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Multi-Modal Home Sleep Monitoring in Older Adults
Published on: January 26, 2019
The Use of Media as a Sleep Aid in Adults
Liese Exelmans1, Jan Van den Bulck1
1a School for Mass Communication Research, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven.
Abstract:
A sample of 844 adults, aged 18-94 years old, was queried about media habits and sleep behavior in face-to-face interviews with standardized questionnaires. A substantial proportion of this sample reported using books (39.8%), television (31.2%), music (26.0%), Internet (23.2%), and videogames (10.3%) as a sleep aid. The use of media as sleep aids was associated with increased fatigue and higher scores on the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI), indicating poorer sleep quality. There was no relationship with sleep duration. Finally, results suggest that media use coincides with later bedtimes, but also later rise times, a process called time shifting.
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