“Glued to the Tube”: The Interplay Between Self-Control, Evening Television Viewing, and Bedtime Procrastination

Abstract

There is ample evidence that media use displaces sleep, but little theory about the mechanism that explains this. We studied sleep displacement as a self-control issue: People postpone going to bed because they have trouble ending their media exposure. We therefore modeled television viewing (habitual viewing, deficient TV self-regulation, and viewing volume) as a mediator of the effect of trait self-control on bedtime procrastination. A random sample of 821 adults participated in face-to-face interviews using standardized questionnaires. Lower self-control was associated with more bedtime procrastination. This relationship was mediated by habitual viewing, which led to less bedtime procrastination, and deficient TV self-regulation, which led to more bedtime procrastination. Evening viewing volume was not a significant mediator. Our results support the idea that (1) self-regulatory failure over television viewing can partly explain the common struggle with bedtime, and (2) strong viewing habits seem to inhibit bedtime procrastination.

Bedtime Procrastination, Sleep-Related Behaviors, and Demographic Factors in an Online Survey on a Polish Sample

“…The values of Cronbach’s α did not differ significantly between both samples, χ 2 (1) = 2.01, p = 0.156, and the 95% confidence intervals of this coefficient overlapped considerably. Cronbach’s α for the Polish BPS version in Sample 2 differed significantly from Cronbach’s α obtained for the English (Kroese et al, 2014), Dutch (Kroese et al, 2016a), and Flemish (Exelmans and Van den Bulck, 2017) BPS versions: χ 2 (1) = 22.3, p < 0.001; χ 2 (1) = 13.4, p < 0.001; χ 2 (1) = 11.5, p = 0.001, respectively. It also differed significantly from Cronbach’s α for the English BPS version applied by Sirois et al (2019) in study 1, χ 2 (1) = 6.03, p = 0.014, and study 2, χ 2 (1) = 23.6, p < 0.001.…”

“…For the English version of BPS, Cronbach’s α of 0.92, 0.89, and 0.90 was obtained in an online survey of users of an internet crowdsourcing platform (Kroese et al, 2014) and on two samples of internet users (Sirois et al, 2019), respectively. Cronbach’s α of 0.88 was reported for the Dutch version of BPS in an online survey on a representative sample of Dutch adults (Kroese et al, 2016a) and for the Flemish version of BPS in a survey on a randomly selected sample of Flemish-speaking adults (Exelmans and Van den Bulck, 2017).…”

“…To measure the general tendency to go to bed later than intended, the Bedtime Procrastination Scale (BPS) was developed (Kroese et al, 2014). English (Kroese et al, 2014; Sirois et al, 2019), Danish (Kroese et al, 2016a) and Flemish (Exelmans and Van den Bulck, 2017) versions of the BPS have been used in previous studies on bedtime procrastination. In addition, the preliminary results of work on the Polish adaptation of BPS were presented recently by Herzog-Krzywoszanska and Krzywoszanski (2017).…”

Accounting for automatic processes in sleep health

“…Few health behaviours solely result from intentions because people often lack motivation, capability or opportunity to act on their intentions. For example, limiting screen time during the evening is difficult for people who have strong screen-viewing habits (Exelmans & Van den Bulck, 2017). This 'intention-behaviour gap' phenomenon means that interventions that achieve large increases in intentions translate to only small-to-medium changes in behaviour (Webb & Sheeran, 2006).…”

Sleep, Circadian Rhythms, and Risk Across Health Domains in Adolescents With an Evening Circadian Preference

“…An a priori decision was made to investigate total sleep time (TST) and bedtime on weeknights. Additionally, given increasing evidence that bedtime (i.e., the time at which participants got into bed) does not often represent the time at which participants try to sleep (Exelmans & Van den Bulck, 2015, 2017, this study will also investigate shuteye time (i.e., the time at which participants decided to go to sleep). These variables were selected because late bedtimes and shuteye times are behavioral indicators of an evening circadian preference (Carskadon, Acebo, Richardson, Tate, & Seifer, 1997;Crowley et al, 2014Crowley et al, , 2006Roenneberg et al, 2004), and frequently combine with early morning school start times to result in shorter sleep duration Hansen et al, 2005).…”