social media and sleep deprivation essay

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Sleeping Habits and Social Media Usage

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Published: Mar 19, 2020

Words: 1546 | Pages: 4 | 8 min read

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Introduction.

• Tandon, A., Kaur, P., Dhir, A., & Mäntymäki, M. (2020). Sleepless due to social media? Investigating problematic sleep due to social media and social media sleep hygiene. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0747563220302399 Computers in human behavior, 113, 106487.
• Alonzo, R., Hussain, J., Stranges, S., & Anderson, K. K. (2021). Interplay between social media use, sleep quality, and mental health in youth: A systematic review. Sleep medicine reviews, 56, 101414. (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S108707922030157X)
• Kolhar, M., Kazi, R. N. A., & Alameen, A. (2021). Effect of social media use on learning, social interactions , and sleep duration among university students. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33911938/ Saudi Journal of Biological Sciences, 28(4), 2216-2222.
• Shimoga, S. V., Erlyana, E., & Rebello, V. (2019). Associations of social media use with physical activity and sleep adequacy among adolescents: Cross-sectional survey. Journal of medical Internet research, 21(6), e14290. (https://www.jmir.org/2019/6/e14290/)
• Abi-Jaoude, E., Naylor, K. T., & Pignatiello, A. (2020). Smartphones, social media use and youth mental health. Cmaj, 192(6), E136-E141. (https://www.cmaj.ca/content/192/6/E136.short)

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Can social media use affect our sleep?

We’ve seen an explosion in the use of social media platforms over the past decade, and how we are using social media is having a massive impact on our sleep. So in this article we’re going to explore exactly how social media affect sleep. We’ll cover:

• Why we should all try to limit screentime as bedtime approaches.
• How social media affects our sleep habits and can lead to sleep deprivation.
• Steps you can take to reduce the impact of social media on your sleep.

Social media and sleep

How many of us would admit to taking our phone to bed and scrolling through Facebook/Insta/Twitter before falling asleep? For lots of people, young and old, it’s now the norm to sleep with a mobile phone in our bedroom. 1   2

Polls have shown that browsing social media is now one of the most common pre-sleep activities, between going to bed and falling sleep. While it might feel relaxing to lie in bed and check a newsfeed, the reality is that this constant connectivity can have major negative effects on our sleep.

Are your social media habits leaving you feeling sleep deprived?

Do you want to take back control of your sleep? Sleepstation can help. Our programme builds on core sleep improvement principles with personalised support tailored to you.

The rise of social media

In 2012, only 5% of adults were using social media; this had shot up to 70% at the last count (2020) and it’s even higher in younger adults, at over 90%. 3

There’s also been huge increases in how long we spend on social media: amongst 16-64 year olds, average time spent has been creeping up, from 90 minutes per day in 2012, to now being about two and a half hours per day. 4  This equates to around 1/6th of our waking hours!

But what happens when staying connected continues into bedtime? How exactly does social media affect your sleep? Read on to see how your bedtime social media habits might be stopping you from getting a good night’s sleep.

Mobiles and melatonin: how looking at your phone can affect your sleep

It’s well-established that looking at phone screens can impact sleep. Mobiles emit mostly blue light, and these wavelengths are particularly good at keeping us productive and focussed, so perfectly suited for daytime phone usage.

At night-time, however, this isn’t ideal. At its simplest, exposure to light tells us to be awake, so looking at a bright light from a phone just before bed is telling your body it’s still time to be awake and not sleep time.

In the hours leading up to bedtime, as natural light levels decrease, our brains start to produce a hormone called  melatonin , which causes our alertness to begin to dip. It signals to our bodies to wind down and prepare for sleep.

The blue light emitted by mobile phones affects your melatonin levels more than any other wavelength does. It signals to your brain that it’s daylight, melatonin production is suppressed and sleep becomes delayed. 5

Without melatonin signalling to us that we are sleepy, we remain awake and alert, in a state of ‘cognitive arousal’.

Cognitive arousal: getting wound up when you should be winding down!

When you go to bed, your brain is preparing for sleep, but by looking at social media, you’re providing endless stimulation, signalling to your brain and body to remain active and keep engaged.

It’s not simply the fact that you’re looking at social media which keeps you awake, the type of content has a big impact too.

How it affects you emotionally (for example, after viewing a sad video), socially (a group chat on WhatsApp) and cognitively (reading content that gets you thinking) are all very important in determining the knock-on effects it has on sleep. 6   7

Passively  scrolling through a newsfeed before turning off is less engaging and will affect your sleep less than getting involved in a heated debate on twitter.

Similarly, photo-sharing platforms (generally more passive participation) will have less impact on sleep than those which actively engage their users to respond, such as messaging sites. 8

This comes down to how much involvement the interaction calls for. Looking at photos can be done quite serenely. Debating global politics is going to call for a more involved interaction.

