at Oregon State University.

Tracking a group of 430 preschool-age children, the study gives compelling evidence that social and behavioral skills, such as paying attention, following directions and completing a task may be even more crucial than academic abilities.

And the good news for parents and educators, the researchers said, is that attention and persistence skills are malleable and can be taught.

The results were just published online in Early Childhood Research Quarterly.

"There is a big push now to teach children early academic skills at the preschool level," said Megan McClelland, an OSU early child development researcher and lead author of the study. "Our study shows that the biggest predictor of college completion wasn't math or reading skills, but whether or not they were able to pay attention and finish tasks at age 4."

Parents of preschool children were asked to rate their children on items such as "plays with a single toy for long periods of time" or "child gives up easily when difficulties are encountered." Reading and math skills were assessed at age 7 using standardized assessments. At age 21, the same group was tested again for reading and math skills.

Surprisingly, achievement in reading and math did not significantly predict whether or not the students completed college. Instead, researchers found that children who were rated higher by their parents on attention span and persistence at age 4 had nearly 50 percent greater odds of getting a bachelor's degree by age 25.

McClelland, who is a nationally-recognized expert in child development, said college completion has been shown in numerous studies to lead to higher wages and better job stability. She said the earlier that educators and parents can intervene, the more likely a child can succeed academically.

"We didn't look at how well they did in college or at grade point average," McClelland said. "The important factor was being able to focus and persist. Someone can be brilliant, but that doesn't necessarily mean they can focus when they need to and finish a task or job."

McClelland, who is also a core director in OSU's Hallie E. Ford Center for Healthy Children and Families, said interventions aimed at increasing young children's self-control abilities have repeatedly shown to help boost "self-regulation," or a child's ability to listen, pay attention, follow through on a task and remember instructions.

In a past study, McClelland found that simple, active classroom games such as Simon Says and Red Light/Green Light have been effective tools for increasing both literacy and self-regulation skills.

"Academic ability carries you a long way, but these other skills are also important," McClelland said. "Increasingly, we see that the ability to listen, pay attention, and complete important tasks is crucial for success later in life."

Read more here

Why Americans Don't Sleep Well

Amen. JR

Why are 70 million Americans having trouble getting a good night’s sleep? Let us count the ways:

We are over-caffeinated (coffee, soft drinks, energy drinks, snacks) and over-medicated (prescription and over-the-counter drugs, including alcohol), wreaking havoc with slumber patterns.

We are over-wired (video games, Web browsing, social media, texting) and overstressed (money, work, relationships, overloaded schedules), making us too restless to doze off when we should.

We are overworked (longer hours, night shifts incompatible with our biological clocks) and overweight (perhaps a chicken-or-egg deal, as different studies have found that one leads to the other).

And then there’s societal pressure, what nationally recognized sleep expert Dr. Mark Mahowald calls “the pervasive, erroneous attitude that sleep is not a biological imperative, that it is negotiable. We have raised sleep deprivation to a badge of honor.”

The effects might outnumber the causes, and are hardly as benign as many of us might think. “Any degree of sleep deprivation will impair performance: behind the wheel, in the classroom or workplace,” Mahowald said.

He added that the Bhopal, Challenger, Exxon Valdez and Three Mile Island disasters “all are officially attributed to problems from sleep deprivation. But the biggest risk of sleep deprivation is car crashes, period.”

No wonder the number of accredited sleep centers has risen nationwide by 630 percent in just 15 years. And while sleep study results have been all over the map and sometimes contradictory, experts such as local doctors Mahowald and Michael Schmitz know a lot more than researchers did even a decade ago.

Effects:

• With sleep deprivation, some glucose metabolism problems might predispose one to diabetes. And if so, a consequence could be heart disease and stroke.

• With insomnia, there is no evidence of long-term physical problems or links to other diseases. But insomnia results in poorer quality of life and work absences and can lead to depression.

• There is some evidence that severe sleep apnea can lead to hypertension, heart problems and a higher risk of strokes.

Solutions:

• Improving sleep hygiene -- avoiding late eating and drinking, keeping the room cool and dark, winding down before bedtime -- can improve or resolve transient or acute insomnia but probably not chronic insomnia.

• For chronic insomnia, cognitive behavioral therapy is equally as or more effective than medications. Medication often is useful for acute insomnia.

• Naps can help -- except when they don’t. “We discourage napping when anyone has problems falling or staying asleep at night, which might be an untreated sleep disorder,” said behavioral sleep specialist Schmitz. “We encourage power naps, 30 minutes or less, when folks can’t stay awake or will have late-night events.”

