Screen time is contributing to chronic sleep deprivation in tweens and teens – a pediatric sleep expert explains how critical sleep is to kids' mental health

When teens can’t sleep, they often scroll online well into the night, which only exacerbates the problem. ljubaphoto/E+ via Getty Images

With the start of a new school year comes the inevitable battle to get kids back into a healthy bedtime routine. In many cases, this likely means resetting boundaries on screen use, especially late in the evenings. But imposing and enforcing those rules can be easier said than done.

A growing body of research is finding strong links between sleep, mental health and screen time in teens and tweens – the term for pre-adolescent children around the ages of 10 to 12. Amid an unprecedented mental health crisis in which some 42% of adolescents in the U.S. are suffering from mental health issues, teens are also getting too little sleep.