Because his room was dark and the door was closed, Robin Edwards assumed her then-11-year-old son went to bed before 11 p.m nightly. Then one stormy night, when her husband went into his room to check the windows, the boy?s secret was out: Instead of sleeping, he was playing on his laptop into the wee hours of the morning. He had smushed a pillow against the bottom of the door to block the light.
This explained a lot. ?We usually had to pull him out of bed in the morning,? says Edwards. Besides fatigue, kids who don?t get enough sleep?studies show children 10 to 13 need nine to 10 hours a night, but get less than eight?can suffer from poor grades and memory loss, says Indra Narang, a respirologist and director of Paediatric Sleep Medicine at Toronto?s Hospital for Sick Children. Chronically sleep-deprived kids, she adds, can act a lot like those with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD): irritable, aggressive and distractible. Reading beneath the covers with a flashlight, of course, has become passé; this tech-obsessed generation is now plugged into smartphones, laptops and tablets, spending hours texting and gaming. Almost a quarter of grade four students have their own phone, reports a recent survey by online media literacy organization MediaSmarts. Twenty percent of those kids, it found, sleep with their cells. With notifications going off at all hours, it?s no wonder kids aren?t getting the rest they need.
?Social media and screen time are encroaching on sl...