Assignment 7A Testing the Hypothesis

Many children in recent years have been having difficulties falling asleep, staying asleep, and focusing in school. Much of this is due to the use of electronic screens in children’s lives.

Who: Children in schools having trouble sleeping

What: They are having troubles in school because of the overuse of screens, causing issues with sleep and concentration.

Why: Screens have become commonplace in homes and lives, and children have grown up with them as a big part of their lives, and as such have difficulty separating themselves.

Testing the who: Not everyone in my ‘who’ has the need for assistance with better sleep and being away from screens, and I’m sure there are many outside the current ‘who’ that need the help. Lots of people besides kids have sleep issues and need to separate from screens.

Testing the what: Are all types of screen activities a problem? Are there certain groups who are more likely to have these issues with screens?

Testing the why: Some people have screen issues where they will get distracted and watch too much tv. Others have identified that their screen issues come from the blue light in modern screens, causing a decrease in production of melatonin, and causing issues sleep.

In my interviews, I focused on asking questions centered around who specifically has the issues and what was causing their issues with sleep. For the ‘who’s it seems that pretty much any type of person could have these issues, but not everyone in the group will. In this year, pretty much everyone has constant access to screens and is always connected, so it’s no surprise that these issues are common. For the ‘what’s it seems that the issue of screens causing melatonin production was more prevalent than the issue of people getting distracted by their screens. Everyone seemed to have their own way to explain how the screens were affecting their sleep, with one interviewer saying they had no problems, but mostly they all said they just couldn’t fall asleep at night, even though they’d felt tired all day. For the ‘why’s I identified, they seem to hold true. Most people either simply have trouble falling asleep because they’ve been using a screen too recently before bed, or that they get too invested in the screen activities and don’t think about sleeping.

I know that this opportunity stretches over more people than I had originally expected, with 4/5 people I interviewed told me that they’d had experience with this issue when I thought it would mostly be children affected. I learned that the reasons for this issue could be a variety of things, and maybe even more than one happening at a time. Many people simply are not aware of what they can do to help themselves or are not capable of changing their habits to that point.