More than 460 teenagers at a secondary school in Scotland were questioned about their general social media habits, and in particular their night-time use of sites such as Facebook and Twitter, as part of the study by Glasgow University.
It found that while overall use of social media affects the quality of sleep, those who log on at night to respond to alerts are particularly affected. It remains unclear, however, whether it is social media that is damaging sleep, or whether teenagers turn to social media because they can’t sleep for some other reason.
Dr Heather Cleland Woods said her study had found that children as young as 11 were on Facebook and Twitter and using them considerably. Some pupils at the Glasgow school were using multiple devices – a phone and a tablet for example – to view multiple sites simultaneously and were on them “into the early hours of the morning”.
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Cleland Woods, who presented the paper at a British Psychological Society conference in Manchester on Friday, said: “Adolescence can be a period of increased vulnerability for the onset of depression and anxiety, and poor sleep quality may contribute to this.
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Category(s):Sleep Disorders, Teenage Issues
Source material from The Guardian