Hong Kong’s sleepless children will lack creativity, study warns
Survey finds about a third of youngsters don’t get enough sleep, prompting doctors to warn of the dangers to memory and growth hormones
About one in three school pupils in Hong Kong lack adequate sleep and this could impair their creativity, according to a study that has prompted doctors to urge parents to rethink loading their children with even more activities.
The survey of over 1,800 children by Caritas Youth and Community Service came on the back of another study released to mark Children’s Day today that found fewer Hong Kong children said they were happy compared to eight years ago.
In January and February this year, Caritas social workers sent out questionnaires for 1,838
Primary Five and Six pupils about their homework load, sleep habits and perceptions of their creativity.
It found a correlation of respondents who slept longer tending to give themselves higher scores for their creativity compared with those who spent longer on homework giving lower scores on creativity.
The survey found more than a third, or 34.8 per cent, of the children slept on average for six to seven hours on a school day. It also found 37.5 per cent of them had to do an average of seven to eight pieces of homework a day.
“During deep sleep, the brain is still working. It’s trying to turn short-term memory to long-term memory. When a child lacks sleep, the child’s memory can’t be consolidated.”
Lam said a child aged five to 12 needed 10 to 11 hours of sleep every day, and those aged 12 to 18 needed 8.5 to 9.5 hours.
Dr Henry Cheung Hon-kee, a specialist in psychiatry, said sleep deprivation could also affect growth hormones in children.
Shum Yiu-kwong, principal of FDBWA Chow Chin Yau School, a primary school in Tuen Mun, was asked if the temporary suspension of the controversial Primary Three Territory-wide System Assessment (TSA) by the Education Bureau had lightened students’ workloads. He said much depended on whether schools had made the adjustments, but he also suggested parents had a part to play, saying: “If you go to the book fair in Wan Chai, what’s most popular? Exercise books. In bookstores, what’s displayed prominently? Exercise books.”
Separately, The Boys’ and Girls’ Clubs Association of Hong Kong polled 1,055 children aged six to 17 last month and found only 57.1 per cent said they felt happy compared to close to three-quarters feeling happy in a similar survey in 2008. On factors that would make them happy, nearly 60 per cent said taking a holiday would do it.
Housewife Eacy Chan Yung-chun, 40, a mother of a boy in Form Four, said even though her son had adequate sleep growing up, it was tough for him and other children today, and he had to attend tuition sessions until 10pm regularly.
“There wasn’t really a choice,” Chan said. “We were trying to help him lay a good foundation.”
