Understanding Links Between Social Media Use, Sleep and Mental Health: Recent Progress and Current Challenges

Abstract

Purpose of Review Sleep and mental health researchers are increasingly recognising the need to update our approaches to understanding the unique social, emotional and cognitive aspects of social media use, rather than simply considering it as just another hour of total daily "screen time". In this review, we highlight some recent developments in this area, discuss ongoing challenges facing this field and offer recommendations for future steps. Recent Findings The sleep and mental health research literatures have made recent advances towards a more nuanced understanding of social media use: moving beyond a focus on simply duration of use, towards new insights into the role of content, context and experience of these online interactions. Summary As this research area moves forward, a focus on high-quality measurement-combined with collaborative multidisciplinary approaches that triangulate insight from different methodologies and perspectives-can inform a more holistic understanding of sleep and mental health in today's connected world.

Identifying drivers for bedtime social media use despite sleep costs: the adolescent perspective

“…15,55 This highlights the importance of uniting research that has to date largely examined social media's links to sleep and to other aspects of wellbeing or interpersonal functioning in isolation, to now move forward and build a more holistic understanding of social media's role in adolescent functioning as a whole. 21 Interestingly, our analyses highlighted individual differences in how adolescents balanced social media and sleep. Some participants reported delayed bedtimes, insufficient sleep and daytime tiredness, resulting from ongoing social media activity at nightdespite attempts to self-regulate, as has been previously documented 56 due to a sense of obligation or concern over possible exclusion.…”

“…51 This highlights the value of bringing the adolescent voice to the sleep research literature, since this focus on the social interactionsrather than the devices or platforms themselvescontrasts with the prevalent "screentime" focused research often with measures that focus on the device or specific platform. 21 Furthermore, whilst adults also report feeling anxious, unpleasant and disconnected without access to their devices, 2,52 this negative experience may be particularly intense for adolescents who tend to consider social media interactions as more 'real' than older generations. 45 Efforts aiming to support adolescents in developing healthy social media habits for sleep must therefore approach bedtime social media engagement not as a form of technology use, but instead as an embedded social experience.…”

“…Available evidence now clearly supports associations between adolescent sleep patterns and social media use, with young people who spend more time using social media (especially at bedtime) and those who feel more emotionally connected to platforms reporting later bedtimes, longer sleep onset latency, shorter sleep duration and poorer sleep quality. 5,[18][19][20][21][22] Several likely mechanisms have been proposed to explain this link between adolescent sleep and bedtime social media use, alongside other technologies. 23,24 Firstly, social media (and other technology use) may directly displace sleep by delaying bedtimes, resulting in shorter sleep duration.…”

“…31,32 Although some recent examples of longitudinal and experimental work have supported causal links (in both directions) between general technology use and adolescent short sleep, 33,34 the field remains limited by its reliance on cross-sectional data that precludes conclusions of causality and tends to examine only the frequency and duration of social media use, often grouped together with other technologies. 21 This has limited our understanding of the unique mechanisms linking adolescent sleep and social media use specifically, whose inherently social and interactive nature presents unique implications for sleep processes. 35 There is an opportunity to extend current understanding by bringing an alternative approach to this research area: employing qualitative methods to explore underlying motivations, thus adding the missing adolescent voice to this literature.…”

Energy Justice in Slum Rehabilitation Housing: An Empirical Exploration of Built Environment Effects on Socio-Cultural Energy Demand

“…The exact reasons for higher TV ownership are not known; studies have shown that the popularity of "soap operas" act as cultural drivers of TV ownership in Brazil [71]. However, it indicates a media-consumption culture that is often interpreted as a compensatory response towards poor mental well-being [72,73]. In Mumbai, a recent study has shown that women feel lonely in slum rehabilitation housing (SRH), which motivates them to watch more TV and purchase more appliances as a compensatory mechanism [14].…”