Lack of Sleep Consequences

It is said that children and adolescents require a 9 hour sleep night at least,

unfortunately not everyone gets to sleep the recommended time. Sleeping

disorders have been found to affect many people´s lives in a variety of ways. Since

not everyone has good sleeping habits, problems have been detected. Some

people are completely unable to set good sleeping habits since their jobs and

responsibilities are many while others, mainly children and young people, simply

choose not to go to bed on time as they find TV , computer, or other things more

important than sleeping. We will be discussing the consequences of bad sleeping

and some investigation results on the same topic.

According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, TV had been the most powerful

influence in the lives of most children in 1999. It was found that children spent just

as much time watching TV as they did sleeping per week. It was also reported by

Owenset. al as follows:

Children’s television-viewing habits have been reported to be associated

with a variety of significant behavioral consequences, including obesity and

poor eating habits, decreased physical activity and physical fitness, and

impaired school performance. An association between children’s exposure

to violent images on television and subsequent aggressive behavior also

has been documented repeatedly in the literature. Extended and frequent

television viewing also has been shown to decrease the time and

opportunity available for social interaction within the family. (1999, p. 8)

As we can deduce from this report is that in 1999 TV was literally the main activity

of many children. As we can remember, at that point of the history, TV was a

powerful distracter not only for children but for adults also.

Two important concepts we will be using to describe the lack of sleep

consequences are sleep quality and sleep duration. We must understand that the

first one consists of few interruptions, early onsets and early awakenings. On the

other hand, sleep duration is the number of hours from bedtime until the person

wakes up in the morning.

Looking at a research done by the Faculty of Social and Behavioral Sciences in

Amsterdam , we can also find relationship between quality of sleep and the time

spent in bed and the concentration and development at school. It shows the results

of 449 Dutch children in the seventh and eighth grades of elementary school. They

found that 43% of the children had difficulty getting up in the morning 15% has

sleep problems and 25% did not feel rested while studying.

Time in bed and sleeping quality were not related to concentration whereas

sleeping quality and feeling rested at school were directed related to school

functioning.

Talking about different effects of the lack of sleep I will mention an analysis done

by the same University to 19 students that indicates that cognitive performance is

affected more by sleep deprivation than mechanical performance and that mood is

much more affected than cognitive or motor performance.

The effects on cognitive performance and mood are more prominent with

partial sleep deprivation (continuously £ 5 h in a 24-h period) than with

temporary, but complete sleep deprivation

(Pilcher and Hu.-cutt 1996).

More recently studies from the BMC Pediatrics (Evan Tan et. Al, 2012) show that

70% of students (aged 14 -18 years) had less than eight and a half hours sleep per

night with an average over 200 surveyed students of seven and a half hours per

night.

This patterns of inadequate sleep habits is due to different factors such as the

natural development of teenagers, early school start times, and sleep habits ( also

known as sleep hygiene); for example the consumption of coffee and using

electronic devices near bedtime.

All the previously mentioned studies only prove that having bad sleeping habits has

a great negative impact on the lives of many people, especially students and young

people.

We should take great care on this matter as not many people realize that their

academic and working success can depend on the quality of their sleep and their

sleep duration.

REFERENCES

Judith Owens, Rolanda Maxim, Melissa McGuinn, Chantelle Nobile, Michael

Mshall, Anthony Alario, 1999, Television-viewing Habits and Sleep

Disturbance in School Children. Saved on February the 8th 2013 from:

http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/104/3/e27.full.html

A. M. Meijer, h. T. Habekotheâ and g .L .H . Van den Wittenboer

Faculty of social and behavioural sciences, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, the Netherlands, 1999, Time in bed, quality of sleep and school functioning of children Pilcher, J. J. and Hu.cutt, A. I. 1996, Effects of sleep deprivation on Performance: a meta-analysis. Sleep, 19: 318±326.

Tan Evan, Healey Dione, R Gray Andrew and C GallandBarbara, 2012,BMCPediatrics, Sleep hygiene intervention for youth aged 10 to 18 years with problematic sleep: a before-afterpilot study COMENTARIOS: El siguiente ensayo se encuentra debidamente redactado. También se observa que las fuentes de donde se obtuvo la información son altamente confiables. Considero que es un tema muy interesante porque trata acerca de los malos hábitos que muchas personas tienen cuando se trata de ir a dormir ya que la influencia de la televisión provoca que las personas se duerman a altas horas de la noche, no realicen ningún ejercicio y presenten obesidad. Es un excelente trabajo. Realizò las observaciones: Cristal Jaramillo Hernández.