Is psychological distress the key factor in the association between problematic social networking sites and poor sleep quality?
Introduction
Modern technology such as social media (including Social Networking Sites – SNSs - and instant messaging apps) has changed people’s habits worldwide. Along with benefits for social connectedness, social media have been indicated as potentially detrimental for users’ mental and sleep health (Alonzo et al., 2021). The aim of the current study is to test the relationship between problematic social networking sites use (PSNSU), psychological distress, and poor sleep quality in a sample of adults from the general population.
Whereas the majority of social media users is likely to experience some distress due to social media without reaching severe levels, conservative estimations indicate that the prevalence of problematic social media use is about 5% (Cheng et al., 2021). Unregulated and maladaptive use of social media may result in PSNSU in terms of systematic preference for online social interaction over face-to-face ones, and addiction-like symptoms such as failing attempts to regulate mood via social media use, compulsive use, constant preoccupation for what happens online, and negative consequences for daily life, family conflicts, and school/job jeopardizing (Marino et al., 2021).
As a crucial aspect of sleep-wake function, sleep quality impacts health and refers to sleep latency, duration, efficiency, disturbances, use of sleep medications, and daytime dysfunction (Curcio et al., 2013). In Italy, 14.2% and 29.5% of adults recently reported respectively sleep dissatisfaction and insufficient sleep duration (Varghese et al., 2020). Poor sleep quality, delayed sleep onset, shortening sleep quantity, daytime sleepiness, and insomnia are the most studied sleep disturbance in relation to social media use (Carter et al., 2016, Kumar Swain and Pati, 2021). Prolonged engagement in social media before sleep may increase cognitive arousal with consequent delayed sleep onset, thus causing interrupted sleep (e.g., Thomée et al., 2010). Moreover, bedtime social media use exposes users to bright/blue screen lights that can disrupt the secretion of the sleep hormone melatonin (e.g., Cain & Gradisar, 2010).
Sleep problems often co-occur with psychological distress (Dinis & Bragança, 2018). On one hand, distress might worsen the difficulties in getting to sleep, while on the other hand enduring sleep problems might lead to depression and stress in daily life (e.g., Markarian et al., 2013). Moreover, psychological distress is often associated with PSNSU, with several studies showing that PSNSU might increase the levels of stress, depression, and anxiety (e.g., Eden et al., 2021, Hussain and Griffiths, 2021), even though the association between PSNSU and psychological distress is likely to be bidirectional. Despite an increasing number of studies indicate a positive relationship between social media use, sleep disruption, and distress, especially among youth (Tandon et al., 2020), results are mixed and more studies are needed to ascertain the mechanisms linking PSNSU to sleep quality in adults, beyond the mere frequency of social media use (Alonzo et al., 2021, van der Schuur et al., 2019).
As briefly reviewed above, PSNSU, psychological distress and sleep quality are likely to be interconnected to each other (e.g., Tandon et al., 2020). However, for the purpose of the present study, the perspective of PSNSU as risk factor for health was taken, in order to examine in depth a possible mechanism involved in the understudied association between PSNSU and poor sleep quality. Therefore, the present study tested whether PSNSU is directly associated with poor sleep quality and indirectly via different indicators of psychological distress (stress, anxiety, depression) in a healthy adult sample of SNSs users. Moreover, the association between sleep quality and sleep hours at weekends, time spent on social media, and use of night shift apps was taken into account. Night shift applications reduce emission of blue light by smartphone display by decreasing the brightness of device light at night, thus limiting the strain on user’s eyes. As such, the use of night shift apps was selected as a control variable because it should, at least ideally, positively impact on sleep (e.g., Nagare et al., 2019).
Section snippets
Participants and procedure
An online questionnaire was disseminated via advertisements shared in social network groups between December 2020 and January 2021. All participants received information about the study and gave their online consent at the beginning of the questionnaire. Anonymity of the participants was guaranteed. Inclusion criteria were as follows: (i) being over 18 years; (ii) being able to complete questionnaires in Italian; and (iii) using at least one SNS on daily basis. A total of 1017 individuals
Sociodemographics and information about technology and sleep habits
The questionnaire assessed sociodemographic characteristics (i.e., gender, age, occupation and marital status), sleep-related information (i.e., habitual wake up time at weekends, habitual sleep time at weekends – from which the number of sleep hours at weekends was calculated for each participant), use of night shift application on device at night (response options: no/yes), and technology-related information (i.e., hours of SNSs use per day, use of one or more electronic devices after
Results
On average, participants reported using SNSs for about 2 h and a half per day and the large majority of them (97%) use one or more electronic devices (smartphone, computer) at night after 8:30p.m. Half of the sample (50.1%) reported using the night shift application. About two-thirds (72.3%) of the sample reported good sleep quality (PSQI global score < 5) and, on average, participants slept about 8 h per night (see APPENDIX A for descriptive statistics of the seven components of the PSQI in
Discussion
In line with several previous studies (e.g., Lin et al., 2021), a positive though small association between PSNSU and poor sleep quality was found. The displacement hypothesis suggested that SNSs users tend to prefer to be online rather than go to sleep close to bedtime for social reasons resulting in sleep problems (e.g., Scott et al., 2019). However, despite several studies repeatedly highlighted that self-reported sleep problems might be particularly affected by social media (e.g., Alonzo et
Ethical standards
This study did not involve human and/or animal experimentation.
Funding sources
No financial support was received for this study.
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Claudia Marino: Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Methodology, Writing – original draft. Alessandro Musetti: Conceptualization, Investigation, Project administration, Writing – review & editing. Alessio Vieno: Formal analysis, Writing – review & editing. Tommaso Manari: Conceptualization, Investigation. Christian Franceschini: Conceptualization, Investigation, Writing – review & editing, Supervision.
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
References (29)
- et al.
Predicting sleep quality from stress and prior sleep–a study of day-to-day covariation across six weeks
Sleep Medicine
(2012) - et al.
Interplay between social media use, sleep quality, and mental health in youth: A systematic review
Sleep Medicine Reviews
(2021) - et al.
The Italian version of the Depression Anxiety Stress Scales-21: Factor structure and psychometric properties on community and clinical samples
Comprehensive Psychiatry
(2015) - et al.
Electronic media use and sleep in school-aged children and adolescents: A review
Sleep Medicine
(2010) - et al.
Prevalence of social media addiction across 32 nations: Meta-analysis with subgroup analysis of classification schemes and cultural values
Addictive Behaviors
(2021) - et al.
Pre-sleep social media use does not strongly disturb sleep: A sleep laboratory study in healthy young participants
Sleep Medicine
(2021) - et al.
Does iPhone night shift mitigate negative effects of smartphone use on sleep outcomes in emerging adults?
Sleep Health
(2021) - et al.
A model of BIS/BAS sensitivity, emotion regulation difficulties, and depression, anxiety, and stress symptoms in relation to sleep quality
Psychiatry Research
(2013) - et al.
Identifying drivers for bedtime social media use despite sleep costs: The adolescent perspective
Sleep Health
(2019) - et al.
Sleepless due to social media? Investigating problematic sleep due to social media and social media sleep hygiene
Computers in Human Behavior
(2020)