• See your doctor if: You have had difficulty falling and staying asleep for more than a week. Or if you snore, have frequent awakenings and are reporting sleepiness during the day. Anyone with apnea symptoms should seek treatment.

Read more here

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Read more here: http://www.macon.com/2012/04/09/1981741/americans-are-too-busy-drink-too.html#storylink=cpy

Why are Americans Having Trouble Sleeping?

Why are 70 million Americans having trouble getting a good night's sleep? Let us count the ways:

We are over-caffeinated (coffee, soft drinks, energy drinks, snacks) and over-medicated (prescription and over-the-counter drugs, including alcohol), wreaking havoc with slumber patterns.

We are over-wired (video games, Web browsing, social media, texting) and overstressed (money, work, relationships, overloaded schedules), making us too restless to doze off when we should.

We are overworked (longer hours, night shifts incompatible with our biological clocks) and overweight (perhaps a chicken-or-egg deal, as different studies have found that one leads to the other).

And then there's societal pressure, what nationally recognized sleep expert Dr. Mark Mahowald calls "the pervasive, erroneous attitude that sleep is not a biological imperative, that it is negotiable. We have raised sleep deprivation to a badge of honor."

The effects might outnumber the causes, and are hardly as benign as many of us might think. "Any degree of sleep deprivation will impair performance: behind the wheel, in the classroom or workplace," Mahowald said.

He added that the Bhopal, Challenger, Exxon Valdez and Three Mile Island disasters "all are officially attributed to problems from sleep deprivation. But the biggest risk of sleep deprivation is car crashes, period."

No wonder the number of accredited sleep centers has risen nationwide by 630 percent in just 15 years. And while sleep study results have been all over the map and sometimes contradictory, experts such as local doctors Mahowald and Michael Schmitz know a lot more than researchers did even a decade ago.

The lowdown

• Insomnia victims have trouble falling or staying asleep in a setting with adequate conditions for sleep; this becomes chronic insomniaif it lasts more than three weeks. Sleep deprivation is caused by behavioral or situational factors that curtail or mitigate the ability to get enough sleep time.

• Most adults need seven to nine hours of sleep a night. The amount a person needs is genetically determined, Mahowald said. "Some people might need four hours on the short end, up to 10 on the high end. We have absolutely no control over this."

• Anyone who uses an alarm clock "is by definition sleep-deprived," Mahowald said, "because if the brain had received the amount of sleep it wanted, you would have woken up before the alarm went off."

• Melatonin is a hormone, secreted daily by the brain's pineal gland, that helps maintain the body's sleeping cycle. A nonprescription synthetic melatonin pill is sold in the United States and is widely used. The FDA does not test or regulate melatonin because it doesn't consider it a drug.

• Larks and owls: "Some people are early to bed, early to rise; others late to bed, late to rise. We have very little control over that," Mahowald said. "So you see a lot of problems when an owl marries a lark and each one thinks the other is being stubborn."

EFFECTS

• With sleep deprivation, some glucose metabolism problems might predispose one to diabetes. And if so, a consequence could be heart disease and stroke.

• With insomnia, there is no evidence of long-term physical problems or links to other diseases. But insomnia results in poorer quality of life and work absences and can lead to depression.

• There is some evidence that severe sleep apnea can lead to hypertension, heart problems and a higher risk of strokes.

SOLUTIONS

• Improving sleep hygiene -- avoiding late eating and drinking, keeping the room cool and dark, winding down before bedtime -- can improve or resolve transient or acute insomnia but probably not chronic insomnia.

• For chronic insomnia, cognitive behavioral therapy is equally as or more effective than medications. Medication often is useful for acute insomnia.

• Naps can help -- except when they don't. "We discourage napping when anyone has problems falling or staying asleep at night, which might be an untreated sleep disorder," said behavioral sleep specialist Schmitz. "We encourage power naps, 30 minutes or less, when folks can't stay awake or will have late-night events."

• See your doctor if: You have had difficulty falling and staying asleep for more than a week. Or if you snore, have frequent awakenings and are reporting sleepiness during the day. Anyone with apnea symptoms should seek treatment.

BY THE NUMBERS

One third of Americans suffer from insomnia at some point in their lives.

14 to 15 hours of sleep a night is recommended by the Mayo Clinic for infants, 12 to 14 hours for toddlers and 10 to 11 for school-age children.

84 classifications of sleep disorders have been found.

2,365 U.S. sleep centers are accredited by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine. In 1997, there were 374; in 2006, there were 1,000.

