Video games may kill your precious sleep

A new study has found that video gaming affects sleeping patterns.

Researches from the American Academy of Sleep Medicine have found that on average, the people delayed going to bed 36 percent of the nights they played video games. Average game playing was 4.6 nights per week. The average delay in bedtime on the nights spent gaming was 101 minutes.

Lead author and University of North Texas Health Science Center's assistant professor Brandy M. Roane said these finding provide further insight into factors that influence individuals' decision making when determining if they should get sufficient sleep.

He added the research showed that video gaming is quite an important factor that frequently leads to missed sleep for 67 percent of gamers.

"Additionally, the reasons provided by gamers for their choice to delay their bedtime strongly support the inclusion of video gaming as an addictive behavior," Brandy said.

Questions about demographics, gaming consoles, game genres, gaming frequency and duration were asked during the study, which included online surveys from 963 gamers. The participants were U.S. gamers with an average age of 28.7 years, who played video games at least once the previous week.

The study was presented in the meeting SLEEP 2016.