Sleep, Screen Time, Social Media and Student Success

By Dr. Barrett Mosbacker

September 03, 2017

I have often shared with parents that character is more important than competence for our children’s success. In fact, character leads to greater competence through hard work, self-discipline, integrity, and other virtues that help a child maximize his or her God-given abilities.

Sleep

Character does not just happen — it must be cultivated. For maximum benefit, good character needs to be reinforced with good life habits. One of those is getting enough sleep. Too many students are coming to school tired.

According to the CDC, insufficient sleep is common among young people. Roughly 69 out of 100 high school students get fewer than seven hours of sleep on an average school night. In many cases, staying up too late is the culprit.

In one National Sleep Foundation experiment, children were asked to go to bed later than normal for a week and then to spend no fewer than ten hours in bed for the following week. During the week of later bedtimes, teachers rated these children as having more academic and attention problems — even though the teachers were unaware the children had lost sleep. Many parents assume their children go to bed at a reasonable hour, but even 9:00 p.m. may be considered late for an elementary school child.

As children get older, sleepiness leads to slipping grades. In a study of roughly 1,000 children and preadolescents, researchers found that one of the strongest predictors of school failure was children’s fatigue — being difficult to rouse in the morning and falling asleep during the day. In another study of 3,000 high school students, those who reported higher grades had significantly more sleep and earlier bedtimes on school nights than those with lower grades. Students reporting B’s or better got 17 to 33 minutes more sleep on school nights and went to bed 10 to 50 minutes earlier than students earning C’s or below. Students with lower grades also went to bed an average of 2.3 hours later on weekends than on school nights, compared to A and B students, who went to bed 1.8 hours later on weekends.

Screen Time and Social Media

A significant contributing factor to sleepiness is the amount of time students spend on mobile devices, computers, and television at night. Being in the bedroom does not mean they are sleeping.

The American Academy of Pediatrics reports that the average child between eight and ten years old spends nearly eight hours a day with various media, and older children and teenagers spend more than eleven hours per day. Children who have a television in their bedroom spend even more time with media. Approximately 75 percent of young people between twelve and seventeen own cell phones, and nearly all teenagers use text messaging.

Many children are permitted to have mobile phones, tablets, computers, or televisions in their rooms at night, during which time they engage in substantial unsupervised social media use. School leaders are aware of this because investigations of behavioral matters frequently reveal social media posts and text messages sent late at night. This pattern carries three significant risks: loss of sleep, lower academic performance, and abusing or being abused through social media.

Recommended Sleep by Age

The National Sleep Foundation advises that while every child differs slightly, most require the following amounts of actual sleep — not merely time in bed — to be fully rested.

• Preschoolers (3–5 years): 10–13 hours
• School-aged children (6–13 years): 9–11 hours
• Teenagers (14–17 years): 8–10 hours
• Young adults (18–25 years): 7–9 hours

Assuming most children are awakened at 6:00 a.m. — approximately two hours before school — the following bedtimes are necessary to meet the minimum recommended sleep. Bedtime means no devices, no television, no lights on; it means in bed to sleep. It is also worth noting that depending on the child, falling asleep may take 15 to 30 minutes, which would require moving these times earlier accordingly.

• Preschoolers (3–5 years): 8:00 p.m.
• School-aged children (6–13 years): 9:00 p.m.
• Teenagers (14–17 years): 10:00 p.m.
• Young adults (18–25 years): 11:00 p.m.

This will be a controversial statement for some, but children do not have a right to privacy. Parents are accountable to the Lord for their parenting. Parents own the devices and pay the data plan. Parents not only have the right but the responsibility to know what is on their children’s devices. The American Academy of Pediatrics offers the following recommendations for parents:

• Model effective media habits to help children learn to be selective and thoughtful in what they consume.
• Watch programs with them and discuss values.
• Establish a media use plan that includes mealtime and bedtime curfews for all devices.
• Keep screens out of children’s bedrooms.

A Path to Success

Children will be blessed and more successful when parents foster the development of character, ensure they get enough sleep, and monitor their children’s use of social media and devices.

More sleep, less screen time, and supervised social media use are life habits that, built upon good character, will enhance children’s spiritual and secular flourishing — now and throughout their lives.

Benjamin Franklin is credited with the saying: “Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.” It is a proverb long regarded as common sense.

It is time to make common sense more common for our children.