What parents need to know
E-book readers stayed awake 10 minutes longer than paper book readers – even reading the same text. Tablet reading delays melatonin release by an hour. E-readers activate the brain’s reward system the same way phones do, making it hard to unwind and fall asleep.
Full Citation
Hansen, A. (2022). The Attention Fix: How to Focus in a World That Wants to Distract You. London: Virgin Books. (Page 78)
Publication Type
Book by leading Swedish psychiatrist and neuroscience researcher synthesizing sleep and reading research
What They Studied
Dr Anders Hansen, a practicing psychiatrist and one of Sweden’s leading experts on brain science, reviewed research on how different reading mediums affect sleep. He examined studies comparing people reading the same text on paper books versus e-readers/tablets, measuring sleep onset time, melatonin production, and sleep quality.
Key Findings
- “In one experiment, a group of individuals were told to read a few pages from a book before falling asleep. Some read from a regular hard copy, while others read the same text as an e-book”
- “The results? On average, the e-book readers stayed awake 10 minutes longer than the hard copy readers – even though they had read the same text”
- “If you read an e-book on a tablet, it affects both your melatonin production and the release of melatonin, which is delayed by around an hour”
- “E-books are similar to mobile phones. E-readers are therefore strongly associated with new information and activation of the brain’s reward system, which we wake up just by holding them”
- “When it comes to screens, the brain doesn’t discriminate – and so we find it hard to unwind”
- The brain associates all screens with stimulation, novelty, and reward, making it difficult to use them for relaxing activities like reading before bed
- For children doing homework on screens in the evening, this means both the blue light and the brain’s reward system activation conspire to delay sleep
- Poor sleep from evening screen exposure then undermines learning ability the following day
Read the book
Hansen, A. (2022). The Attention Fix: How to Focus in a World That Wants to Distract You. Available through major booksellers.
