A study published today in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine has found that playing videogames has only a marginal effect on the ease with which teenagers fall asleep. In an experiment, thirteen males between the ages of 14 and 18 played Modern Warfare one week and watched March of the Penguins another and the rate at which they fell asleep was tested. The difference between the two median times wound up being roughly four and a half minutes.
Now, there’s a lot more to this than what the experiment was able to cover. For example, there are some questions raised as to how reflective the study is of actual gaming habits, as the teenagers involved were only made to play the game for fifty minutes, which would probably be a conservative amount of time for the average teenaged gamer.
It’s just a good thing I wasn’t involved in such a thing. I fall asleep with a controller in my hand very frequently, much to the amusement of my housemates. I would hate to skew the results.
Playing a video game before bedtime has only a mild effect on adolescent sleep [GEN]
