Experimental Effects of Light And Content From Evening Screen Media Use On Children's Sleep, Executive Functioning, And Emotion Regulation
Baylor College of Medicine
Summary
The proposed project aims to disentangle the impact of evening light exposure emitted from tablet devices from the impact of arousing media content on children's sleep regulation, circadian physiology and next-day emotion regulation and executive functioning.
Description
Investigators will conduct a 4-group randomized, controlled trial including 200 children (8 to 11 years; Tanner stage 1 or 2) assigned to an unfiltered bright light screen (BL; 109 lux) or a dim light screen (DL; \<5 lux) condition in room lighting (40-50 lux) matched with either calming (CC) or exciting content (EC). Children will participate in two weekend protocols, an experimental and a control weekend. During the experimental weekend, children will be exposed to 1 hour of tablet use in the hour before bed under the following conditions: 1) unfiltered bright screen light and exciting conte…
Eligibility
- Age range
- 8–11 years
- Sex
- All
- Healthy volunteers
- Yes
Inclusion Criteria: * children between 8.0 and 11.9 year old * Tanner stage 1 and 2 * live with their parent(s) (biological or legal guardian at least 50% of the time and has a primary role of caring for the child). * Children who sleep between 8.5 to 11 hours per night habitually * Children must sleep alone most nights * parent and child able to communicate and read and write in English * The child does not have to have access to a mobile device (tablet or Phone), but if they do, the primary device they use has to be an a) Android OS ≥5.0 either used only by the study child or shared with ot…
Interventions
- Behavioralno screen control with dim light and calming activities
Non-screen-based quiet activities for 1 hour before bed in room lighting 40-50 lux
- Behavioralunfiltered Bright tablet screen
Bright light screen media exposure will be delivered on an iPad Pro provided by the research team which will be set to the brightest light intensity setting for 1 hour before bed in room lighting 40-50 lux
- BehavioralFiltered dim tablet screen
Filtered dim light screen media exposure will be delivered for 1 hour before bed in room lighting 40-50 lux on an iPad Pro provided by the research team. A blue light filter will be used to alter the spectral distribution of the emitted light and the screen brightness will be dimmed to the lowest possible setting
- BehavioralExciting content
We will create a 1-hour recording of movie clips containing exciting content from age-appropriate movies for 8- to 11-year-old children as rated by Common Sense Media.
- BehavioralCalming Content
We will create a 1-hour recording of movie clips containing calming content from age-appropriate movies for 8- to 11-year-old children as rated by Common Sense Media.
Location
- Children's Nutrition Research CenterHouston, Texas