It’s hard for anyone to ignore the lure of a social media notification, and research is showing the temptation is even stronger for adolescents. A new study by De Montfort University Leicester in the U.K. suggests that 12.5% of 10-year-olds are losing about one night of sleep per week because they’re waking up in the middle of the night to check notifications.
The research, led by psychology lecturer John Shaw, involved 60 students, age 10, from schools within Leicester. On average, the group got about 8.7 hours of sleep per night, which is less than the nine to 12 hours the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends for school-age children. The majority of the group also admitted to using social media for “more than four hours a day, with two-thirds saying they were using it in the hours before bedtime.”
