How is social media affecting sleep schedules of its teen users?

With the increase in social media use how are adolescents sleep times or lack there of being changed.

Bedtime vs. Social Media (KalingaTv, 2020)

Have you ever decided to use your phone minutes before you decide to go to sleep but then end up sucked into all that is going on? Well I often do this myself. Over the past few years my social media use has increased especially during the nighttime, leaving me with even less sleep than my usual days as a college student.

This topic relates to my time as a media scholars student since over the past semester and a half we have discussed the implications of social media on our health. Through this blog we will discuss how social media use can affect sleep schedules of teens. Since adolescence in such an important time in a person’s life, the habits they create then can affect them for the rest of their lives. This includes the favoring of social media over sleep during the period when it is most necessary.

Social media use has been on the rise since the start of the 21st century with each generation increasingly spending almost all their time online. As stated in an article by Heather Woods, “Social media sites – such as Facebook and Twitter – have rapidly become a central part of young people's lives, with over 90% now using social media, day and night” (Woods, 2016). With so much time spent online adolescents are having poorer sleep qualities with ever changing sleep schedules based on the amount of social media use per day.

As teens, many of us are now required to have social media accounts in order to stay up to date with friends and to have a social life. This is partly due to the reason known as the Fear of Missing Out or FOMO for short. This basically means that we are so immersed in the lives of our peers that many teens now feel obligated to spend as much time as possible online in fear of missing something important. Woods also highlights this when she says, “Young people struggle to relax at bed time due to anxiety at missing out on new messages or new content” (Woods, 2016). One such example of this would be teens spending time on the app known as Tik Tok where a lot of current day popular trends and humor are based. Due to this many users and content creators stay online whenever they get a chance in order to keep up with the fast moving trends and catch as many as possible to stay relevant.

Another aspect of this is the newer technology available from smartphones or smart watches which are easier to hold on to and carry with us. This can affect social media use, especially in the nighttime because most adolescent users keep their phones or other small devices close to them when sleeping. This can lead to sleep disturbance since every time they receive a new notification they are likely to wake up and check it. Woods mentions this problem in her article when she writes, “However, unlike the other uses of the Internet, social media involves incoming alerts at all times of the day” (Woods, 2016). This means that no matter the time of day, you can receive notifications leading to 24/7 alerts and no actual sleep time. Due to this, teens are not getting full hours of sleep and making it seem as though there is no set sleep schedule at all.

Not only does keeping your phone with you 24/7 cause sleep disturbance, it also creates this version of instant gratification whenever you check your phone. This is another reason why many teens stay online throughout the day and night no matter how late it is or how sleepy they are. With this source of pleasure always at their fingertips, it makes it even harder to control social media intake and leaves the users in need of more and more instant gratification as time goes on. This leads to increasing social media use and even less sleep time.

A final aspect of this increased use in social media is the late bedtimes and waking times during most days including school days. This is mentioned in the article by Holly Scott as she states, “Social media was also associated with later wake times on school days” (Scott, 2019). This is due to the fact that these trends spend so much time online leaving them extremely sleep deprived and late to other activities in their life. This can also be seen in the article by Woods when she writes, “Increased internet use is associated with shorter sleep duration, later bedtimes and rise times, and increased daytime tiredness” (Woods, 2016). So in general teens are losing sleep time and instead using up their time with social media.

All in all social media use is causing adolescents to have extremely unhealthy sleep schedules, leaving them feeling tired even before the day begins.

Woods, H. and Scott, H., 2016. #Sleepyteens: Social media use in adolescence is associated with poor sleep quality, anxiety, depression and low self-esteem. [online] Science Direct. Available at: <https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140197116300343?casa_token=C54HhZ7EukwAAAAA:uFDam4hUeX2rCYjf1KDC-4-OyBqV5fqRbGgNR5qgpggI-IemVYy3bzHICvuiROoDr5U9WqAZ9rQ> [Accessed 24 March 2021].

Scott, H., Biello, S. and Woods, H., 2019. Social media use and adolescent sleep patterns: cross-sectional findings from the UK millennium cohort study. [online] BMJ Journals. Available at: <https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/9/9/e031161> [Accessed 24 March 2021].

KalingaTv, 2020. The Independent. [image] Available at: <https://cdn.kalingatv.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Smartphones-causes-sleep-deprivation-The-Independent.jpg> [Accessed 24 March 2021].

#socialmediaandsleep #mediascholars