Compulsive Social Media Use and Sleep Disturbances in University Students: Examining the Mediating Role of Emotional Self-Disclosure

Abstract

The aim of the current study was to investigate the association between social media, sleep problems and disclosure of emotions among university students. The survey design employed was a cross-sectional design with 300 students between the ages of 18-26 years (50% female and 50% male) who filled out the Chen Internet Addiction Scale, Sleep Quality Scale and Distress Disclosure Index. Results showed that there was a significant positive correlation between problematic sleep and the use of social media (r = .286, p < .01), meaning more social media correlates with worse sleep outcomes. But no strong correlations were found between socio-demographic variables and emotional self-disclosure (r = .023, p > .05) and problematic sleep (r = -.024, p > .05) respectively, and between emotional self-disclosure and problematic sleep (r = -.139, p > .05). The emotional self-disclosure construct did not mediate the social media-sleep relationship (indirect effect β = .000, 95% CI [-.008, .005]). Results suggest that compulsive social media use is directly linked to sleep problems, even after controlling for emotional disclosure behaviors, indicating a need to intervene on decreasing nocturnal social media use, and not the role of disclosure behaviors.