Half of children use smartphones before bedtime, education ministry survey finds

About 51 percent of children in Japan frequently use smartphones and other information equipment until just before going to sleep at night, according to a latest education ministry survey.

Finding that many of such children tend to oversleep or experience sleepiness in the morning, the ministry posted online a guidebook telling school teachers and students how to improve sleeping habits.

The ministry conducted a survey on children’s sleep in November last year, collecting responses from about 23,000 boys and girls from the fifth grade in primary school through the third year in high school.

The results, released on Thursday, showed that those who use smartphones at least two hours a day accounted for 21.9 percent of the total and about 30 percent of high school students.

Meanwhile, 51.6 percent said they frequently use information equipment such as smartphones, personal computers and tablets, until just before bed, and 23.8 percent answered they do so occasionally.

The proportion of such frequent bedtime users surpassed 60 percent for high school students in all grades, reaching as high as 67.6 percent for second graders.

In the frequent user group, 78.1 percent of middle school students and 85.4 percent of high school students said there are times when they find it difficult to get out of bed in the morning. Those who said they sometimes feel very sleepy in class in the morning accounted for 68.9 percent of middle school students and 82.3 percent of high school students.

Doctors and researchers have already warned that using smartphones and other light-emitting gadgets before bedtime can cause sleeping problems such as insomnia.

Source: Japan News