“I sometimes fall asleep in the lounge room watching the TV - but then when I go to bed and my head hits the pillow I’m wide awake”.

MG: “So why don’t you have the TV in your bedroom?”

“Because I heard you’re not supposed to. I use to. And I enjoyed it.”

This was a common conversation I had with clients experiencing insomnia … about 15 years ago.

I‘ve had similar experiences myself.

Have you?

There you are relaxing at the end of a full-on day, slouching on the couch, watch the ‘Tellie’, and before you know it you’re catching yourself drifting off.

And because of my own experiences, I let these experiences infiltrate my clinical practice. Mind you - I had no scientific evidence 15 years ago to support my ideas.

But now there is …

SCT

I’ve already written about one of the first insomnia treatments - Stimulus Control Therapy - and its inventor Richard ‘Dick’ Bootzin - in a previous post.

Dick invented SCT in the 1970s, and it’s one of the most well known treatments for insomnia. It made Dick so famous he has his own Wikipedia page.

Dick humbly took a technique that the alcohol dependence field was using - and applied it to insomnia (long story).

The idea was to use the bed only for sleep.

But he kindly added one exception - you can use the bed for sex.

But, *Dick wasn’t into further exceptions - like watching TV in bed.

(*for those who know I’m trying to cut back on my swearing, these Dicks don’t count …).

Morgan Freeman is a Sedative

In 2010 we released our first experimental study testing the effects of videogaming on the sleep of teenagers.

On average, it took the teenagers 7.5 minutes to fall asleep after playing a violent videogame in the hour before bed.

And they played the videogame in bed.

Thing is, the control condition was watching TV. And on average it took them 3.5 minutes to fall asleep.

And get this - one third of the teenagers fell asleep whilst watching TV (after all, the documentary was narrated by Morgan Freeman).

We had to quickly run into their bedroom and wake them up. Even so, they still fell asleep quickly after watching TV.

Although experimental lab studies are great at determining whether A causes B (ie, does watching TV cause difficulties falling asleep), they are resource-intensive, and thus they don’t usually have a large sample.

And having a small sample is one of their biggest criticisms - how can a small sample of 13 teenagers translate to all teenagers?

Passive vs Interactive

Our 2010 study was our first mention of ‘passive’ vs ‘interactive’ technologies.

A passive technology is something like watching TV. You’re receiving info, but you don’t have the ability to have an effect on what you’re watching.

In contrast, you do have an effect on what you see on the screen with an interactive technology. Video games are a great example. You see images on the screen. You react by pressing buttons. And because of those button presses, the screen changes.

Even if you don’t play video games, the touch, pinch and swipe of your fingertips changes what you see ona screen.

So fast forward 3 years and we published a large survey study in 2013 with the National Sleep Foundation. This was a survey of about 1,500 people.

Our analysis showed no relationship between passive technologies (eg, listening to music, watching TV, etc.) and difficulty falling asleep.

It’s great when you get 2 studies that point towards the same ‘truth’.

And it’s even better when you get way more than 2 studies …

That Bartel M-A

A meta-analysis (M-A) is being touted as one of the best scientific tools.

Rather than a single finding from a single study, it collects as much data from as many studies as possible (even ones that haven’t been published) and analyses the whole bloody lot.

One person who knows a lot about this is a PhD graduate of mine - Dr Kate Bartel.

She did a meta-analysis between sleep and … almost everything related to sleep.

And that included various technologies.

When I saw the relationship between watching TV and sleep, I smiled on the inside.

There was a near-zero relationship!

You Can Watch TV In Bed

TVs have changed since I first began recommending people to bring them back into their bedroom.

And TV watching has changed too.

In fact, I would now recommend that people do not have a TV in the bedroom. They’re frickin massive these days, hey?.

With so many streaming services available, and a few different ways to watch them (ie, phone, tablet, laptop), it’s made it easier than ever to watch TV in bed.

That’s gonna sound a little radical to some of you.

But this is coming from the guy (ie, clinical psychologist specialising in the treatment of insomnia) who was recommending this 15 years ago.

So this week, you can feel more at ease at Netflix and chilling*

(*that doesn’t count either..)

• Prof MG