Those Darn Gadgets... Keeping The Youth Of America Awake All Night

from the or-maybe-not dept

Tue, Mar 28th 2006 2:47am — Mike Masnick

The headline certainly looks ominous enough: Technology keeps teens awake, study shows. A new study has found that (surprise, surprise) teenagers don't get the recommended amount of sleep -- and that there's at least some sort of correlation between the number of gadgets in their bedroom and the amount of (non) sleep the teens get. Of course, the tech story is just one angle, and other articles on the same exact study don't even bother to mention the gadget angle. Perhaps that's because it's not clear that it's really the gadgets that are the issue. There doesn't seem to be any comparison to data from the past where gadgets weren't around, which would be a lot more interesting. Certainly, it's easy to see how kids using computers and mobile phones to chat away with friends or surf the internet could potentially be staying up later than before -- but it's not clear this study proves anything just yet.

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

53 Comments

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...

Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread

Jirka, 28 Mar 2006 @ 4:01am

When I was small, I would read under my blanket for hours late at night ..... no gadgets ... still no sleep ... In my opinion, any distraction (not just gadgets) causes this...
[ link to this | view in thread ]
BlackCow, 28 Mar 2006 @ 4:15am

I am 15 and ive been staying up fairly late (wicked late on weekends) on my computer like back when I was 11 years old. My friend stays up till like 12 am sometimes on school nights. Sleeping is just sooo boring.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Martin Desilets, 28 Mar 2006 @ 4:40am

sleep
there will be plenty of time to sleep when you're dead

Marty
Lehigh Valley Internet Media
[ link to this | view in thread ]
charles, 28 Mar 2006 @ 4:59am

Re: sleep
amen to that. Live your life now, before you know it...your old.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Antimatter, 28 Mar 2006 @ 5:02am

The problem
The problem in my mind is that everyone is too busy. This is especially true in school when you have so much homework and such to do. Even if getting the recommended amount of sleep is possible, the problem is that you start to feel like all you're doing is working and sleeping. Unfortunately, it seems to be that the only thing you can possibly afford to take time away from is sleeping. It may be detrimental to your physical health, but mentally I don't think that most people can go without any form of relaxation for an extended period of time.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
tosshin, 28 Mar 2006 @ 5:24am

I must say that students in high school (HS) don't have as much school work as you think. During HS I can remember gonig home and doing pretty much nothing the entire night. It was very possible to get all your homework done in class, study hall, or elsewhere. I managed to get everything I needed done as well as play basketball and run XCountry. If parents are worried about the sleep that kids are getting in HS they should see the lack of sleep they kids get in college, especially if they are going after a technical degree such as engineering or computer science. I can remember staying up for all night multiple time and then take a quick 30 min nap before class the next day.

Also, if you want to "hack sleep" you could attempt to follow 1 of these non-traditional sleeping habits.
http://www.dbeat.com/28/ or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyphasic_sleep
[ link to this | view in thread ]
yawmn, 28 Mar 2006 @ 6:04am

zzz....
[ link to this | view in thread ]
heavyw8t, 28 Mar 2006 @ 6:06am

sleep
If you want some solid sleep, read this thread....
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Michael, 28 Mar 2006 @ 6:25am

I have lack of sleep because i have to much to do with school, work, and school activities. My body crashes before i get the recommended amount of sleep. So i don't think its the gadgets.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Chachi, 28 Mar 2006 @ 6:28am

This shit
sorry but if your complaining about not gettin sleep, then quit bitching grab a pillow and knock the hell out. end of story.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
icepick314, 28 Mar 2006 @ 6:36am

sleep
i rather fall asleep at a class than middle of drive on a highway...

if you're sleepy, take a quick 10-20 min nap....

unfortunate for me, we don't allow that in military...

and there aren't enough waking hours for me to watch TV...if there was a way to watch DVD and play games during your sleep....
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Stanley, 28 Mar 2006 @ 6:43am

bogus
I stay up late but i sleep when i'm tired. Tech just gives us something to do when it's late and we're not tired enough to sleep
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Kyle, 28 Mar 2006 @ 6:44am

On the issue
I agree with the first post. Though, I have no doubt that it isn't a coincedence that teens get less sleep when there are gadgets in the room, you also have to look at any distraction. I was just like the first poster. I would stay up super late reading a good book. And, similar to the third poster.....Sleep is for those who don't play World of Warcraft!
[ link to this | view in thread ]
chronicon, 28 Mar 2006 @ 7:12am

