Social media linked to sleep disturbance in psychiatrically vulnerable youth

Sleep disturbance in psychiatrically vulnerable youth may be linked to negative emotional responses to social media, according to data published in the Journal of Psychiatric Research.

“In a sample of youth with acute mental health concerns, those who reported more negative emotional responses to using social media reported worse sleep and higher levels of psychiatric symptoms,” Jacqueline Nesi, PhD, assistant professor in the department of psychiatry and human behavior at the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University, told Healio. “The ways that youth feel when they are using social media may have important implications for sleep health, which is central to overall mental and physical health.”

Nesi and colleagues assessed 243 adolescents aged 11 to 18 years who were admitted to an adolescent psychiatric inpatient unit between February 2020 and January 2021 and examined their relationships with social media, clinical outcomes and sleep disturbances.

Participants first completed an eight-item, self-report, short-form questionnaire that assessed elements of their sleeping habits within the past week, including sleep quality and satisfaction, sleep restoration, and difficulty falling asleep and staying asleep.

The participants then completed multiple single-item self-reports assessing their individual relationships with social media, including the duration and frequency of use; the importance of social media to each participant; how each perceived their own amount of time spent on social media; and their emotional response.

The researchers used the Suicidal Ideation Questionnaire-Junior (SIQJR) and the Youth-Pediatric Symptom Checklist (PSC-17) to assess the potential clinical outcomes of participants, notably suicide ideation, internalizing symptoms and attention problems.

Nesi and colleagues used three mediation models to examine the results, with all three indicating a significant effect of negative emotional responses to social media on sleep disturbance. Additionally, sleep disturbance effects were significant for suicidal ideation and internalizing symptoms, but not for attention problems, according to the study results.

Additionally, the researchers noted no significant association between daily hours spent on social media , as well as no significant direct or indirect association between daily hours on social media and suicidal ideation, internalizing symptoms or attention problems.

“Furthermore, sleep disturbance mediated the relation between negative emotional responses to social media and clinical symptom severity,” the researchers wrote. “While gender differences were revealed in characteristics of social media use, sleep disturbance, and clinical outcomes, the associations among these constructs did not vary across gender groups.”

The researchers noted that these findings reinforce the importance of assessing the relationship between psychiatrically vulnerable youth, and social media and may help tailor individual treatments to youth based on emotional responses and sleep difficulties.

“The findings indicate that clinicians who work with teens should be aware of the ways that social media use may influence how teens feel – for better and for worse – and support teens in using social media in healthier ways,” Nesi told Healio. “Teens may also benefit from direct assessment of how social media use may be impacting their sleep and assistance in developing better sleep hygiene (eg, minimizing social media use in the time before going to sleep, keeping phone out of the bedroom when sleeping, etc.).”