Having trouble sleeping? Look no further than your social media addiction.
Frequent social media users are at a significantly higher risk of sleep problems than those who are less keen on Facebook, Twitter and other social platforms, according to a study of 1,788 adults ages 10 to 32 by researchers at the University of Pittsburgh. The study, which will be published in the April issue of the journal Preventative Medicine, asked about time spent on these social media platforms: Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Google Plus, Instagram, Snapchat, Reddit, Tumblr, Pinterest, Vine and LinkedIn.
“This is one of the first pieces of evidence that social media use really can impact your sleep,” said lead author Jessica Levenson, a postdoctoral researcher in the university’s department of psychiatry.
On average, this group of young adults — nearly 1 in 3 of whom had high levels of sleep disturbances — used social media for 61 minutes each day and visited different social media sites roughly 30 times a week.
Those who most often looked at their social media accounts had three times the likelihood of sleep disturbances, compared with the group that looked least frequently. Those who spent the most total time on social media had twice the risk of sleep disturbances.
“This may indicate that frequency of social media visits is a better predictor of sleep difficulty than overall time spent on social media,” Levenson said. “If this is the case, then interventions that counter obsessive ‘checking’ behavior may be most effective.”
This study bolsters other research that shows computer use in general (not just for social media) can impair sleep. A 2012 study of more than 1,400 young adults from researchers at the University of Gothenburg found that frequent computer use led not only to sleep disturbances, but also to depression and stress. “It was easy to spend more time than planned at the computer (e.g., working, gaming, or chatting), and this tended to lead to time pressure, neglect of other activities and personal needs (such as social interaction, sleep, physical activity), as well as bad ergonomics, and mental overload,” the researchers wrote.‘Those who most often looked at their social media accounts had three times the likelihood of sleep disturbances.’
Millions of Americans (roughly 50 million to 70 million adults have sleep or wakefulness disorders) already get insufficient sleep — an issue that the CDC calls a “public health problem” and notes is “linked to motor vehicle crashes, industrial disasters and medical and other occupational errors.”
And while those are extreme cases, there are plenty of other, less severe but still life-altering side effects of a lack of sleep. Roughly 1 in 4 Americans says a lack of sleep impairs their ability to concentrate, about 1 in 5 their ability to remember things and about 1 in 10 their ability to drive and take care of financial affairs, according to CDC data.