Re: The problem
Antimatter wrote: The problem in my mind is that everyone is too busy... you start to feel like all you're doing is working and sleeping.
[sigh] Welcome to the real world (no not that assinine TV show)...
Savor your youth. Don't ever go around telling people you're "bored". I become more convinced that youth really is wasted on the young when I hear them saying that.
Read What You'll Wish You'd Known. A solid strategy for youthful success...
[ link to this | view in thread ]
anonymous, 28 Mar 2006 @ 7:13am

its true
its obviously true, I know as a teenager
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Scott, 28 Mar 2006 @ 7:20am

Re:
Maybe where you went to school, but in the HS I worked for there was no such thing as study hall, and in order to keep accredidation, there was very little down time during class. There was supposed to be no point at which a student is not "being engaged"(this may be new age doublespeak for taught). It really complicates things for the students who do sports and/or work after school, they don't get a lot of down time.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Zeroth404, 28 Mar 2006 @ 7:21am

Teens don't get enough sleep because they spend too much time doing what they want. Correct me if I'm wrong here, because I knwo I'm not, but thats the only friggin point of living. Oh yeah, and that whole reproduction thing, but America hates that too.

You want to know what REALLY wastes their time? I'll tell you. It's school. We all know that it doesn't take 13 years to be taught everything you need to know by the time you graduate highschool.

Somebody please tell me why this is news-worthy.

[ link to this | view in thread ]
Eric, 28 Mar 2006 @ 7:22am

It has nothing to do with gadgets
When I was a kid, I stayed up all night reading, doing art or using my computer. I'm 24 now... and I still do the same (minus the art, I've given up on that).
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Speak for yourself, 28 Mar 2006 @ 7:37am

I must say that students in high school (HS) don't have as much school work as you think. During HS I can remember gonig home and doing pretty much nothing the entire night. It was very possible to get all your homework done in class, study hall, or elsewhere. I managed to get everything I needed done as well as play basketball and run XCountry.

Speak for yourself on that statement. I don't know how long it's been since you were in high school, but these days high school students do have a lot of homework. Also, you evidently didn't take many (or any) challenging courses; if you take any type of challenging course these days, it's more than just a "study hall" assignment.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Dr. Bobbles, 28 Mar 2006 @ 7:57am

Re: On the issue
level 60 NE Hunter =P
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Brandy, 28 Mar 2006 @ 7:58am

Want to know what keeps me up even more? My homework. Tonight I know I'm going to end up staying up way past 2 or 3, and that's usually the point where I just say "oh, well it'll just be easier if I stay up all night" (it's easier to stay up than it is to wake up after a couple hours of sleep). But I also know I've dug my own grave. I have several essays to turn in before the semester ends, and I knew about them plenty in advance. I just put it off until now, when they NEED to be in.

Honestly, we're teenagers. We do what we want to do. Sleep isn't all that fun, so we don't do it.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Sleeps, 28 Mar 2006 @ 8:11am

Re: #19
Wow... what courses are you taking? I was taking Calc, Algebra, English, CS, Physics, Chem just last year, and even though it wasn't just a "study hall" assignment, I almost never spent more than 30 minutes a day studying (exceptions were big assignments and finals). Even though HS might seem hard, wait till you get to university.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Sean, 28 Mar 2006 @ 8:14am

Changes in how school is done
I personally hated HS. They told you what classes to take and you pretty much had no say so as to when you took that class or who from. They assigned your schedule and you could not change it no matter what.

I personally think that middle school should be more like HS and HS should be more like community college. I would have gotten a lot more out of HS if this was how things were. I got horrible grades in HS and better grades by almost a full grade point in college.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
SPARTAN_MSU, 28 Mar 2006 @ 8:15am

Hmmm....
interesting.... i just stayed up all night to study for an exam on RNA and DNA synthesis/replication....

gotta keep moving till this exam is over at 4

time to get back to the grind

PS. what parents of college students would really get a kick out of is the popularity of using/abusing adderall as a study aid..... I guess there are worse ways to "abuse" such a drug...
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 28 Mar 2006 @ 8:40am

