Not so fast: sleep and media use

There is little doubt that the avalanche of ever-smartertelephones, social e-networking sites and around-the-clocktelevision, and an eternal and everywhere-accessible inter-net, provide fantastic opportunities to never be out of reach ofsomebody or something (Gradisar et al., 2013). There is anemerging literature describing the impact of this e-revolutionon our lifestyles, of which sleep is, of course, an essentialpart. Sleep may be seen as an ideal opportunity to withdrawfrom the social world and its ongoing demands, and themedia revolution may jeopardize successful escape to thisblissful nocturnal social desert. A few years ago, it wasreported in this journal that ‘. . .the use of computers andmobile telephones in the bedroom is related to poor sleephabits, but that media use in the bedroom seems to beunrelated to symptoms of insomnia’ (Brunborg et al., 2011).Before and since then, several studies have highlighted theimpact of media use on sleep, in particular the sleep ofchildren (Magee et al., 2014) and adolescents (Fossumet al., 2013); see (Tavernier and Willoughby, 2014) for morereferences. In general, these studies report a negativeassociation between media use and sleep, i.e. more mediause associates with poorer sleep. Some of the limitations ofthese studies include the lack of longitudinal data, which tosome extent would allow addressing the question—whichcomes first, media use or sleep problem? Tavernier andcolleagues now provide some longitudinal data in emergingadults (Tavernier and Willoughby, 2014). In accordance withprevious reports, negative associations between media use,etc. and sleep were observed. Somewhat surprisingly, across-lagged model, aimed at detecting which came first,indicated that sleep problems precede excessive media use.The authors conclude that ‘emerging adults appear to seekout media as a means of coping with their sleep problems’.Others have previously emphasized the ‘bidirectional nature’of the relationship between media use and sleep problems(Magee et al., 2014), and future research will undoubtedlyfurther disentangle the various pathways and mechanisms[including media-use-related light exposure (Heath et al.,2014)], and hopefully will also include randomized trials inwhich media use is experimentally manipulated.In the current issue of Journal of Sleep Research, we

also find a report on the association between long-chainomega-3 fatty acids and sleep in UK children. Importantly,this study does not stop at simply describing an associ-

ation, but also describes the results from a randomizedcontrolled trial (Montgomery et al., 2014). Additional papersdescribe how cerebrospinal fluid beta-amyloid levels arealtered in narcolepsy (Liguori et al., 2014), and how ananalysis of the memory sources of dreams may make usthink in a different way about the role of rapid eyemovement sleep in memory consolidation (Malinowski andHorton, 2014).

Derk-Jan DijkEditor in Chief

doi: 10.1111/jsr.12212

REFERENCES

Brunborg, G. S., Mentzoni, R. A., Molde, H. et al. The relationshipbetween media use in the bedroom, sleep habits and symptoms ofinsomnia. J. Sleep Res., 2011, 20: 569–575.

Fossum, I. N., Nordnes, L. T., Storemark, S. S., Bjorvatn, B. andPallesen, S. The association between use of elec-tronic media in bed before going to sleep and insomniasymptoms, daytime sleepiness, morningness, and chronotype.Behav. Sleep Med., 2013, [Epub ahead of print].

Gradisar, M., Wolfson, A. R., Harvey, A. G., Hale, L., Rosenberg, R.and Czeisler, C. A. The sleep and technology use of Americans:findings from the National Sleep Foundation’s 2011 Sleep inAmerica poll. J. Clin. Sleep Med., 2013, 9: 1291–1299.

Heath, M., Sutherland, C., Bartel, K. et al. Does one hour of bright orshort-wavelength filtered tablet screenlight have a meaningfuleffect on adolescents’ pre-bedtime alertness, sleep, and daytimefunctioning? Chronobiol. Int., 2014, 31: 496–505.

Liguori, C., Placidi, F., Albanese, M. et al. CSF beta-amyloid levelsare altered in narcolepsy: a link with the inflammatory hypoth-esis? J. Sleep Res., 2014, 23: 420–424.

Magee, C. A., Lee, J. K. and Vella, S. A. Bidirectional relationshipsbetween sleep duration and screen time in early childhood. JAMAPediatr., 2014, 168: 465–470.

Malinowski, J. E. and Horton, C. L. Memory sources of dreams: theincorporation of autobiographical rather than episodic experiences.J. Sleep Res., 2014, 23: 441–447.

Montgomery, P., Burton, J. R., Sewell, R. P., Spreckelsen, T. F.and Richardson, A. J. Fatty acids and sleep in UK children:subjective and pilot objective sleep results from the DOLABstudy—a randomized controlled trial. J. Sleep Res., 2014, 23:364–388.

Tavernier, R. and Willoughby, T. Sleep problems: predictor oroutcome of media use among emerging adults at university? J.Sleep Res., 2014, 23: 389–396.

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J Sleep Res. (2014) 23, 363 Editorial