The danger posed by technology in your child's room: TVs, games consoles and mobile phones by the bed 'make youngsters lose sleep and perform worse at school'

Losing just on hour's sleep for four consecutive nights can make it harder to solve maths problems and impede memory, research finds
They also have worse attention spans and are more badly behaved

Published: 02:20 EST, 14 November 2013 | Updated: 06:01 EST, 14 November 2013

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Children with televisions, games consoles and mobile phones in their bedrooms suffer anxiety and perform worse at school due to lack of sleep, new research suggests.

Having such gadgets in their rooms makes children to see it as a place for entertainment rather than a place for rest and quiet, the study found.

And playing violent video games in the bedroom tricks young minds' into seeing it as a place of danger, leading them to be alert when they should be relaxed, it is claimed.

Tired but wired: Children with televisions, games consoles and mobile phones in their bedrooms suffer anxiety and perform worse at school due to lack of sleep, new research from Canadian psychologists suggests

The study by researchers from Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, Canada, found that losing just on hour's sleep can hamper a child's performance at school, making it harder to solve maths problems and impeding memory.

'One of the biggest culprits for inadequate and disturbed sleep is technology,' said Dalhousie psychologist Jennifer Vriend, the study's lead author.

'Many teenagers sleep with their phones and they are awakened regularly by it ringing or vibrating throughout the night when they get a text, email or Facebook message.

'Having televisions and games consoles in the bedroom is also a problem. It sets up the brain to see the room as an entertainment zone rather than a quiet, sleepy environment.

Dramatic: Children who slept less had impaired affective response, emotion regulation, short-term memory, working memory and attention

'So when a teenager is playing a violent video game regularly in his bedroom, his brain starts to associate it as a place where he should be on edge and ready for danger; the brain becomes wired to not want to sleep in that environment.'

For their study Dr Vriend and her team enlisted 32 children aged between eight and 12 who slept, on average, nearly nine hours a night, the Daily Telegraph reported.

They asked the youngsters to maintain their usual routines for the first week and then split the group in two, with half going to bed an hour later for four consecutive days.

The other half went to bed an hour earlier than usual, giving them, on average, an extra 73 minutes of sleep compared to those who stayed up.

The effect was dramatic.

After the four-day stint, all the children were tested to assess their maths skills, attention span and both their short-term and working memory. Their parents, meanwhile, kept a log of the youngsters behaviour.

Results revealed those youngsters who slept less had impaired functioning on measures of positive affective response, emotion regulation, short-term memory, working memory and aspects of attention.

'Results suggest that even modest differences in sleep duration over just a few nights can have significant consequences for children’s daytime functioning,' the authors wrote in the Journal of Paediatric Psychology.

'These findings demonstrate the important impact of sleep duration on children’s daytime functioning.'