The Screen Time Epidemic and Adolescent Sleep: A Cross-Sectional Study in Jharkhand, India
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.69980/ajpr.v28i1.862Keywords:
adolescent; screen time; blue light; sleep hygiene; daytime sleepiness; sleep quality; Jharkhand; India; cross-sectional studyAbstract
Objective: To quantify the prevalence of electronic screen use within 1 hour before bedtime among Indian school students and examine its associations with sleep hygiene, sleep duration, daytime sleepiness, and a composite high-risk sleep status (Hale & Guan, 2015).
Methods: Cross-sectional survey of 1,719 students (Classes VI–XII, age 12–17) from Jharkhand, India. Pre-bedtime screen use and sleep hygiene behaviours were assessed alongside self-reported sleep duration and daytime sleepiness using validated instruments (LeBourgeois et al., 2005; Drake et al., 2003). Multistage random sampling ensured representativeness (Mweshi & Sakyi, 2020), and sample size was calculated for 80% power (Cohen, 1988). Associations were tested using chi-square, Mann-Whitney U, Spearman correlations, and multivariable logistic regression (Field, 2013).
Results: Overall, 80.4% (n=1,382) reported pre-bedtime screen use (Cain & Gradisar, 2010), the second-most prevalent sleep hygiene violation after bed misuse (82.5%). Prevalence was higher in males (83.2% vs. 77.5%; OR=1.44), urban students (84.2% vs. 76.7%; OR=1.63) (LeBourgeois et al., 2017), and increased across grades from Class VI (74.9%) to Class XII (84.3%; p<0.001) (Twenge et al., 2017). Screen users showed no significant difference in sleep duration (p=0.156) (Gradisar et al., 2013) but reported higher daytime sleepiness (p=0.032; d=0.14) (Chang et al., 2015). In multivariable regression, screen use was a significant but modest predictor of high-risk status (B=0.034, p=0.032), ranking below grade level and school start time (Wheaton et al., 2016).
Conclusions: Pre-bedtime screen use is nearly ubiquitous among Jharkhand adolescents and is associated with higher daytime sleepiness but not reduced sleep duration (Hysing et al., 2015; Bartel et al., 2015). Despite modest individual effects, population-level impact is substantial (Rose, 1992). Interventions should enforce a screen-free wind-down period of at least 1 hour before bedtime (Exelmans & Van den Bulck, 2016) while addressing co-occurring sleep hygiene behaviours and contextual factors such as academic pressures (Peach & Gaultney, 2013) and limited parental supervision (Nuutinen et al., 2014).
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