Almost everyone has experienced a zombie-like feeling after a night of poor-quality sleep. Research shows that a single night of sleep deprivation can have a negative result on cognition and behavior.[1]Sleep deprivation for children can be particularly costly. Good quality sleep helps children with healthy brain development. That is why Dr. Bennett includes a whole lesson on how to protect your child’s sleep in her Connected Family Online Course. By following research-backed guidelines, setting sensible rules, and setting up your house to optimize learning and safety, your family can avoid costly digital injuries. If you are interested in learning about how to create a safe screen environment at home while discovering ways to promote open and honest communication within your family then check out our GKIS Screen Safety Essentials Course. In today’s GKIS article, you’ll discover how a child’s learning can be negatively affected by lack of sleep and how to avoid it.
How does lack of sleep impact a child’s learning?
Attention and Concentration
A child needs an average of 9 to 11 hours of sleep each night for optimal health and learning performance.[2]Poor sleep affects the functional connectivity of the prefrontal cortex. This means that a sleepy child will experience problems in their ability to focus and sustain attention in a learning environment. Further, a 2009 study demonstrated that sleep may cause the child to become overly sensitized to reward stimuli.[3] An overly sensitized person craves rewards so much that if they can’t get the desired activity immediately, they may resort to acting out and tantrums. To understand more about this process, check out Dr. B’s whiteboard video GetKidsInternetSafe from Sensory Overload on the Dr. Tracy Bennett YouTube Channel.
Memory
Mental lapse refers to a moment of unexplained forgetting, like walking into a room and forgetting what you came in for. A sleepless night slows down brain cell activity, sometimes resulting in impairing daytime mental lapses. A 2017 UCLA study demonstrated that lack of sleep disrupts the brain cells’ ability to communicate with one another, resulting in a mental lapse that negatively affects the way we perceive and react to things around us.[4]
Learning and Information Processing
In Dr. Bennett’s book Screen Time in the Mean Time, she explains that when we don’t get enough sleep our brain’s housekeeping and memory consolidation tasks remain undone, leaving us unable to efficiently acquire or retrieve information. Without good focus, attention, and memory, kids are unable to process information and understand and learn new concepts.
Creativity
Sleep deprivation can also limit planning, creativity, and the ability to think outside of the box. According to a study from the University of Loughborough, sleep deprivation can negatively impact a person’s creativity by impairing one’s ability to create new ideas and change strategies.[5]
How does a lack of sleep impact mood and behavior?
Sleepy Throughout the Day
If your child chronically gets insufficient sleep at night, their body may compensate by falling into a pattern of daytime hypersomnia. This is a condition when someone repeatedly is falling asleep throughout the day.[6]
Mood Swings
Lack of sleep can be a main contributing factor in mood swings.[7] Moodiness and irritability can negatively affect relationships, leading to deeper problems and feelings of hopelessness. If sleep deprivation is habitual, it can contribute to clinical conditions like anxiety, depression, and even psychosis!
Decision-Making
Little to no sleep can also affect how well we make decisions.[8] That means that kids who have sleep deprivation will have a difficult time prioritizing tasks like when to brush their teeth or do homework. If your child seems to get stuck on even the smallest of choices, consider if sleep may be the issue.
How can lack of sleep affect learning in children of different ages?
Teenagers tend to have more sleepless nights than younger children. Not only do parents allow later bedtimes for teens, but they also stay up chatting with friends and playing video games. Without the right amount of sleep, teens have more trouble focusing and learning in class compared to younger children. According to the CDC Healthy Schools, teens ages 13-18 need 8-10 hours of sleep.[9]
How can parents help their children get better sleep and improve their learning?
The incel movement was discovered by the general population in 2014 after a mass murderer posted on Facebook, “The Incel Rebellion has already begun…” Starting as an inspirational social movement, incels has been tied to at least four mass murders and, most recently, as a mass shooting threat for the October 2019 movie premier of The Joker. Like with other hate groups, radicalized young men use incel ideas to boost their tattered egos and justify sexist and even violent behavior. How can we prevent our kids from being victimized or radicalized by this crazy movement?
What is an incel?
The term incelwas first coined in 1993 and is short for “involuntarily celibate,” a non-derogatory term for people who’ve had a hard time finding an intimate relationship.
The incel movement began when a young woman named Alana was working in a university math department. While she was at her desk, a man walked up and said, “I am 27 years old and have never been on a date.”[1] Alana noticed the man needed someone to talk to, so she listened. She discovered that she too could identify as an involuntary celibate. After she found love, she created an online support group for “INVCELS” who were distressed due to intimacy problems.
