Digitale Medien und Schlaf bei Kindern und Jugendlichen: Prävention und Intervention

In addition to all the positive aspects, advancing digitalisation also poses risks for children and adolescents, such as gaming disorder, cyberbullying, online sex addiction or cyber grooming. These digitalisation-related disorders, but also the intensified use of digital media in general, can negatively influence the sleep of children and adolescents. A combination of structural and behaviour-oriented prevention is necessary to effectively counteract this negative development. For effective structural prevention, the cooperation of developers and providers of media services as well as support at the political level is indispensable. In terms of behaviour-oriented prevention, it is important to strengthen the resources of children and adolescents, to include contextual factors and to offer assistance and clear recommendations to parents and guardians. Paediatricians and general practitioners should be made more aware of the problem. Existing intervention measures to control screen use with the aim of improving sleep quality mostly have only small effects. The availability and use of digital treatment programmes is increasing. Meaningful evaluation studies on the effectiveness of these interventions are needed.