The Relationship Between Social Media Use and Sleep Quality among Undergraduate Students

Insufficient sleep is a growing health problem among University students, especially for freshmen during their first quarter/semester of college. Little research has studied how social media technologies impact sleep quality among college students. This study aims to determine the relationship between social media use and sleep quality among freshman undergraduates during their first quarter in college. Specifically, we explored whether variations in Twitter use across the time of day and day of the week would be associated with self-reported sleep quality. We conducted a study of Freshman Twitter-using students (N = 197) over their first quarter of college, between October to December of 2015. We collected students' tweets, labeled the content of the tweets according to different emotional states, and gave theme weekly surveys on sleep quality. Tweeting more frequently on weekday late nights was associated with lower sleep quality (β = -0.937, SE = 0.352); tweeting more frequently on weekday evenings was associated with better quality sleep (β = 0.189, SE = 0.097). Tweets during the weekday that were labeled related to the emotion of fear were associated with lower sleep quality (β = -0.302, SE = 0.131). Results suggest that social media use is associated with sleep quality among students. Results provide can be used to inform future interventions to improve sleep quality among college students.