Social Media NOT Causing Sleep Problems?

I don’t believe it. A new study says the amount of time spent on social networking sites like Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn doesn’t affect how much sleep college students get each night.

Like I said, I’m very skeptical of this study, though I should note that it wasn’t done on American students.

The very next day, I read about another study - this one done on US soil by the Kaiser Family Foundation - that states plainly how connected our kids are these days. Check out the following facts:

• Those ages 8 to 18 spend more than seven and a half hours a day with such devices, compared with less than six and a half hours five years ago. (This doesn’t count the hour and a half that youths spend texting, or the half-hour they talk on their cellphones!)

• Multitasking (ahem, texting while listening to music and watching TV) allows youths to pack on average nearly 11 hours of media content into that seven and a half hours.

• The heaviest media users were more likely than the lightest users to report that they were bored or sad, or that they got into trouble, did not get along well with their parents and were not happy at school. They also didn’t score as well on their report cards.

• More than 7 in 10 youths have a TV in their bedroom, and about a third have a computer with Internet access in their bedroom.

A problem? Social media is here to stay. But that doesn’t mean that parents can’t take back the power and instill good habits in their kids when it comes to using social media responsibly. There have been plenty of other studies done to support the idea that all these digital distraction do, in fact, interfere with a good night’s sleep.

So with all this in mind, I hope that parents increasingly consider establishing better ground rules at home. Think about setting “curfews” for electronic usage in the Power Down Hour before bedtime. This includes television, computer, cell phones, iPods, and portable players like DVDs. Your teenager might not like it, but his or her mind and body (and bed!) will.

And if social media truly doesn’t affect how much our kids sleep at night, then I want more proof of that-at least when it comes to our over-stimulated and often privileged American children.