FYI
Entering your email address when you comment here will fill your inbox with spam, lots of spam.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Byrnie, 28 Mar 2006 @ 9:02am

youth and sleep
I'm 30, I grew up playing lemonade stand on the commodor64 and playing hours of pitfall, river raid, and other assorted atari games. When I was a kid there was no internet, I loved computers but because of the lack of connectivity I was forced to find other things to do. We'd go outside and play "night games" in the summer, like "kick the can", we'd play baseball during the day or toss around the football, bike around town, go "bummin" (which consistet of walking to the nearest gas station for a candy bar and a soda), or go skateboarding. We'd build forts, we converted a shed in the back yard into a club house, I went to radio shack and bought a 300 foot coaxial cable to run cable tv to a television we found in the trash. Those were the good old days. When technology was growing but not taking over. I slept at night because I was tired from the "negative" effects of playing outside - sunshine, fresh air, and exercise. Today I'm still a kid but technology has only enabled me to do work literally 24 hours a day if I wish, if I want to play video games I stay up late into the night to do so. If I was a kid today I'd probably never leave the house, be on my wireless phone while surfing the internet, and chatting online with other friends I may never physically see. All this does is intertwine the mind with the technology. Technology never sleeps. I don't think that kids are bored because of lack of things to do, I think there is just too much available for instant gratification that gathering up kids for a baseball game is just too much of a pain when you can go online with your PS2 or XBOX360 and find a baseball game going on at any given time of the day. it's too bad they don't have games that incorporate movement so that the hours of play result in fatigue, then you'd have kids that could actually sleep, regardless of how many gadgets are present.

"Yes I love technology, but not as much as you you see, but I still love technology, always and forever......allllwayyss...and....forever....."
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Byrnie, 28 Mar 2006 @ 9:04am

Re: Hmmm....
Ha! That cracks me up, "abusing" a drug designed to help someone study better.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
dorpus, 28 Mar 2006 @ 9:08am

Now if you get to grad school
staying up at strange hours and doing homework will be an advantage!

Did this pizza delivery guy play with too many gadgets?

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/28/national/28seattle.html
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Whateva, 28 Mar 2006 @ 9:16am

What a wierd synopsis.
What's your point? Are you trying to highlight the point in the original study where they show that indeed there is a correlation with #gadgets? Or are you trying to somehow minimize that observation with your super-scientific notion that the fact that other articles that don't quote the original research on that point is conclusive evidence that the original research is flawed? Shoddy work.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
lizard, 28 Mar 2006 @ 9:17am

these kids today ...
when i was their age, we didn't have computers, or video games, or cell phones or dvd's. cable? please. we only had three channels, which went off the air in the wee hours.

if we wanted to be insomniacs we had to work at it! like poster #1, under our covers with flashlights, reading books! remember books? yeah, we read them! and if there was nothing to read, we wrote! bad teenage poetry! uphill through the snow!

hmmph. young insomniacs these days don't know how good they've got it.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Zeroth404, 28 Mar 2006 @ 9:38am

"high school students do have a lot of homework"

School work is for school, not home. Students being required to do school work at home while spending 7 hours every weekday at class minus a couple months of vacation per year for 13 fucking years is abso-fuckin-lutely ridiculous. Thats a lot of time you're wasting in their lives.

I can back that up Personally. I learned every little nitty grity detail I know about computers on my own time. Look at my sourceforge profile if you're curious, its accurate. All that time I wasted at school or doing homework I could have been home learning something much more important (more important because I make a living of it). Public Schooling wasted nearly 2 solid years of my time.

7 hours per day, 5 days per week, 38 weeks per year, for 13 years. thats 17,290 hours learning how to pronounce each letter of the alphabet, perform sufficient algebra, simple geometry, and learn a shit load of lies about american history (ie, the pillage of the native americans)

Separation of Church and State -- Separation of Home and Class, anyone? At least public schools.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
wolff000, 28 Mar 2006 @ 10:09am

