Binge-Watching TV Is Linked To Poorer Sleep And Insomnia

From forbes.com

Falling into the category of "not surprising but worth a study on," a new study finds that binge-watching a favourite TV show before bed is a bad idea, at least when it comes to sleep. Binge-watching seems to increase what psychologists call arousal—not sexual arousal, but cognitive arousal, the feeling of being wired and ready to do more. In fact, in the new study, published in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, binge-watching TV was linked to significantly poorer sleep, suggesting yet another way that gadgets, especially before bed, are detracting from our ability to engage in normal human behaviours—in this case, falling asleep.
In the new research from the University of Michigan, the team had 420 young adults (between 18 and 25 years of age) fill out questionnaires, which were designed to measure a number of behavioural variables, including sleep quality, fatigue, insomnia, “pre-sleep arousal” (both cognitive and physiological) and binge TV-watching, defined as “watching multiple consecutive episodes of the same television show in one sitting on a screen, be it a television, laptop, computer or tablet computer screen.”

It turned out that a lot of the participants, about 80%, reported binge-watching at some point or another over the past month. Though 40% binge-watched only once during that time, 28% did it a few times in the month, and 14% did it a few times a week. Almost 7% reported binge-watching almost every day of the study period. (Keep in mind these are mostly college students.)And their sleep suffered for it. Those who binge-watched more frequently reported more insomnia, poorer sleep quality in general, and more daytime fatigue. Interestingly, the results were almost entirely explained by greater cognitive arousal at night—the feeling of being mentally wired—in those who binge-watched, rather than physiological arousal.
The researchers point out that people often didn’t intend on a bingeing episode, but it just sort of happened: “Curiously," they write, "binge viewing appears to be unintentional: reports indicate that 71% of binge viewing happens by accident, when people wound up watching more than they wanted to.”

Why are people bingeing in this way? Part of it is that the TV shows these days are just that good. They're so engaging, the team suggests, that they can suck in a viewer unawares. “[T]he narrative complexity in these shows leaves viewers thinking about episodes and their sequel after viewing them,” the authors write. “This prolongs sleep onset or, in other words, requires a longer period to ‘cool down’ before going to sleep, thus affecting sleep overall. Whether the increase in cognitive pre-sleep arousal can be attributed to the higher degree of involvement with the content is an interesting avenue for future research.”
There’s been a lot of attention, in recent years, on the fact that using our smartphones and other gadgets before bed is bad for sleep—but for a different reason. Here, the blue wavelengths of light from the screens can affect the brain regions that govern circadian rhythm, in part by suppressing melatonin secretion. So the reason has largely been explained by neurophysiological mechanisms.
But this new study hints that there can also be a purely psychological element to the feeling of being wired from our gadgets. With TV, we’re cognitively and intellectually amped up. Thinking about what just happened on House of Cards, and what could possibly happen next, is apparently just too engaging to relinquish for sleep. But we may want to keep this study in mind before we click "next episode."

https://www.forbes.com/sites/alicegwalton/2017/08/18/binge-watching-tv-linked-to-poorer-sleep-quality-and-insomnia/#7f2b5d3a25ee