Sleepless in the Digital Age: Social Media's Impact on Rest

The growth in social media has affected our attention, memory, and other everyday behaviours. This increase has led to the need for always wanting to reach for your device. But does this influence our sleep? It was found that as young people start using a cellphone, social media use increases. Young people are also more likely to stay up at night to use their phones. Our sleep can affect our mental health, but so can the time we spend on social media.  If we spend our nights scrolling through the information provided on the internet rather than sleeping, our mental health may be at risk.

This article aims to learn how social media addiction plays a part in sleep problems in college students. Using social media at night, and fear of missing out are two things that were chosen to help understand this.

The authors had four predictions. First, that college students’ social media use will play a part in sleep problems. Second, being afraid to miss out on something will help to explain why social media addiction plays a part in sleep problems. Third, using social media at night will also help to explain social media addiction on sleep problems. Lastly, both factors together will have a part to play in the relationship.

They sent questionnaires to 907 college students in China. The questions allowed the students to report on how they felt about their own experiences. Once they were returned, they compared the results of how they felt about their social media addiction, if they felt fear of missing out, how often they used social media at night and whether they had sleep problems.

There was a link between social media use and sleep problems. Fear of missing out and using social media during the night contributed too. Using social media can impact sleep by itself as well as combined with the other two factors. Both other factors helped explain this link between social media use and sleep problems as they contribute to social media addiction.

 

A problem with the findings was that they only looked at college students. They did not compare the results to another age group, which might have showed a different pattern. But their predictions were confirmed. This opens a door for more research to be done around social media addiction and how it effects a person’s sleep problems. With this opportunity, we can study another age group, such as high-school students, where social media usage tends to begin.

Social media has created a world where we no longer have to be mindful of our behaviours. We can display only the good things in our life and use it to distract us from the lives we actually have. It’s important to know that limiting our social media use can help support our health in many ways. We can prevent our everyday usage from becoming an addiction and we can improve our mental health and sleep habits.