THE ONE ABOUT A "TERRIFYING" SLEEP STUDY

A reporting nightmare.

A week ago, I drove up to a friend’s wedding in regional Australia in a rental Mazda SUV. I knew it was going to be a long night of revelry, so I planned to sleep in the boot of the car before driving an hour back to the airport and jumping on a plane home. To say I slept poorly would be a bit of an understatement.¹

But, according to recent headlines, my night on a mattress-free back seat in freezing conditions pales in comparison to the “terrifying” results of a study announced this week that apparently shows primary school children are losing a night’s sleep every week thanks to social media access on their Dreaded Pocket Screens.

But doomscrolling under the surface of the study lurks… well, not much at all. And there’s some learnings in that.

So, let’s talk about ‘em.

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What happened? Last week, the British Science Festival took place in Leicester, UK, with many talks and panels held at De Montfort University (DMU) in Leicester. One of these talks was conducted by Dr John Shaw, a psychologist at DMU, who would be revealing “research which is the first to examine the role of social media use and sleep quality in pre-teens,” according to a press release.

The talk happened on September 15 and the media were quick to pick up on it, with one particular headline catching the eye of Twitter and being promoted in it’s What’s Happening bar,² by Times Science.

The headline that really got me though was from Leicester Mercury:

'Terrifying' social media obsession is robbing primary school children in Leicester of healthy sleep

This panicked headline is all too common in digital journalism but its application here is particularly concerning. “Obsesssion”… “robbing”… “healthy sleep.” It all makes this seem very concerning and, more importantly for clicks, very urgent.³

The piece recaps Shaw’s talk at the British Science Festival and does not reveal the study is still under peer review until its very last sentence — which means the primary source of the data has, presumably, not been seen by the journalists.⁴

An accompanying press release by the DMU⁵ reveals a little more about the findings as did a tweet thread by the university.

In short, the study quizzed 60 ten-year-olds in Leicester. It asked them to answer a series of questions about social media, when they went to bed, when they woke up, how many alarms they set and whether they felt disconnected from friends when not online. It didn’t study the effect of blue light on sleep-wake and seemed to focus, predominantly, on the use of social media (even though, as the researchers note, most social media platforms require users to be over 13 years of age).

The results? The average amount of sleep was 8.7 hours. 69.6% said they spent more than four hours on social media each day. 66.1% said they used it in the two hours before bed. 12.5% reported they used it in the middle of the night.

A quick science digression: How artificial light, from our phone screens and computers and TVs, might affect human health is an area of active research. The focus is on blue light and a growing body of evidence suggests this could interfere with our body clock and sleep and maybe even mood. Research has been pretty ad-hoc in the sense that there hasn’t been a standardized testing of the effects of repeated exposure to artificial light, and there is still a dearth of high quality studies.

The disruptive nature of screen time is also highly studied! Some research suggests excessive screen time has negative effects, others suggest the opposite. It’s a mixed bag and there’s often correlations drawn between screen time and a variety of maladies, though whether its screens, social media or other effects bringing about those maladies is still up for debate. It’s still a young field of research.

Okay, back to it.

So what’s the big deal here? Well, this is a particularly difficult study to really examine because there’s no access to the original data. It’s based on a pilot study of 60 children, all self-reporting their sleep quality and usage of social media. This kind of study is useful but mostly for informing further, more rigorous studies.

The reports, from Leicester Mercury and from Times Science, both fail to explore what other experts might have to say about the research. They wouldn’t have had to go far to find people who would have knowledge of this.

Amy Orben, a Cambridge Uni scientist looking at how digital tech impacts mental health, called out the press release on Twitter. As did Pete Etchells, a professor of psychology and science communication at Bath Spa University, with a little more… frank… language.

Etchells made an interesting point to me, via email, that the average amount of sleep is only around ~18 minutes under the recommended amount (8.7 v 9-11) so there’s a question about any practical significance, too. On the surface, at least, it seems pretty silly to go with “terrifying” in a headline.

The way the study is presented also feels strange. The notion that kids “lose a night’s sleep” to social media every week doesn’t seem to make sense. If they’re, on average, losing 18 minutes, well that’s not anywhere near a night’s sleep each week. I also don’t really understand the percentages used in the report… For instance, if 12.5% say they check their phones in the middle of the night out of 60 kids, that’s… 7.5 kids checking their phones. What’s that half-a-kid doing?

There’s just so much we don’t know about the science that a discerning science journalist has to dig in a lot more and really nut out what this pilot study is showing — if anything at all. Mostly, we need to be cautious and not overhype this research with panicky headlines. That’s not always the journalist’s fault, but we should be taking responsibility in some way for repeating words like “terrifying” out of context or using others, like “obsession.”

Why does this matter? Accurately covering new science without access to the original data/study and just based on a talk is problematic at best and extremely poor journalism at worst. I would argue these kinds of stories shouldn’t be written — but if you have to file something (and I get that we are often under pressure to do so), you must be getting expert commentary from other researchers in the field and tamp down the language in your headlines.

Otherwise, we see it get picked up and repeated (it inspired at least one radio spot about “no phones in the bedroom” and a quick glance seems to suggest its picked up in the US, too). The cycle unnecessarily worry parents about screen time and social media use and — potentially — distracts from some of the very real issues with both of those things.

Stay well rested, friends.

1. This week’s header comes from “Dreams of a Rarebit Fiend” on the Public Domain Review.

2. I promise that I will get to that email about why Twitter is very bad for popular science journalism…….

3. We know the journalist themselves rarely write the headline, for what it’s worth.

4. I reached out to DMU PhD student Sorcha Newby, who conducted the research, to see if I could get a copy of the paper but did not receive a response.

5. You can find that here.