New Study Suggests Facebook, Twitter, Other Social Media Leads To Sleep Disturbance

Do you feel sleepy all the time? Researchers believe social media is disrupting your sleep cycle. A University of Pittsburgh study with the backing of National Institutes of Health found that 30 percent of those who suffered from sleep disturbance were the most active social media users at night.

"This is one of the first pieces of evidence that social media use really can impact your sleep," Lead author Dr. Jessica Levenon said. "And it uniquely examines the association between social media use and sleep among young adults who are, arguably, the first generation to grow up with social media This may indicate that frequency of social media visits is a better predictor of sleep difficulty than overall time spent on social media. If this is the case, then interventions that counter obsessive 'checking' behavior may be most effective.”

According to Medical News Today, researchers found that "participants used social media an average of 61 minutes per day and visited their accounts around 30 times per week. Additionally, nearly 30% of the participants had sleep disturbance levels that were characterized as high.”

Social media may disturb sleep if it is:

• Displacing sleep, such as when a user stays up late posting photos on Instagram.
• Promoting emotional, cognitive or physiological arousal, such as when engaging in a contentious discussion on Facebook.
• Disrupting circadian rhythms through the bright light emitted by the devices used to access social media accounts

These are the most popular social media sites during the time of the study : Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Google Plus, Instagram, Snapchat, Reddit, Tumblr, Pinterest, Vine and LinkedIn.