Study: Texting negatively affects teen's sleep and academic performance

A study shows that teenagers who text at night hurts their sleep and academic performance.

Can't stop texting? If you're a teenager, it may be to blame for falling grades and increased yawning in school, according to a new Rutgers study.

The study, published in the Journal of Child Neurology, is the first of its kind to link nighttime instant messaging habits of American teenagers to sleep health and school performance.

"We need to be aware that teenagers are using electronic devices excessively and have a unique physiology," says study author Xue Ming, professor of neuroscience and neurology at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School. "They tend to go to sleep late and get up late. When we go against that natural rhythm, students become less efficient."

The American Academy of Pediatrics reports that media use among children of all ages is increasing exponentially; studies have found that children ages 8 to 18 use electronic devices approximately seven-and-a-half hours daily.

Ming's research is part of a small but growing body of evidence on the negative effects of electronics on sleep and school performance. But few studies, Ming says, have focused specifically on instant messaging.

"During the last few years I have noticed an increased use of smartphones by my patients with sleep problems," Ming says. "I wanted to isolate how messaging alone - especially after the lights are out - contributes to sleep-related problems and academic performance."

To conduct her study, Ming distributed surveys to three New Jersey high schools - a suburban and an urban public school and a private school - and evaluated the 1,537 responses contrasting grades, sexes, messaging duration and whether the texting occurred before or after lights out.

She found that students who turned off their devices or who messaged for less than 30 minutes after lights out performed significantly better in school than those who messaged for more than 30 minutes after lights out.

Students who texted longer in the dark also slept fewer hours and were sleepier during the day than those who stopped messaging when they went to bed. Texting before lights out did not affect academic performance, the study found.

Although females reported more messaging overall and more daytime sleepiness, they had better academic performance than males. "I attribute this to the fact that the girls texted primarily before turning off the light," Ming says.

The effects of "blue light" emitted from smartphones and tablets are intensified when viewed in a dark room, Ming says. This short wavelength light can have a strong impact on daytime sleepiness symptoms since it can delay melatonin release, making it more difficult to fall asleep - even when seen through closed eyelids.

"When we turn the lights off, it should be to make a gradual transition from wakefulness to sleep," Ming says. "If a person keeps getting text messages with alerts and light emission, that also can disrupt his circadian rhythm. Rapid Eye Movement sleep is the period during sleep most important to learning, memory consolidation and social adjustment in adolescents. When falling asleep is delayed but rising time is not, REM sleep will be cut short, which can affect learning and memory."

Ming notes some benefits to early-evening media use, such as facilitating collaboration for school projects, providing resources for tutoring, increasing school readiness and possibly offering emotional support systems.

She suggests that educators recognize the sleep needs of teenagers and incorporate sleep education in their curriculum. "Sleep is not a luxury; it's a biological necessity. Adolescents are not receiving the optimal amount of sleep; they should be getting 8-and-a-half hours a night," says Ming. "Sleep deprivation is a strong argument in favor of later start times for high schools - like 9 a.m."

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Health consequences of texting in bed

A study indicates that texting in bed can lead to losing sleep in addition to poor school performance in teens.

Many American teens text in bed, leading to lost sleep, daytime drowsiness and poorer school performance, a new study says.

Researchers from New Jersey looked at nearly 3,200 middle and high school students in the state. They found that nearly 62 percent of the kids used their smartphones in some capacity after bedtime; nearly 57 percent texted, tweeted or messaged in bed; and nearly 21 percent awoke to texts.

"Our study confirms that many teenagers are texting late at night when they should be sleeping. This behavior is more common among older teenagers, especially those in high school, and among girls," said study co-author Vincent DeBari. He is director of research at the Seton Hall University School of Health and Medical Sciences, in South Orange.

"One of the most worrisome aspects of our findings is that in addition to affecting the quality and amount of sleep teenagers are getting, bedtime smartphone use seems to be having a negative impact on their level of alertness during the day and on their grades in school," DeBari said in a university news release.

His study co-author, Dr. Peter Polos, added that teens whose sleep is disrupted by incoming texts may feel compelled to respond to those texts immediately. These exchanges can go on for hours.

"This leads to excessive stimulation at night. Light from electronic devices can suppress the secretion of melatonin, a hormone that promotes sleep. All of these factors combine to make sleep difficult in the face of excessive smartphone use at night," said Polos, a member of the sleep medicine division of the JFK Neuroscience Institute in Edison, N.J.

The researchers also found that smartphone use just before or after bedtime may worsen teens' tendency to go to bed much later and sleep until late morning. This behavior has been linked with depression, anxiety and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, the study authors said.