The take home from this is that if you must use social media before you go to sleep, try to avoid areas that will stimulate you and demand high levels of engagement.

Delayed bedtime: time spent surfing should be spent snoozing

How many times have you thought you’d just quickly check your social media account before going to sleep, only to find yourself falling down a rabbit hole of entertaining videos, photos, funny comments, chatting with friends, reading newsfeeds…? And just like that, an hour or even two have passed.

When we finally put down our phones, it also takes us longer to fall asleep, the quality of sleep is reduced and you wake up feeling sleepy and unrefreshed. 9

Your bedtime has been  displaced  and additionally, you’ve lost some valuable sleep time, so your sleep duration will generally be shorter. Sleep displacement by social media is well-recognised amongst adolescents, and recent studies are beginning to show similar effects across adult age groups, too.

For people still in education, who have early start times, this is a particularly bad combination. For adults, this often leads to later wake-up times and has a knock-on effect on time available to complete tasks over the coming day. 5   8

Fear of missing out (FOMO)

A study from 2012 found that young people spend 54% of their internet time on social media. 10  In teenagers, the fear of missing out (FOMO) and social disapproval are driving forces in the use of social media at night time. If you’re not connected, then you’re missing out; everybody else is online, so why are you not? 9

Studies are starting to show similar results in adults; FOMO is definitely not unique to teenagers. 8

Sadly, FOMO can feel like a no-win situation: you log off, but feel guilty because you’re no longer responding immediately to notifications, you can lose sleep worrying about what you’re missing and what people will think of you for not being available.

Or, you stay online and your sleep is compromised, you’re setting yourself up for  anxiety , poor focus and increased risk of  depression .

There’s no need to feel like you have to be available 24/7; we need to move away from these ways of thinking. Logging off or taking a break is totally fine. The bottom line is simple: we all need to sleep.

Denying yourself sleep to appear constantly online is just sabotaging your own well-being. Sleep deprivation can negatively affect your health in many different ways, so it seems crazy that we’d put our wellbeing at risk just to keep up to date on social media.

If you feel like you’re struggling to disconnect and your sleep is being compromised, the team at  Sleepstation  can provide you with the tools you need to get a good night’s sleep.

Disturbed sleep: alerted by all those alerts

When you do eventually fall asleep, this isn’t the end of social media’s hold on your brain. Message alerts, notifications, texts, updates…

In our eagerness to appear always available and connected, many of us further jeopardise our sleep by keeping our phone within grasp, on vibrate or unmuted.

Plus, once sleep has been disturbed by an alert, we often remain awake thinking about and anticipating further beeps and pings, which leads to fragmented sleep.

The best way to avoid this is to turn your phone off, put it on airplane mode or leave it on silent. Keeping it out of the bedroom at night would be ideal, but if this feels like a step too far, leave it on the other side of the room, as far away from your bed as possible.

The chicken and the egg: insomnia and social media

It’s the middle of the night and you find yourself unable to sleep, so you reach for your phone and check your social media accounts.

It’s an easy distraction from whatever is keeping you from sleeping, but then you find you can’t disengage, so you keep scrolling, you become more alert, so you can’t sleep. It’s a vicious cycle.

Research is now underway to examine the relationship between insomnia and social media use, and two important questions are being asked:

• Does night-time social media use cause insomnia? Or
• Do people with insomnia use social media to cope with their sleep problems? 11

This angle is now being examined in greater depth, so for some, night-time social media usage may actually be their way of coping with a sleep problem, as opposed to causing it.

Positive steps you can take

Social media has many good points; it connects people, can bring friends and families closer together, it informs us and is entertaining. But sleep and social media do not make for good bedfellows.

We need to be mindful of how often and at what times we connect. Social media usage around bedtime can have major repercussions for your sleep.

Reducing exposure to social media can help you to disconnect and may improve your sleep quality.

Ideally, aim to  wind-down  your usage in the 2 hours before bedtime, but at a minimum, at least 30 minutes before bed.

Instead of scrolling through your phone, screen-free time will help prepare you for sleep. Maybe read a book, relax, take a bath, listen to music. Try whatever works to relax you, without involving looking at a screen.

If possible, keep your phone out of your bedroom at night! Buy a cheap alarm clock and leave your phone on charge in another room. You want to aim to create an  ideal bedroom  setup for good sleep, which means limiting distractions in the bedroom and making the space an inviting, calm and comfortable place to retreat to.

If you think you’re developing unhealthy sleep patterns due to social media then speak to us at  Sleepstation . We can work with you to get to the root cause of your sleep issues and we’ll help you to improve your bedtime sleep habits.

