Beyond self‐report: The relationship between daily social media use and sleep in university students

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Abstract
Objectives: University students regularly report insufficient sleep, with almost one‐third of students achieving less than 6.5 hours per night. Social media is one behaviour shown to negatively influence sleep. However, there has been a reliance on self‐report measures of both processes, which may not reflect objective behaviour. The aim was to determine if there is a relationship between social media use and sleep outcomes when measured objectively, and if so, which sleep outcomes were associated with social media use. Design: A longitudinal repeated measures design was used to assess daily social media use and sleep outcomes over 14 days. Methods: Participants wore accelerometers to measure their sleep, with total daily social media use derived from smartphone data. Results: Sixty‐two participants ( M age = 22.11 years, SD = 5.82 years) completed the study. Linear mixed models revealed no between or within‐participant effects of daily social media on sleep duration, sleep onset latency, sleep efficiency and bedtime. However, TikTok showed a positive between‐participants effect on bedtime. A generalized linear mixed model also revealed that Snapchat had a negative between‐participants effect on sleep onset latency. Conclusions: Findings indicate that the duration of time spent on social media does not impact sleep across this sample. However, interactions with different social media platforms such as TikTok and Snapchat may play an important role in influencing sleep quality. These findings suggest that behavioural measures do not reflect the same pattern of effects observed with self‐report, highlighting the need for future research to corroborate findings derived from self‐report.
Funding Information
  • Australian Government

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