"Repeatedly, studies have shown that today's adolescent students are seriously sleep-deprived, and that it affects their health, their mood and their safety behind the wheel. Our study shows that the unrestricted use of smartphones at night may be a major contributing factor," Dr. Sushanth Bhat, an assistant professor of neuroscience at Seton Hall, said in the news release.

"Since getting the proper amount of sleep is very important for brain development and learning in the teenage years, our study should prompt parents and guardians to consider placing reasonable limitations on adolescent smartphone usage at night," Bhat concluded.

The study findings appear in the October issue of the Journal of Adolescence.

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Texting leads to sleep problems in college students

A study claims that text messaging results in sleep disorders for college students.

College students, you might want to give your phones a rest for the sake of your sleep.

A small new study from Washington and Lee University researchers shows an association between more texting among college freshmen, and worse sleep.

The findings, published in the journal Psychology of Popular Media Culture, are based on questionnaires answered by 83 first-year undergraduate students. They were asked about the amount of text messages they send and receive each day, as well as their sleep problems, well-being, and academic and social burnout.

The researchers found that the more daily texts, the worse the sleep of the college freshmen. They also identified an association between texting and psychological well-being, but noted that this association depended on the stress level the students were already facing.

Some potential reasons for the link between texting and sleep are that cell phone message notifications might wake students as they sleep; they may also feel pressure to respond immediately to texts no matter the time of day, researchers said.

Recently, LiveScience reported that sleep-texting -- when a person text messages in the middle of the night during sleep, with little recollection of it the following morning -- is becoming a trend reported by sleep disorder specialists.

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Risks of sleep texting

This article discusses the new phenomenon of sleep texting and how it could be harmful for your health.

While smartphone owners use their devices to text and email throughout the day, some people are taking their addictions to new heights and texting while sleeping, reports say.

A phenomenon called "sleep-texting" is on the rise, with sleep disorder specialists reporting that more and more people are texting several times a night while they're asleep, according to CBS New York last week.

WebMD writes that teens are especially at risk of "sleep-texting," with more and more kids reaching for the phones during the night, sending texts, and waking up with no recollection of what took place.

"Four o'clock in the morning, 3 o'clock in the morning -- it would just be a sentence of jumbled-up stuff," sleep-texter Megan told CBS New York.

"I guess I got up and texted, and went back to bed, but I don't remember it."

Aside from the risk of sending bizarre texts to your contacts, sleep-texting isn't good for your health in that it interrupts deep, restful REM sleep, experts say.

"Sleep is a very important restorative process," Dr. Josh Werber, a sleep and snoring specialist, told US News. "And when we're not fully engaged in it, and not getting the amount we need, we're not having the same restorative effect on our brains -- and that affects our cognitive ability the next day."

Best way to resolve the problem? Experts recommend shutting off your smartphone before bed or even moving your devices out the bedroom entirely.

Also wean yourself off using gadgets in the evenings, in that research has shown that light-emitting screens from tablets and smartphone can suppress the release of the sleep-promoting hormone melatonin and enhance alertness, making it more difficult to sleep.

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Both ADHD and texting impair driving in teenagers

A study claims that both ADHD and texting while driving were distracting to teenage drivers and impaired their driving abilities.

ADHD and texting both significantly impair driving performance among teenagers, according to a study published online today in JAMA Pediatrics.

Researchers from Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center used a driving simulator to test the driving performance of 16- and 17-year-old drivers; approximately half of the study's 61 participants had been diagnosed with ADHD, the other half had not. During the 40-minute driving simulation, researchers measured the speed and lane position of the young drivers as they texted and talked on the phone.

Texting significantly affected drivers' speed and lane position for all study participants and further increased the risk for drivers with ADHD, according to researchers.

"Texting is especially dangerous because it involves visual, manual and cognitive distractions," said senior author Jeffery N. Epstein, PhD, director of the Center for Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder at Cincinnati Children's. "Those are the very kinds of distractions that lead to car accidents."

The study found that even when no distractions were present, drivers with ADHD demonstrated significantly more variability in speed and lane position than did teens without ADHD. Researchers report texting added to existing ADHD driving impairments, essentially doubling the amount of time kids with and without ADHD strayed from their lane.

The Cincinnati Children's study is believed to be the first to investigate the effects of texting on the driving performance of adolescent drivers with ADHD.

"Teens as a group are already at increased risk of distracted driving accidents. Now we know that an ADHD diagnosis and texting while driving increase those risks," added Dr. Epstein. "Our results demonstrate the need for increased education and enforcement of regulations against texting while driving for this age group."

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