The new study found that screen time has little to no effect on a child's sleep quality.

A new study from New Oxford University Research has found that screen time has little to no impact on the quality of children’s sleep. The study was conducted using data from a 2016 U.S. National Survey of Children’s Health. In this survey, parents answered questions about their children, their household and themselves.

"The findings suggest that the relationship between sleep and screen use in children is extremely modest," said Professor Andrew Przybylski, author of the study. "Every hour of screen time was related to 3 to 8 fewer minutes of sleep a night."

The study found that there is a small correlation between the quality of children’s sleep and the amount of time they spend looking at screens during the day. The average sleep time of teenagers who had minimal screen time during the day was eight hours and 51 minutes. The average sleep time of teenagers who had eight hours or more of screen time during the day was eight hours and 21 minutes. Consequently, the research team did not believe that 30 minutes of time was significant enough to establish a correlation between sleep quality and screens. Instead, they found that other factors, such as early starts to school, have a larger impact on sleep than screens.

"This suggests we need to look at other variables when it comes to children and their sleep," said Przybylski. "Focusing on bedtime routines and regular patterns of sleep, such as consistent wake-up times, are much more effective strategies for helping young people sleep than thinking screens themselves play a significant role. Because the effects of screens are so modest, it is possible that many studies with smaller sample sizes could be false positives — results that support an effect that in reality does not exist."

"The next step from here is to research on the precise mechanisms that link digital screens to sleep. Though technologies and tools relating to so-called 'blue light' have been implicated in sleep problems, it is not clear whether they play a significant causal role," said Przybylski.

The study was published in the Journal of Pediatrics.