Teens who obsessively check social media get less sleep

Social media has become the go-to place not just for the younger generation, but also for most adults that happened to catch the bug. As always, it should be noted that correlation does not necessarily equal causation, as other explanations for the connection are possible.

Teenagers who spend a lot of time on Facebook and Twitter irrespective of the time are more likely to suffer sleep disturbances than their peers who prefer outdoor activities with smartphones on silent mode, say researchers. People who have problems with sleep turn to social media as a way to spend the time hoping it might help them fall asleep.

Separating the respondents into heavy social media users and light users, respondents who checked social media more throughout the week were three times as likely as those who checked it less frequently to experience major sleep disturbances.

The researchers say the results of their study may suggest that how often we use social media could be a better predictor of sleep disturbances than how long we use it.

However, more studies will be needed in order to determine that social media was the cause of sleeping issues and not that participants used social media more because they couldn’t sleep, etc.

Social media could be affecting the sleep of young adults, according to a new study. Checking social media at night was also correlated with lower levels of self-reported feelings of well-being and happiness.

Young adults aged 18-29, however, are the largest social media group; 90% of people in this age group use some form of social media. They used the questionnaires to identify the participants’ use of social media apps such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Tumblr, Pinterest and LinkedIn.

After examining participants’ answers researchers found, on average, participants spent 61 minutes a day on social media and visited multiple sites 30 times a week. Almost 43 percent of participants made it into the low-disturbance group, while 28 percent fell into the medium-disturbance group and 29.4 percent were in the high-disturbance group.

Promoting emotional, cognitive or physiological arousal, such as when engaging in a contentious discussion on Facebook.

“If this is the case, then interventions that counter obsessive “checking” behaviour may be most effective”.

Assistant vice chancellor for health and society Associate Professor Dr Brian Primack said: “It also may be that both of these hypotheses are true”. These findings are considered the first piece of evidence showing social media may impact our quality of sleep. The schools serve as the academic partner to the UPMC (University of Pittsburgh Medical Center). Since 1998, Pitt and its affiliated university faculty have ranked among the top 10 educational institutions in grant support from the National Institutes of Health.