Running head: ADOLESCENT SLEEP NEEDS AND PROBLEMS

An Association Between Media and Sleep Patterns
Tasha Benn
Towson University
July 1, 2013

An Association Between Media and Sleep Patterns
The Effect of Presleep Video-Game Playing on Adolescent Sleep journal article suggests that playing a video game before bedtime has a small effect on the sleep of older male teens.
The study involved thirteen male participants between the ages of 14 and 18 who were good sleepers, which was defined as falling asleep in less than 15 minutes. They were “evening types” who did not have excessive daytime sleepiness and had no identifiable sleep disorders (Weaver, Gradisar, Dohnt, Lovato & Douglas, 2010). Participants completed a seven-day sleep diary for the week prior to their initial testing night. This information was used for the testing conditions so that participants attempted to sleep at their typical bedtime.
The study was conducted at Flinders University Sleep Research Laboratory. There, participants sat in a bed beneath the covers with electrodes attached and lights dimmed for both testing conditions: active video gaming and passive DVD watching. During the experimental condition, the participants played a Sony PlayStation 3 video game called “Call of Duty 4: Modern Welfare” for either 50 or 150 minutes on two different nights. During the control condition, the participants spent the same amount of time watching a documentary called “March of the Penguins”.
Data showed that eleven adolescents took longer to fall asleep after playing the video game than after watching the documentary, while two of them fell asleep faster. Seven teens reported that they felt less sleepy after watching the movie.
The study was supervised by Dr. Michael Gradisar. Based on the polysomnography tests, he found that there was a 27-minute loss in total sleep time after 150