Bad Parents Not Bad Gadgets
Gadgets don't keep kids up at night, thier bad habits and parents not paying attention do. If a kid doesn't get enough sleep cause he plays Quake all night it's not the PC's fault but the parents. If your kid is tired all the time even though he goes into his room to go to "sleep" at 9 then he probably isn't sleeping. How hard is it to check on your kid every now and then to make sure he went to bed? My mother was a single parent with 2 jobs raising 3 boys and our bedtimes were enforced even in HS. I got caught a few times staying up late talking on the phone or playing video games and each time I was told to go directly to bed. There was no saving the game or finishing the conversation I got my a$$ in bed or faced the consequences which would have been the loss of whatever it was I was doing. I am so tired of these studies blaming everything on anything other than the real problem, parents not doing thier jobs. if you simply lay down rules and enforce them the kids will go to bed, not shoot at people, and get good grades. It really is that simple. Kids need instruction and some discipline without they turn into delinquents.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
txjump, 28 Mar 2006 @ 10:21am

Re:
"I must say that students in high school (HS) don't have as much school work as you think. During HS I can remember gonig home and doing pretty much nothing the entire night. "

im not sure where you went to school either. i had TONS of homework and studying and i was always "engaged" in school, didnt have study hall. i had practice or a game after school year around. student council, nhs, spanish club, dfyit, etc ...

but we were using college books in high school...

i usually got about 4 or 5 hours of sleep. and when i went to college, it was no different. tons of homework and projects but i had less extracuricular stuff related school.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
txjump, 28 Mar 2006 @ 10:25am

Re: Bad Parents Not Bad Gadgets
Gadgets don't keep kids up at night, thier bad habits and parents not paying attention do. If a kid doesn't get enough sleep cause he plays Quake all night it's not the PC's fault but the parents

exactly! that goes for any activity that leads to lack of sleep and not fulfilling responsibilities. if a kid can't get enough sleep to function parents need to consider what to trim out.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Mike (profile), 28 Mar 2006 @ 10:27am

Re: FYI
Entering your email address when you comment here will fill your inbox with spam, lots of spam.

Um. Would you care to defend that? We do not use those email addresses for anything. They are simply there in case we need to contact the commenter, as has happened on occassion. We do not put them into a list. We do not do anything else with them, and we do not even require a valid email address.

So, if you're worried, don't put in an email address, but you are completely wrong that entering an email address here increases your risk of getting spam.

So, if you're going to make completely baseless statements, you should at least have something to back it up... because in this case you're 100% wrong.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 28 Mar 2006 @ 11:06am

Re: Re: FYI
I'm actually concerned with it...I like to add my email address when commenting, and don't care to be anonymous

I've noticed a pattern...started getting phishing emails shortly after I began commenting here. The more I comment, the more I get.

And, oddly, within an hour or so after commenting, I always receive 2-3 new ones.

Maybe the phishers are getting my address from somewhere else, but this is the only site I frequently enter my email address at?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Mike (profile), 28 Mar 2006 @ 11:30am

Re: Re: Re: FYI
I'm actually concerned with it...I like to add my email address when commenting, and don't care to be anonymous

I've noticed a pattern...started getting phishing emails shortly after I began commenting here. The more I comment, the more I get.

It's not from us. We would NEVER give out your email. Please don't make accusations like this without proof.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 28 Mar 2006 @ 11:36am

Re:
It's newsworthy because tards like you think you've learned all you need to know without "a proper education." Sadly, we can all see that this is not true based on your inability to write coherently.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Dylan Johnston, 28 Mar 2006 @ 11:48am

Huh
Somebody explain, what is this sleep thing?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Zeroth404, 28 Mar 2006 @ 12:06pm

"It's newsworthy because tards like you think you've learned all you need to know without "a proper education." Sadly, we can all see that this is not true based on your inability to write coherently."

Public education is FAR from "proper", and thats enough with the grammar and punctuation comments, you troll.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Justin, 28 Mar 2006 @ 12:57pm

In conclusion...
Kids just don't like sleep!
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Tim, 28 Mar 2006 @ 2:14pm

another thing keeping the kids awake....
I think it may be attributed to all the crystalmeth they are doing.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Rick, 28 Mar 2006 @ 2:22pm

When I was a teen...
I remember being 15 or 16 and having 3 jobs - working 40-60 hours a week, attending zero hour classes (an hour before school started) and still stayed up as late as possible coding on my new 'gadgets'. (At the time this was a 1KB RAM (lol) Timex Sinclair computer I built from a kit and learned how to program in BASIC and machine language on as well as various Commodore home PC models).

I slept 2-4 hours a night during the week and still maintained a 3.8 GPA. I hated sleeping, it seemed like a boring colossal waste of time to me.

I enjoy sleep much more now, as a 35 year old adult, but I still don't feel like I need to or have to have 8 hours a day. I'm lucky if I get 6 hours.

