Texting and electronic media is acting as a necessary evil and studies have shown that they are causing insomnia and mood swings amongst the teens of the 21st century. It is seen that most children even after going to bed indulge themselves in either text messaging or playing games in their laptops and computers.

This habit of not keeping aside the phone or laptop leads to insomnia, depression or cognitive problems among teenagers and they also experience difficulties in learning. Another interesting fact which was bought to the fore by Dr. Peter G. Polos was that due to excessive messaging or electronic use the affected children move a lot in bed during sleep which leads to leg cramps. He has noticed this among people between the age group of 8 and 22.

This is a recent problem because researchers says that watching television, in the yesteryears, was more of  a passive activity and didn’t involve much input from the audience however in laptops the user is a lot more involved. So when the mind should be shutting down it actually works at a fast pace leading to various cognitive problems.

The research team from JFK sleeping Centre in Edison, New Jersey, conducted a pilot test on 40 people aged from eight to twenty two, giving them questionnaires and asking about their sleeping habits and use of text and video games. The results came that an average of 33.5 text were sent out at one night to 3.7 people, sending each people around 3,404 people emails or text per month.

The messages were sent from ten minutes to four hours after bedtime. It was also seen that in general boys used laptops to play games and girls messaged or called someone up. However both sexes woke up at least once in the night due to messages.

The results, as already stated, also showed high insomnia, mood swings, ADHD, anxiety learning difficulties. More than 77 % of the adults surveyed have high and persistent trouble in going to sleep.

Tags: Texting and electronic media, Texting teens, insomnia, depression or cognitive problems Texting