Lesson video

Hello, I'm Mr. Whitehead and welcome to the RSHE health and prevention: Sleep and routine units.

This is the last lesson of this unit and today we're going to be looking at the impact of device use on sleep.

So let's get started.

In this lesson you will need the following items, a piece of paper or a notepad and a pen or a pencil.

There are times throughout this lesson when you will be required to either take some notes down or complete the tasks.

Now let's take a look at the agenda for this lesson.

So already you should have completed the intro quiz and hopefully you got five out of five on that.

Well done if you did.

We then go to take a look at some key words or some key terms that you will need to know throughout this lesson.

We'll then go on to look at how devices can impact negatively upon our sleep.

We'll then follow that with some strategies on how you can manage your device use.

And finally, at the end of this lesson you are going to complete the exit quiz.

Let's take a look at some key words.

So the two key words and terms that we need to know for this lesson.

So the first one is sleep and sleep is a condition of body and mind that typically recurs for several hours every night, in which the nervous system is relatively inactive.

The eyes are closed, the posterior muscles are relaxed and consciousness practically suspended.

The second key word that we're going to look at today is a blue light filter and a blue light filter is one of the strategies that we'll be looking at later on in the lesson.

And a blue light filter decreases the amount of blue light displayed on the screen.

And blue light can suppress the production of melatonin which is also known as the sleepy hormone.

We now want to take this opportunity to think about the following question.

What time did you put your device down last night? Now you may not have put it down because it may be a TV or a games console.

What time did you turn it off? Take a few moments now to pause the video and have think about last night and the last few nights, on how close you turn your device off before going to sleep.

Okay.

Pause now.

Welcome back.

Now hope you've had enough time to think about when you put your device down, how close it is to how when you go to sleep.

And it's really important you do have a bit of time between turning your device off and going to sleep and mainly because of the blue light which we'll talk about later in the lesson.

Okay.

That's something to get us started and get us thinking about.

So let's get in to the main part of the lesson.

We're now want to take a look at how devices can impact on the quality of our sleep.

And it can have huge implications on the quality because it can disrupt our full 24 body clock cycle.

And this is because naturally as the sunrises the light encourages cortisol, which is a hormone that encourages being awake and alertness.

And at night time when the sun sets, our body releases a hormone called melatonin which it produces and it encourages sleepiness and that helps us get a good quality sleep.

Whereas when we're on our devices and we're in front of our devices and devices very late at night time, they emit something called a blue light and our brains mistake that for daylight.

So it reduces the amount of melatonin that our brain produces at nighttime and this can obviously have huge effects in the quality of our sleep 'cause we aren't feeling tired, we don't want feel like we need to go to bed and our brains quite hyperactive.

In addition to this, blue light can also damage the retina in your eyes and can cause sight problems later on in life.

So it's really important when we look at the strategies later on in the lesson, that we take down some of these strategies and try and implement them over the next couple of days.

Based on the information that we've just gone through, you're going to answer two questions.

So the first one is, what hormone does blue light reduce? Is it cortisol, sleepiness, melatonin, or alertness? Now I'm going to give you a few seconds to think about this one before we go through the answer.

Welcome back.

Okay, let us go for the answer for, what hormone does blue lights reduce? And the answer is melatonin.

Melatonin is responsible for making us sleepy at nighttime.

Blue lights will reduce the production of this hormone causing difficulty falling asleep at night.

Well done if you got that one right.

And now the second question, is it true or false? So blue light is good for our eyes.

Is that true? Or is that false? Let me give you a few seconds to think about this one.

Welcome back.

Okay.

Let's go through the answer.

So just to reminder of the question that I asked.

So blue light is good for our eyes.

Is that true? Or is that false? And it is of course false.

Blue lights are harmful for our retina in our eyes.

It is recommended that we reduce our exposure to blue lights.

And as you already know as we've gone through in this lesson already, blue lights can reduce the quality of our sleep.

Okay, let's move on in the lesson.

We're now going to look at some strategies for managing our device use.

And the first one, and then this is advised by the sleep foundation, is that you put your devices down 30 minutes before bed and this will help with the melatonin production in our brain.

The second one is, decrease your daytime and nighttime device use.

This will put our brain and our body into a natural process that we want and we don't want it to be disrupted due to device use.

The third one is to establish a relaxing bedtime routine.

So devices away, have a bit of time to yourself maybe do some yoga, write a to do list for the next day just to bring the body down into a wind down state and sleepiness.

And the fourth one is make your bedroom a screen-free room.

So take your TV out of there, take your devices out and then you know that when you enter your bedroom that is a place for sleep.

It's not time for your brain to be active watching devices, playing on games consoles.

That is one of the big advice that I would give in terms of how to manage your device use.

The next one is, keep your bedroom lights dim.

Now, some people may not have this available to them where they can dim the lights.

So if you can't dim your lights, if you get a lamp and put it on the side you can completely turn your lights off and having the lights lowered will definitely increase the production of melatonin which is what we want when we go to bed.

And the last one is used nighttime mode on your devices.

Some devices it's called blue light filter, some device it's called nighttime mode and this will reduce the blue light on our devices and of course we know that blue light decreases the production of melatonin.

So this is definitely a great strategy that we can use for managing our device use.

Okay, let's move on to the next part of the lesson.

We're now going to take a look at Chelsea, and Chelsea has been struggling to sleep for several weeks.

She often spent several hours in bed playing on her games console until she goes to sleep.

Chelsea will then take approximately 45 minutes to get to sleep.

Based on the information that we know about Chelsea, is to complete the following tasks.

So using your pen or paper, you need to write down, why might Chelsea be struggling to sleep and what strategies could she implement to improve the quality of her sleep? Okay.

Take the opportunity now to pause the video and go through the two questions on the screen.

Once you've finished, hit the play button and we'll go through the answers.

Pause now.

Welcome back.

So let us take a look through the answers.

So first of all, why might Chelsea be struggling to sleep? Well it mentions that she spends several hours playing on her games console before she goes to sleep.

So this will reduce the melatonin levels being produced in her brain because of the blue light being given off by her games console.

What strategies could she implement? Well, first of all, she could make sure that she puts her game console down 30 minutes before trying to go to sleep.

This will improve her quality of sleep.

Secondly, I've also noticed that she plays on her game console in her bedroom.

So if she can, she should try and move her game console out of her bedroom so that when she goes into that room she associates her room and her bed with going to sleep.

Okay.

Well done if you've got something along those lines.

Let's move on to the last task of this lesson.

The last task before you complete the exit quiz is to create a mind map about the impacts of device use on our sleep.

So somethings that you need to include on your mind map.

How screen use impacts on sleep.

We can include the 24 hour cycle.

Cortisol, so what is it? And does it increase or decrease during the day? Melatonin.

So what does that do? And lastly, some strategies to manage device use.

You may also want to conduct on your own research and you can use websites such as the NHS and the sleep foundation.

Okay.

Take an opportunity now to pause the video and complete this task.

Thank you so much for engaging in the lesson today.

It's been a pleasure to teach you all and I'd love to see your mind maps.

So if you would like to, please ask your parent or carer to share your work on Twitter tagging @OakNational and #LearnwithOak.

It's been great to teach you all in this unit.

Take care.

Bye bye for now.