Early in the group’s development, a primary rule was adopted that members could not blame others for their problems. Instead, each member was required to commit to self-improvement. At that time, haters and blamers were kicked out of the group.[2] Over time, Alana left, the movement grew, and different sub-groups of incels formed.
Social Movement to Hate Group
Researchers believe that the boasts and posts of social media feed into a hopeless cycle of compare and despair for some users.[3] For the more radical of social media users, there are online forums where one can find validation for their despair. Radicalized incels adopt hateful belief systems typical of a broader online manosphere on forums like 4chan, Reddit, and Voat. Incels overlap with extremist men’s rights vlogs that offer pickup artistry tips and espouse the hateful rhetoric of alt-right and white supremacy groups, inciting suicide among fellow incels, the assault of sexually successful women, and violence toward sexually successful men.
Further spurred by the #MeToo Movement, radicalized incel groups spew hate and use their comradery to threaten and intimidate others. Some stereotype people who have successful relationships as “Chads” and “Stacys.” With young people unsupervised online hours every day, hate group forums can influence vulnerable teens. In my book, Screen Time in the Mean Time, I describe how “the Internet platform is the perfect tool for grooming, behavioral manipulation, and coercive thought control.”
The Black Pill
The black pill is an analogy from the movie, the Matrix. In the Matrix, Neo has two options of pills to take, the blue pillto stay in the Matrix, and remain in the comfort of blissful ignorance or the red pillto face life’s harsh realities.[4] Incels use the term black pill to describe the fatalistic perspective that women control the world, and incels are hopeless to get sex because of biological determinism, meaning they were fatalistically born with intimacy-crippling features like low attractiveness, small penis size, or shyness.[5] They believe they lost their chances of intimacy at birth because they lost the genetic lottery.[6]
Group Think & Radicalization
Online forums offer violent incels a community of like-minded individuals to escalate hateful philosophies. In psychology, we call thisgroupthink, reflecting the dynamic of one’s ethical, moral, and rational values eventually dissolving into the group’s character. Individuals joining a group in search of support are vulnerable to a group’s coercive and sometimes irrational group opinions. Groupthink differs from individual opinions in that members ultimately fail to think for themselves, instead of becoming dependent on group principles.
Mass Murder
In May 2014, a member of the incel group shot and killed six people in Isla Vista, California.[7] His name was Elliot Rodger, and he was 22 years old. Fueled by the philosophies of other members of the group, he felt revenge was his only solution. Rodger felt rejected by women. He blamed handsome people who were happy for his lack of intimacy with women. The Incel community saw him as a hero.
In April 2018, Alek Minassian killed ten people driving through a crowded street. He posted on Facebook, “The Incel Rebellion has already begun… All hail the Supreme Gentleman Elliot Rodger!”[8] Alek carried out the attack for the same reasons Rodger did, hatred for those who did not have intimacy problems.
In October 2015, Christopher Harper-Mercer killed nine people at his community college campus in Roseburg Oregon before killing himself.[9] He too identified as an incel.
In February 2018, another man who was part of the incel community, Nikolas Cruz, was charged with killing 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.[10]
Clowncel
In September 2019, the FBI reported to partners in the private sector about a threat from online incel communities regarding unspecific mass shootings threatened to occur at the premiere showings of ‘the Joker’, slated for October 4, 2019. A September 2019 report by the Department of Defense reported on the same threat.
Those making these threats were reported to be a side group of incels who identify as clowncels. They chose this movie because they resonated with the beliefs of the main character, Arthur Fleck. Arthur is a poor, mentally ill stand-up comedian who is a victim of violent thugs and a society that views him as a freak. In the movie, he retaliates against society by becoming a criminal mastermind known as The Joker.
Support positive online and offline peer relationships rather than restrict unhealthy friendships.
Teach your teen how to avoid cyberbullying by teaching empathy, social and netiquette skills, and complex problem-solving.
Just as parents keep an eye on their teens’ school and after-school activities, they must also monitor their virtual activities.
Model healthy balance and self-care.
Implement healthy eating, sleeping, and exercise habits and explain why that is so important for strength and health.
Love and compliment your kids loudly and unapologetically for all they are.
Reinforce that the self is made up of far more facets than a beautiful face.
Remind your teen that what they see on social media and in advertisements isn’t always the real deal.
Thank you to CSUCI intern, Andrew Weissmann, for teaching us about the incel movement, and how it has splintered off to be a hate group with coercive access to kids. For more information about how to protect your kids from the grooming techniques of cults and hate groups, check out the GKIS article “White Supremacists or ISIS? Are Hate Groups and Cults Seducing Your Teen Online?