2 million U.S. children suffer from sleep disorders.

18 million Americans probably suffer from sleep apnea, with more than half of them undiagnosed.

$15.9 billion is added to national health care costs by sleep problems, according to the National Commission on Sleep Disorders.

Read more here

Teens With Autism Preoccupied With TV, Video Games: Study

When given the opportunity to have screen time, children with autism spectrum disorders typically choose television and video games over social interactive media, such as email, a new study finds .

The preoccupation with video games could interfere with the children's socialization and learning, warned the researchers, whose study appears online in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders.

Autism is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by problems with social interaction, communication and restricted interests and behaviors. Autism spectrum disorders, or ASDs, include Asperger syndrome, which is a milder form of autism.

In conducting the study, the researchers analyzed information on more than 1,000 teens in special education classes, including those with autism spectrum disorders, learning and intellectual disabilities, and speech problems.

About 60 percent of the teens with autism spectrum disorders spent most of their time watching TV or videos, the investigators found.

"This rate appears to be high, given that among typically developing adolescents, only 28 percent have been shown to be 'high users' of television," Paul Shattuck, an assistant professor at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis, said in a university news release. "Television viewing is clearly a preferred activity for children with ASDs, regardless of symptoms, functional level or family status."

Moreover, 41 percent of the teens with autism spent most of their free time playing video games, the study authors found.

"Given that only 18 percent of youths in the general population are considered to be high users of video games, it seems reasonable to infer based on the current results, that kids with ASDs are at significantly greater risk of high use of this media than are youths without ASDs," Shattuck added.

In contrast, the teens with autism spectrum disorders were less likely to use email or social media.

"We found that 64.4 percent of youth with ASDs did not use email or chat at all," Shattuck said. "Kids with speech and language impairments and learning disabilities were about two times more likely to use email or chat rooms than those with ASDs."

He noted, however, use of social media increased among the teens with autism spectrum disorders as they got older and their cognitive skills improved. Cognitive is a word used to describe brain-based functions such as memory, thinking, learning and processing information.

"This proclivity for screen time might be turned into something we can take advantage of to enhance social skills and learning achievement, especially [with] recent innovations in devices like iPads," Shattuck suggested.

Read more: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/news/fullstory_121913.html

Is social media stopping you from getting a good night's sleep?

We're tired of sensationalist stories which claim that social media is single handedly causing the breakdown of relationships, turning our brains into mush and making us more reclusive. However, a new study shows that it could have an impact on how well we sleep and although that might not seem as serious as developing OCD or whatever else tabloids are claiming, it means we're probably more grouchy, which is never a nice thing.

The study carried out by MyVoucherCodes.co.uk(who are also the guys behind the handy littlevoucher app) showed that 86% of those questioned spend time on social networking sites when they feel they really should be sleeping, with 52% logging on and tweeting, sharing and liking from their beds. This is hardly surprising considering how many of us use our phones as alarms, need to be checking emails 24/7 and how teeny tiny tablets are, but it still seems like a habit we need to kick before we start waking up EVERYday feeling like a sleepy zombie.

Michael J Breus, a clinical psychologist who specialises in sleep disorders, has written numerous articles here and there about the way technology is "stealing" your sleep away from you (Note use of sensationalist STEALING). And although some of what Breus says seems a little OTT, when it comes to sleep he really knows his stuff. In an article he wrote for Pyschology Today earlier this year, he suggests that you need to take some immediate steps to ensure you get a good night's sleep and this includes imposing a technology curfew, turning down the brightness of screens and seeing your bedroom as a gadget-free "sanctuary". That all sounds great but hardly doable, so here are a few of our favourite gadgets to help you out:

The Chillow You know how REALLY there's nothing better than the cool side of the pillow? Well The Chillow is a neat little squishy thing that fits inside of your pillow to keep it (and your head) nice and cool making it much easier to drift off. Available from Amazon for £27.45.

Pzizz Pzizz is a piece of (very pricey) software which plays all kinds of relaxing sounds and promises to send you to sleep. It works on all kinds of smart phones, computers and MP3 players choosing the best playlists to send you off peacefully. Available from Pzizz from $89.99.

Philips Wake-up Light The Philips HF3490 Wake-up Light is designed to slowly get you out of bed in the morning, making you feel more refreshed and less hurried and depressed. Its special light gradually wakes you up and works through a number of stages and its iPod / iPhone dock allows you to pick the music you'd like to wake up to. Available from Boots for £110.

Read more at: http://www.shinyshiny.tv/2011/09/social-media-sleep.html