If you’ve read or watched or listened to anything that Plugged In has created over the years, you’re bound to have heard us lift up repeated red-flag warnings about kids having phones and screens in their bedrooms at night. And parents with kids who passionately clutch those amazing little devices have probably also asked many questions about why such draconian rules still exist in this modern day and age. What is the drawback to phones in the bedroom?
Well, there are several very prominent problems with phone use at night. And though you may have heard them before, let’s quickly review.
One straightforward clinical issue is the fact that phones emit blue light, which suppresses the sleep-inducing hormone called melatonin. And that, in turn, makes it harder to get to sleep. Your brain keeps buzzing instead of naturally winding down.
If nighttime phone users do get to sleep, their rest can be disrupted by notifications from calls, messages and other pings, chimes and tones that want to keep them aware of all the many things they shouldn’t miss out on!
And of course, it only makes logical sense that if anyone’s sleep is disrupted and shortened, it’s going to impact their performance the next day. That’s true if you’re 15 or 45. Sleeping problems have been proven to negatively impact concentration and focus; they reduce academic performance; and they flat out make you more anxious and irritable. Sleep loss can even weaken the body’s immune system if it gets bad enough.
However, there’s one other major and very serious reason to keep phones and tablets far away from any tween or teen bedroom: the late-night phone messages themselves. As parents, we may understand the sleep deprivation side of nighttime screen use. But we don’t often think about the messages that are keeping the kids awake.
One recent tragic story out of Salem, Virginia is a perfect example.
Autumn Bushman was a fairly typical 10-year-old. She was a fourth-grade cheerleader and a “bundle of energy.” Her mother, Summer Bushman, said that Autumn would “turn my living room into a dance floor.” “She never sat still … She really did care about others more than she did herself,” Bushman told CBS News.
Why am I talking about Autumn in the past tense? Well, it’s because Autumn took her own life one night in March of this year after reading some late-night bullying texts. Her mom reported that she would raise questions about Autumn’s bedtime phone use, but her daughter always argued for the necessity of the phone’s early-morning alarm.
However, studies and researchers have declared that the dangers of having phones in the bedroom far outweigh any helpful advantages. The CBS article included comments from Dr. Abhishek Reddy—a clinical psychiatrist and professor at the Virginia Tech Carilion School—who stated that it’s dangerous for kids, particularly bullied kids, to take their phones to bed at night. “Because during the daytime, you can talk to people, you can talk to school counselors, you can talk to your family members, friends. But at nighttime, all that access is cut off,” Reddy said.
Dr. Reddy also led a Virginia Tech study of children 12 to 17 who had attempted suicide by overdose like Autumn did: “It found that about two-thirds of those overdosed after 8 p.m., and approximately three out of four were on screens right before.”
At this point, Autumn’s mom says that she wishes she had never given her daughter a smartphone at all, let alone allow Autumn to take it into her bedroom.
“She deserved to live life, and I will never see her go to a homecoming or prom,” Bushman said. “I’ll never see her, you know, get married, or in a wedding dress. And that’s really difficult.”
This is a painful story. And every parent would sacrifice just about anything to prevent such an agonizing outcome. But this story also illustrates exactly why we at Plugged In think No is the right answer to phones in the bedroom at night.
