Personalising Children's Screen Use Reduction for Better Sleep, Mental, and Brain Health

Recruiting now · Not applicable

Conditions studied: Screen-use Reduction + Sleep Extension, Free-living

In brief

In Singapore, 64.4% of school-age children sleep less than the minimum recommended duration of 9 hours on school nights, thus risking poor mental, cognitive, and brain health. These short-sleeping children, however, spend on average 2.5 hours per school day on non-academic media use, revealing the potential of reducing their screen time for more sleep. Previous interventions targeted at reducing media use and/or improving sleep among school-age children, though effective in increasing sleep, required cooperation from schools, extensive personnel training, and high commitment of participants, rendering them difficult to implement in Singapore. Existing interventions also focused on evening or pre-bedtime screen use, and took a one-size-fits-all approach, ignoring individual differences in the duration, type, and purpose of media use throughout the day. Here, we propose a scalable approach to curtail media use based on individual need throughout the day. We will conduct a randomised controlled trial during term time, recruiting 150 children, aged 6-12 years, who on school days, sleep less than 8 hours and spend more than 2 hours on media use. At baseline, all participants will record their time use patterns. The research staff will then help the intervention group to repurpose at least 60 minutes of media use per school day for sleep. Importantly, participants can decide the type, timing and duration of media use to curtail, thus giving them a sense of agency and mastery, while boosting their self-efficacy, a vital ingredient in behavioural change. The intervention group will follow this personalised schedule for 2 weeks, while the control group will be in a free-living condition. Two weeks after the intervention has ended, the intervention group will undergo follow-up assessments. Throughout the study, sleep, time use, cognitive functions, and psychological well-being will be assessed daily. Other cognitive tasks and questionnaires will be conducted during 2-3 lab/school-classroom visits, with one-third of the participants also undergoing high-density electroencephalography to measure brain activity.

Key facts

Study ID

NCT05956392

Run by

National University of Singapore

People needed

150

Starts

2023-07-03

Expected to finish

2027-12-31

Last updated by the study team

2026-04-13

Who can join

Age: 6 and older, up to 12. Sex: any. Healthy volunteers: accepted.

You may qualify if…

• Is a Singaporean or Permanent Resident
• Speaks English
• Aged between 6-12 years old
• Habitually sleeps less than 8 hours during school nights
• Habitually spends more than 2 hours on media use (i.e. social media, gaming, and TV / videos) on school days
• Is not on any long-term medications
• Has no known medical or developmental conditions that could affect sleep (e.g. asthma, arthritis, cancer, congenital heart disease, diabetes, epilepsy, eczema, inflammation)
• Has no history of psychiatric or neurological disorders

Where it is running

• National University of Singapore — Singapore, Singapore (enrolling)

Full record on ClinicalTrials.gov

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