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Maida Lynn Chen<\/a>, University of Washington<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n With the start of a new school year comes the inevitable battle to get kids back into a healthy bedtime routine. In many cases, this likely means resetting boundaries on screen use, especially late in the evenings. But imposing and enforcing those rules can be easier said than done.<\/p>\n A growing body of research is finding strong links between sleep, mental health and screen time<\/a> in teens and tweens \u2013 the term for pre-adolescent children around the ages of 10 to 12. Amid an unprecedented mental health crisis<\/a> in which some 42% of adolescents<\/a> in the U.S. are suffering from mental health issues, teens are also getting too little sleep<\/a>.<\/p>\n And it is a vicious cycle: Both a lack of sleep and the heightened activity involved in the consumption of social media and video games before bedtime can exacerbate or even trigger anxiety and depression that warrant intervention.<\/p>\n I am the lead physician of the sleep center at Seattle Children\u2019s Hospital, where I study various pediatric sleep disorders<\/a>. Our team of physicians and providers routinely observe firsthand the negative effects of excessive screen time, and particularly social media, both of which affect not only sleep, but also the physical and mental health<\/a> of our patients.<\/p>\n Research has long shown a clear relationship between mental health and sleep: Poor sleep can lead to poor mental health and vice versa. People with depression and anxiety commonly have<\/a> insomnia<\/a>, a condition in which people have trouble falling or staying asleep, or both, or getting refreshing sleep. That ongoing sleep deprivation further worsens the very depression and anxiety that caused the insomnia in the first place.<\/p>\nRelationship between mental health and poor sleep<\/h2>\n