Social Media Use and Sleep Quality Among Secondary School Students in Aseer Region: A Cross-Sectional Study

Use of different social media platforms has increased radically over the past decade, emerging as an important part of adolescents and young people's everyday life. This might exert potential adverse effects on sleep quality and daytime performance of young adults.

To assess the relation between use of social media platforms and sleep quality among public secondary school students.

A cross-sectional study was conducted on 961 students in Aseer region, Saudi Arabia. Students were asked to fill in a structured interview questionnaire covering personal data, pattern of social media use, sleep quality using The Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) and their mental health status using the depression, anxiety and stress scale (DASS-21).

Students' ages ranged from 15 to 20 years with a mean age of 16.7 ± 2.1 years old. A total of 570 (59.3%) students were females. Tiktok (80%), Snapchat (77.9%), Instagram (63.8%) and YouTube (58.8%) were the most reported platforms used. Regarding their sleep quality, 34.7% of students were poor sleepers. TikTok use (OR 1.33, 95% CI 1.01-1.77), hours spent on social media (OR 1.26, 95% CI 1.16-1.37) and having moderate to severe depressive symptoms (OR 1.69, 95% CI 1.19-2.40) were significant independent predictors of poor sleep among the studied sample.

The present study emphasized the association between prolonged use of social media and poor sleep quality among Saudi adolescents. Awareness and behavioral change strategies and activities concerning the drawbacks of poor sleep and proper use of social media are urgently called for to control mental and physical health consequences of poor sleep and social media addiction.