Are Your Social Media Habits Linked to Your Sleep?

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Live Poster Session: Zoom Link

Gabby Roberts
Gabby Roberts

Gabby Roberts (‘22) is a Government & Psychology double major on the pre-law track. She is from Louisville, KY and actively works to bring her knowledge and skills from Wesleyan back home to better her community. Currently, she is interested in the intersection between psychology and law and how its study can be used to increase accessibility to the justice system and inform effective public policy. In the future, she will attend law school and work in education law to promote equitable, proactive, and anti racist educational practices and norms.

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Abstract: The aim of this study is to explore the relationship between social media habits and self-reported sleep in emerging adults. Since the prevalence of social media use is especially high among emerging adults (Pew Research Center, 2021), who are at a developmental stage where socializing and establishing relationships are particularly salient for overall well-being, it is essential to study the linkage between its use and sleep measures. Sleep quality, sleep duration, sleep onset latency, social media use disorder, and social media social comparison were measured in this study. Participants were recruited through Qualtrics for the “Sleep and Psychosocial Adjustment during COVID-19 Among College Students” survey, referred to as the SPAdCACS study. This study featured 619 participants total, but 344 participants are featured in the present study, as this study utilizes select questions from Time 2 of the SPAdCACS dataset. Participants were U.S. college students and of the emerging adult age range (ages 18-29). Results were based on a concurrent regression model in Amos that controlled for age, gender, and race-ethnicity. Those who spent more time on social media were likely to see higher social media use disorder, social media social comparison ability, and social media social comparison opinion scores. Moreover, social media use disorder was significantly correlated with all self-reported sleep measures. These findings contribute to the growing body of evidence that social media use is related to various aspects of wellbeing in emerging adults. Additionally, these results indicate that social media addiction is significantly linked to sleep behaviors, but that the ways in which one compares themselves to others abilities and opinions are not linked to sleep behaviors, suggesting that there are possible healthy ways to use social media. Future research should examine possible bidirectional relationships, since some research suggests that sleep may predict social media use.

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