I’m the mom psychologist who will help you GetKidsInternetSafe.
Onward to More Awesome Parenting,
Tracy S. Bennett, Ph.D.
Mom, Clinical Psychologist, CSUCI Adjunct Faculty
Works Cited
[1] ReplyAll Gimlet
[2] ReplyAll Gimelt
[3] bbc.com Facebook lurking makes you miserable by Sean Coughlan
[4] medium.com by Ethan Jiang
[5] medium.com by Ethan Jiang
[6] bbc.com/news/blogs-trending Toronto van attack: Inside the dark world of ‘incels’ by Jonathan Griffin
[7] The New York Times What is an Incel? A term used by the Toronto Van Attack Suspect, Explained by Niraj Chokshi
[8] The New York Times What is an Incel? By Niraj Chokshi
[9] The New Yorker The Rage of the Incels by Jia Tolentino
[10] Babe.net by Harry Shukman
Screen technology provides amazing entertainment, convenience, and communication as well as a wide range of problems, particularly for kids and teens. Parents and professionals complain they can’t find the perfect tech toolbox to help. There are a lot of costly third-party solutions out there, but where do parents start? None seem to cover all the bases! Apple may have helped us by launching the Screen Time setting in the new iOS 12 update. Promising more speed, the ability to FaceTime up to 32 people at once, new personal animojis, stickers, and filters, augmented realities, easily sharable photos, searching, and shortcuts, Apple is committing to more “power” overall. Features that promise to help us control our use include auto turn-off Do Not Disturb, Instant Tuning to selectively turn off notifications, advanced shortcut and privacy features, and Screen Time tracking. Find out what you need to know in today’s GKIS article.
Tracking Your Usage
This update offers Screen Time, which will allow you to see which apps you use most often and how much time you spend on each activity with an easy-to-read bar graph and data count. Screen Time also allows parents to see which of your kids is the Twitter addict and which is up past their bedtime watching YouTube videos. You can monitor multiple devices linked to your iCloud account.
The Screen Time feature also tracks how many notifications you receive and from which apps they are coming from. Screen Time even tells you how many times you picked up your phone, a number that may surprise you.
Setting Limits
There are several limits that you will find with this update. If you see that social media is taking up a majority of your child’s day, you can set a timer on that category and for the entire day they will only have a set time to use their phones for that specific purpose. If your concern is about a certain app, like Snapchat, then you can just set a limit on that app alone.
Another useful tool is the Content and Privacy Restrictions, which allows you to monitor your child’s internet usage and their app store purchases. This is a simple way to ensure that your child is not viewing graphic or inappropriate internet content.
The last major setting that can be utilized by this new update is called Downtime. Downtime allows for you to schedule time for yourself or your family to disconnect from the distractions of your apps. This may sound a lot like Airplane mode, however the difference with Downtime is the ability to allow certain apps to continue to be used. Calls and texts come in automatically with Downtime, but if you can’t be without your emails you can allow that to remain active during this scheduled break.
Opportunity to Start Important Screen Time Conversations with Your Family
With the new Screen Time feature, your kids may feel like their privacy is being infringed upon, and you aren’t giving them enough space. However, we at GKIS feel that filtering inappropriate content and monitoring screen use is an important aspect of parenting, especially for younger kids and teens.
Rather than avoid the discussion and lock their screen use down, negotiate what seems reasonable for your family. Have spirited conversations. Share important facts about risk and benefits that you learned from GKIS articles. Team work builds stronger relationships.
There is no more influential tool for screen safety than a healthy parent-child relationship. Trust is earned on both sides. As stated in Dr. Bennett’s book, Screen Time in the Mean Time, your attachment to your child is a relationship built upon communication, negotiation, and fun. It’s important to ensure that your children’s privacy is something that is as important to you as it is to them, and that seeing where their time on their phones is spent is a way to look after their digital health and social well-being.
Recap
You can see which apps are the most used and for how long
You can set limits to specific apps and categories of apps
You can set content restrictions for internet and iTunes usage
You can set a bedtime for yourself and your children
Thanks to GKIS intern Adam Ramos for keeping us up on the latest! We at GKIS are big fans of Apple’s new Screen Time innovation. It is worth carving the time out of your chaotic parenting schedule to check this one out. It’s easy to use, free, and a giant step toward personal screen time accountability. Need support how to start these important family conversations, set your home up for safe screen use with handy tech tools, and get your family behind sensible rules? Check out the GKIS Home Starter Kit. In 10 easy steps and in as little as two hours, you can make several giant steps toward a closer relationship and better screen safety in your home.
I’m the mom psychologist who will help you GetKidsInternetSafe.
