Recently, some of my students told me they struggle for hours before falling asleep. For adults with busy lives and heavy responsibilities, sleepless nights are common. But when schoolchildren—who should be full of energy—start complaining about the same thing, it puzzles me.
That was until I came across a podcast on Matthew Walker’s book Why We Sleep. Suddenly, my puzzling question— “Why can’t children sleep nowadays?”—made sense.
Walker explains the importance of creating a “Pre-Sleep Ritual.” Simple steps such as dimming the lights, doing light tidying, reading a book, and most importantly, charging your phone outside the bedroom can make a big difference. These are things we know are good for us, yet how many of us do them?
I’ll be honest: I didn’t.
I used to love listening to podcasts in bed. I convinced myself that the time spent falling asleep was wasted unless I used it to learn something useful. Most nights, I would drift off to discussions about psychology or business management. But recently, I noticed it was getting harder to fall asleep—sometimes taking me hours.
When I finally followed Walker’s advice and stopped charging my phone by my bed—and stopped playing podcasts while falling asleep—my sleep improved dramatically. I realized I had been overloading my brain with information right before bedtime. The more stimulating the topic, the harder it was for my brain to switch off.
If adults like me are affected this much, imagine what’s happening to children who live with their phones 24/7. They are constantly bombarded with information, entertainment, and distractions. No wonder they can’t sleep.
I once watched a student scroll through Instagram reels, never spending more than three seconds on each video. Think about what that does to a child’s brain—reel after reel, information after information. If children watch reels before bed, their minds keep processing those fragments long into the night. It’s no surprise so many say, “I can’t sleep!”
This constant information overload doesn’t just affect sleep—it impacts focus, learning, and even emotional health. Over my 40+ years of teaching piano, I’ve witnessed a clear change in children’s behaviour. Compared with students 20 years ago, today’s children often show shorter attention spans, less patience, and greater difficulty fine-tuning details in their performances.
It worries me to think we may be raising a generation of “phone zombies”—children living in a world of endless scrolling, yet restless and distracted in real life.
So next time your child struggles to sleep, don’t just shrug it off. Pay attention. Maybe it’s not just “bad luck” or “too much energy.” Maybe it’s the phone in their hand, the reels before bed, or the flood of information their brain is still trying to process.
For many children, a better night’s sleep might begin with one simple change: putting the phone away.