Are Screens Sabotaging Your Sleep?

Many educators are aware of how digital devices are derailing students’ sleep: you’re experiencing the consequences in your classrooms. The research conclusively tells us that tired students cannot learn, regardless of their cognitive abilities. Sleep is vital for optimal health, learning and wellbeing, for students and teachers alike. However, many teachers have overlooked how their digital habits may be compromising their sleep and subsequent health, wellbeing and productivity.

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Thanks to mobile technologies teachers can now spend their evenings sitting on the lounge, catching up on emails, or perhaps writing school reports on the laptop or marking student work on a tablet device. You can be asleep and receive a text message from a sick staff member informing you that they’ll require a substitute teacher the next day. You can be woken up throughout the night because of email alerts and social media notifications on your phone.

Anecdotally, many educators are reporting feeling constantly tired. There are a host of factors that may contribute to tiredness, such as increased administration, demands from parents, professional development requirements to name just a few. However, the chief culprit for teacher tiredness is likely to be inadequate and/or poor quality sleep. Unhealthy technology habits are impacting teachers’ sleep and subsequently hampering their wellbeing and productivity.

How are screens impacting our sleep?

The use of technology, whether it’s a laptop, desktop computer, tablet or smartphone, or even watching TV can impact the quantity and quality of sleep.

Research has shown that the use of mobile devices in the 90-minutes before we sleep has been shown to delay the onset of sleep. Mobile, backlit devices emit blue light which suppresses the body’s production of melatonin (the hormone our body secretes to help us fall asleep quickly and easily). Insufficient melatonin production can delay the onset of sleep and over time, these sleep delays can accumulate into a sleep deficit. Many teachers are simply not clocking enough hours of sleep each night.

The use of screens before sleep can also have an arousal effect on the brain. If teachers are dealing with an upsetting email from a parent, or writing up an incident report before bed it can delay sleep, as your brain starts to release the stress-hormone cortisol. This isn’t conducive to sleep! Your brain becomes wired and tired all at once!

Many teachers are surprised to learn that the quality of their sleep may also be impacted if they have digital devices in their bedroom. Alerts and notifications can interfere with our sleep cycles. Instead of having approximately 4-5 completed sleep cycles each night, email pings, text alerts, or social media notifications can result in an insufficient number of completed sleep cycles which contributes to feelings of tiredness.

Three healthy screen habits to protect your sleep

• Have a bedtime for devices:
Ideally, we should switch off digital devices 90-minutes before sleep. This allows your body to make melatonin to induce sleep and gives your brain (and nervous and sensory systems) a much-needed rest from the constant onslaught of information they’re subject to during a day. Even 30-60 minutes of screen-free time before sleep will help if 90 minutes isn’t tenable.

• Keep devices out of bedrooms:
Devices in bedrooms compromise the quality of our sleep, especially if the alerts and notifications aren’t silenced. The presence of a device in our bedroom means that we’re also likely to succumb to the temptation, to have a quick peak at our inbox or social media if it’s within reach, when we wake throughout the night. A 2016 study by consultancy firm Deloitte found that approximately 33% of adults checked their phones overnight. I know many teachers, responsible for sourcing substitute teachers, believe that they need to have their phones on until late in the night, or on overnight. However, I challenge this idea. Even if you receive the text at midnight, are you really going to call or send a message to a casual teacher at that time? Things can wait.

• Take preventative measures:
If you really must be on your laptop or phone just before you go to sleep (and sometimes there’s no escaping it like during report-writing time), use blue-light blocking glasses, or use Night Shift mode on iOS devices or blue-light apps on Android devices. Both of these reduce the blue light emissions.

As teachers, we need to develop healthy nocturnal technology habits, as digital devices are here to stay. We need to manage our media and not be a slave to the screen… especially if this is what we’re suggesting to our students!

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Dr Kristy Goodwin


Dr Kristy Goodwin is a digital wellness researcher, speaker and author who
helps parents, educators and health professionals navigate the digital world
with children aged 0-16 years. Kristy delivers seminars and workshops that
translate the latest research, into practical and digestible information for parents and professionals so that they can help students thrive online and offline.