Computer games can impair boys’ sleep
New research out of Germany suggests that teenaged boys who play an action-packed video game between finishing their homework and going to bed could impair not only their sleep but also their ability to remember facts, Reuters reported recently.
Led by Dr. Markus Dworak of the University of Cologne, researchers conducted overnight sleep studies and visual and verbal memory tests on 11 boys aged 12 to 14. All displayed normal sleep patterns and none were taking any medication.
The boys were tested both before and after playing an interactive racing computer game two to three hours prior to turning in for the night.
Researches concluded that playing the game significantly increased the time it took the boys to fall asleep, and that the strong emotional experience of playing a computer game had impacted their ability to remember what they had just learned.
“Because recently acquired knowledge is very sensitive in the subsequent consolidation period, emotional experiences within the hours after learning could influence memory consolidation considerably,” they state in this month’s issue of Pediatrics.
On another occasion, the boys watched movies two to three hours before bed. This significantly reduced only their “sleep efficiency,” the time spent sleeping versus the total time spent in bed.
But Reuters noted the researchers now suspect “they picked the wrong movies for the experiment, as none of the boys judged the chosen films as very thrilling to watch.”
Yet, they nonetheless conclude: “Our results provide supplementary evidence for a negative influence of excessive media consumption on children's sleep, health and performance.”
Previous studies have shown that children who play interactive video games can develop significant increases in heart rate, blood pressure and respiratory rate.
