Elsevier

Sleep Medicine

Volume 83, July 2021, Pages 230-234
Sleep Medicine

Brief Communication
Home vs. bedroom media devices: socioeconomic disparities and association with childhood screen- and sleep-time

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sleep.2021.04.012Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Media devices were more common in high-than low-SES households.

  • Media devices allocated in children's bedroom were more prevalent in low-SES families.

  • Television and mobile devices in the bedroom significantly increased screen-time.

  • Television and mobile devices in the bedroom significantly decreased sleep-time.

Abstract

Background

The literature has shown a widespread use of portable electronic devices among children over the last years. This study aimed to identify the availability of different media devices at home versus in children's bedroom according to the socioeconomic status (SES), and analyze the association between that availability and children's screen- and sleep-time on week and weekend days.

Methods

Data from 3 to 10 year-old children (n = 8430) from a cross-sectional study conducted in Portugal (2016/17) was used. Screen- and sleep-time, availability of media devices, father and mother education (as a proxy measured of SES) were assessed via questionnaire.

Results

Available devices at home were significantly more common among high-SES families; while media devices in the bedroom were more frequent in low-SES families (p < 0.001). In preschool and elementary school-aged children, media devices in the bedroom were associated with increase screen-time and shorter sleep per day. Also, mobile devices in the bedroom were shown to exert similar, or even more, influence on children's screen- and sleep-time as television.

Conclusions

Further research is needed to explore the pathways by which different electronic media negatively impacts on children's sleep and screen-time and to develop effective strategies to minimize device access at bedtime.

Introduction

Excessive screen-time and shorter sleep duration have important implications for children's health [[1], [2], [3], [4]]. The widespread use of mobile devices and the popularization of screen media devices in the bedroom are likely to be responsible for the substantially increased in childhood screen-time over the years [5].

Increased screen-time and its adversely impact on school-aged children's sleep have been consistently reported before [6], but less is known about this association in preschool-aged children [7]. Moreover, the relationship between socioeconomic status (SES) and screen-time in children is not well characterized and requires further attention, but studies suggest that screen use is more likely among children with low parental SES than among children with higher SES backgrounds [8,9].

The purpose of this study was twofold: 1) to assess traditional and new media devices ownership in the house vs. in children's bedroom according to SES and 2) to explore the associations between screen media ownership with screen- and sleep-time on week and weekend days.

Section snippets

Methods

Data were derived from the ObesInCrisis Project, designed to study the impact of the socioeconomic crisis in childhood obesity and related determinants. During 2016-17, a total of 8430 Portuguese pre- and school-aged children (n = 2397 between 3 and 5 years, 51.6% boys; n = 6033 between 6 and 10 years, 50.4% boys) were recruited from public and private schools, in the cities of Porto, Coimbra and Lisbon; details are available elsewhere [9]. Participation rates were 60% in Porto, 58% in Coimbra

Results

Screen devices at home were: television (home: 99.5%, of which 36.7% in the bedroom), laptop (home: 82.1%; bedroom: 6.4%), tablet (home: 81.6%; bedroom: 19.5%) and computer (home: 32.9%; bedroom: 8.9%). Similar results were found for boys and girls, except for having a computer in the bedroom which was significantly more common for boys than girls (10.1% and 7.7%, respectively, p = 0.04). Independently of sex, owning a computer, a laptop and a tablet was significantly more common among children

Discussion

The present study identified that higher-SES children had more media equipment at home compared with children from lower-SES; however, the inverse was found for the availability of those devices in the children's bedroom. Similar findings were previously reported, were electronic devices were more likely to be located in lower-SES children's bedrooms [[11], [12], [13]]. This suggest that the socioeconomic differences in Portuguese children's screen media-time [9] may be driven primarily by

Funding

This study was supported by a grant from Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, Portugal [grant number PTDC/DTP-SAP/1520/2014]; COMPETE 2020, Portugal 2020 - Programa Operacional Competitividade e Internacionalização (POCI), União Europeia by the Fundo Europeu de Desenvolvimento Regional (FEDER).

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Daniela Rodrigues: Conceptualization, Methodology, Validation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing, Visualization. Augusta Gama: Investigation, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing. Aristides M. Machado-Rodrigues: Investigation, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing. Helena Nogueira: Investigation, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing. Vítor Rosado-Marques: Investigation, Writing – original draft,

Acknowledgements

We thank all the Directors of the schools, the teachers directly involved and the parents of the children who accepted to participate in this project.

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