Thursday 15 September 2022 10:29 AM Primary school children lose one full night's sleep a week due to staying up ... trends now
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Young schoolchildren are missing out on the equivalent of one full night of sleep a week, with their sleep worse the more time they spend on social media.
Children aged ten are recommended to get nine to 12 hours of sleep a night, with less sleep linked to poor performance at school and risky behaviours.
But a study found ten-year-olds who use social media more have worse sleep, and that this age group now only get 8.7 hours of sleep a night on average.
Added up over a full week, that is the equivalent of one full night's missed sleep.
Ten-year-olds who use social media more have worse sleep - with this age group now only getting 8.7 hours of sleep a night on average
The study, which is the first to look at social media, sleep and fear of missing out in young 'pre-teen' children, found one in eight use social media during the night when they should be asleep.
Dr John Shaw, from De Montfort University, who presented the research at the British Science Festival in Leicester, said: 'We found 69 per cent of the kids said that they are on social media for more than four hours a day.
'It is quite terrifying when you think about the level of engagement that they're having.'
The study, conducted in schools across Leicester, recruited 60 children aged ten, all of whom had access to social media,
