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Association of media use with sleep of children and adolescents: an umbrella review.

Maxi Brozatus·Madeleine Ordnung·Navdeep S Sidhu·Jon Genuneit
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Abstract

Adequate sleep is essential for child and adolescent development, driving extensive research across scientific disciplines. This umbrella review provides a comprehensive overview of existing evidence on media consumption and sleep and thereby lays the foundation for identifying key concepts and gaps. An inclusive systematic search for reviews reporting literature searches was conducted in 02/2021 and updated last in 09/2024. Methodological quality of the included reviews was assessed using AMSTAR-2. We included 84 reviews reporting on the association between media use and sleep in individuals aged 0-18 years. The field is dominated by reviews of low methodological quality, mainly including original cross-sectional studies with subjective measures in older children and adolescents. A total of 475 original articles were covered by the reviews; only 10 of them appeared in at least seven and at most nine reviews. Screen time generally had a negative impact on sleep, though evidence varied from very low to strong. Evidence for effects of conventional books on sleep remains inconclusive. High quality systematic reviews are needed to evaluate robust studies using objective measures of sleep and contemporary media use across all age groups up to adolescence and to explore the impact of non-digital media use on sleep, considering age and gender differences.

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HumansAdolescentSleepChildDigital MediaMedia ExposureScreen TimeSleep DurationAdolescentsChildrenMedia useScreen timeUmbrella reviewJournal ArticleSystematic ReviewReview

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Maxi Brozatus, Madeleine Ordnung, Navdeep S Sidhu, Jon Genuneit. 2026-06-20. Association of media use with sleep of children and adolescents: an umbrella review.. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.smrv.2026.102327

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Adolescent subjectChild subjectChildren subjectDigital Media subjectHumans subjectJournal Article subjectJournal Article; Systematic Review; Review resourceMedia Exposure subjectSystematic reviews study

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