These are TEENAGERS, gadgets have nothing to do with it - teens just don't needf as much sleep as we think they do.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Cheerboy, 28 Mar 2006 @ 2:22pm

Re:
You're crazy if you think that high school's a breeze. I graduated two years ago and there wasn't a night that I didn't have just as much homework as I have now in college. Granted, I took all honors and AP classes but that not withstanding, high school students have to run on a constant sleep deffict just as much as anyone else. There are so many pressures on high school students today to succeed in order to get into college that gadgets make life easier and allows them to get more sleep by increasing efficiency. With out them, I don't know how i would have survived. It's all part of the high speed, high performance society that we live in today.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
BlackCow, 28 Mar 2006 @ 2:30pm

Agreed
"I must say that students in high school (HS) don't have as much school work as you think." You are absolutly right. Its the same now to. I can get most of my work done in study and class and on the bus and all that crap. People just seem to spazz out over kids haveing to much home work when its not all that bad. Unless you are one of those over acheveing kids that do nothing but work.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 28 Mar 2006 @ 2:56pm

Free will anyone?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Rikko, 28 Mar 2006 @ 3:39pm

Time management
Nobody has "too much homework" - that's a crock. I took virtually every difficult science course I could manage in high school because I thought it would get me farther when I went to college (HAH!).
I highly doubt I did more than two hours homework a night, and typically far less than that. I had people in most of my classes constantly crying and moaning that they got too much homework... Where? How?
I'm absolutely convinced that the people who complain about having too much work assigned lack the basic time management skills to get it done in a reasonable amount of time. Like it or not, when you're out in the real world you're going to have to do the same - bad employees who can't manage their time get fired, and after a while when your resume shows that you haven't held a job for longer than six months anywhere, nobody is going to hire you.

Figure it out early - stop pissing away your day! You can't do homework in front of the TV and if you daydream and fall behind in class you need to bloody well get caught up on your own time and not just flounder along!
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Mischa, 28 Mar 2006 @ 10:29pm

Actually, the second article does talk about the link between teens not getting enough sleep and having gadgets. (4th paragraph from the bottom.) The difference is that the first article is all about what's supposedly causing the lack of sleep while the second article is about the lack of sleep itself.
I find it interesting that neither article talks about caffeine. Since according to the poll's key findings caffeine and tech toys also take their toll on adolescent sleep.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Zeroth404, 29 Mar 2006 @ 7:28am

"These are TEENAGERS, gadgets have nothing to do with it - teens just don't needf as much sleep as we think they do."

On the contrary, Teenagers do generally require shit loads of sleep. I'm 20, and for as long as I can remember I sleep 12 consecutive hours if nobody wakes me up and I'm a happy boy. Now, some may not need sleep at all. I know people younger than I that sleep around 5 hours per week.

Teens may need sleep, but that doesn't mean they want it or get it.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
buckykat, 30 Mar 2006 @ 1:47am

my theory
is that morning sleep is more effectual. therefore, hs shouldn't start until 8 AM at the very earliest. for me, midnight-6 AM is worthless, but 4 AM-10 AM is great.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Zeroth404, 30 Mar 2006 @ 7:00am

Basically, Sleep is only effective once you're sleepign hard, you say. I'd have to agree. I don't want to go to bed until I'm dead beat, and thats only after at least 14 hours of consciousness, and a previous 12 hours of sleep under my belt. that dose'nt even fit into a day. The way the calendar year is formatted, and the way days are partitioned, dosen't take into consideration human health (or at least fatigue). If companies and schools ran fewer hours each day, we'd all be much happier (and less tired) people.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Kimmy, 6 Jun 2006 @ 10:49am

i disagree
hi, i am a 14 year old and i would like to argue about this.
hows it a surprise surprise* that teens dont get enough sleep at night? are you trying to say ALL of us suck, ill admit i usually crash at about 2 or 3 in the morning every night but thats cuz im so freaking busy with sports, school, computer, music, photography, skateboarding,,, im really bussy. and it kind of bugs me that your stereotyping all of us cuz quite fankly i know some pansies that go to bed at 8 at night.

so please, shut the hell up.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Sha-la, 9 Oct 2006 @ 8:35am

Re: This shit
Wow. You've got issues, dude.
[ link to this | view in thread ]