According to a latest survey, Americans in general are not getting the requisite number of hours of sleep during night time and the culprit for this is the plethora of technology devices, such as computers, cell phones, televisions, laptops, e-readers etc which the Americans have grown really fond of using right before going to the bed.
National Sleep Foundation, which is based in US, has revealed it annual poll’s results on Monday. The poll was conducted to determine the sleeping habits of the Americans. The results of the poll show that 95% of the poll-respondents use at least one electronic tech device right before closing their eyes for sleeping.
According to the results of the survey revealed, Americans resort to this habit of using any tech device before lights out, at least a few nights every week.
Marked differences were shown in the trends due to the difference in age of the respondents. For example, old people switch on their TV sets before sleeping while youngsters and teenagers keep stuck to their laptops or cell phones.
When late-night computer gaming was considered, the teenage respondents were found to be in the habit of trying to make new score records right before going to bed.
Experts say that the habit of using internet, watching movies on computer or flipping through the TV channels before going to sleep might deteriorate one’s mood or inclination of going into the sleep valley.
According to the Harvard Medical School’s Dr. Charles Czeisler, who also practices in the women’s hospital affiliated with the Harvard Medical School, the natural rhythms of the human body may actually get thrown off due to the exposure to the artificial lights from the tech devices such as computer, TV and cell phone. This increases the alertness of people and shifts their circadian rhythms to at least one hour later, thereby making it difficult for the people to go to sleep.