• Social media usage around bedtime can negatively affect how long and how well you sleep.
• Looking at social media in bed can make it harder for you to fall asleep.
• It can also reduce the amount of time you sleep for and leave you feeling unrefreshed the next day.
• Try to limit (or stop) social media use a couple of hours before bedtime, to allow your body to wind down and prepare for sleep.
• If possible, keep your mobile phone out of the bedroom-easier said than done!
• Woods HC, Scott H. #Sleepyteens: Social media use in adolescence is associated with poor sleep quality, anxiety, depression and low self-esteem. J Adolesc 2016;51:41–9. ↩︎
• Lenhart A, Ling R, Campbell S, Purcell K. Teens and Mobile Phones. Pew Research Center; 2010. ↩︎
• Internet access – households and individuals – Office for National Statistics [Internet].  Ons.gov.uk . 2021 [cited 7 December 2021]. Available  here . ↩︎
• Clement J. Daily social media usage worldwide 2012-2019. Published by J. Clement, Feb 26; 2020. Available  here . ↩︎
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• Scott H, Woods HC. Understanding links between social media use, sleep and mental health: Recent progress and current challenges. Curr Sleep Med Rep 2019;5:141–9. ↩︎
• van der Schuur WA, Baumgartner SE, Sumter SR. Social media use, social media stress, and sleep: Examining cross-sectional and longitudinal relationships in adolescents. Health Commun 2019;34:552–9. ↩︎
• Levenson JC, Shensa A, Sidani JE, Colditz JB, Primack BA. The association between social media use and sleep disturbance among young adults. Prev Med 2016;85:36–41. ↩︎
• Scott H, Biello SM, Woods HC. Identifying drivers for bedtime social media use despite sleep costs: The adolescent perspective. Sleep Health 2019;5:539–45. ↩︎
• Thompson SH & Lougheed E. Frazzled by Facebook? An Exploratory Study of Gender Differences in Social Network Communication among Undergraduate Men and Women. College Student Journal 2012;v46 n1 p88-98 Mar. ↩︎
• Tavernier R, Willoughby T. Sleep problems: predictor or outcome of media use among emerging adults at university? J Sleep Res 2014;23:389–96.   ↩︎

Further information

Mirtazapine and sleep: will it help you sleep better?

Many of us check our social media accounts just before we go to sleep, but did you know that this can actually be a really bad idea if you want a good night’s rest? Read on to find out just how your social media habits can impact on your sleep.

Is a sound-based alarm clock the best way to wake up?

Medicines that can affect sleep

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Adolescent use of social media and associations with sleep patterns across 18 European and North American countries

• Meyran Boniel-Nissim, PhD Meyran Boniel-Nissim Affiliations Department of Educational Counselling, The Max Stern Academic College of Emek Yezreel, Emek Yezreel, Israel Search for articles by this author
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• Anita Villeruša, MD Anita Villeruša Affiliations Department of Public Health and Epidemiology, Institute of Public Health, Riga Stradins University, Riga, Latvia Search for articles by this author
• Henri Lahti, MSc Henri Lahti Affiliations Faculty of Sport and Health Sciences, University of Jyvaskyla, Jyvaskyla, Finland Search for articles by this author
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• Joanna Inchley, PhD Joanna Inchley Affiliations MRC/CSO Social and Public Health Sciences Unit, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK Search for articles by this author

Design, setting, and participants

Measurements, conclusions.

• Social media
• Adolescents
• International survey

Introduction

• Spitzberg BH.
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Anderson M, Jiang JJPRC. Teens’ social media habits and experiences. 2022. Available at: http://tony-silva.com/eslefl/miscstudent/downloadpagearticles/teensandsocialmedia-pew.pdf . Accessed January 29, 2022.

Inchley J, Currie D, Budisavljevic S, et al. Spotlight on adolescent health and well-being. Findings from the 2017/2018 Health Behaviour in School-aged Children (HBSC) survey in Europe and Canada. Volume 2. Key data. Vol. 1. 2020. International report.

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Data and participants

Social media use.

Mascheroni G, Ólafsson K. Net children go mobile: risks and opportunities. 2022. Available at: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/55798/1/Net_Children_Go_Mobile_Risks_and_Opportunities_Full_Findings_Report.pdf . Accessed Jan 31, 2022.

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Sleep patterns

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SMU and bedtime

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SMU and sleep patterns by age

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sleh.2023.01.005

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Western News

We’ve all done it – scrolled through our phones immediately before bedtime to read the latest news, only to wake up at 3 a.m. feeling anxious about all the things we’ve read. Then, having trouble falling back to sleep, we grab our phones again and distract ourselves with social media.

The next day we wake up feeling overwhelmed, anxious and exhausted.

But how exactly do social media and poor sleep influence our mental health? Researchers in the department of epidemiology and biostatistics at Western’s Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry are working to understand the relationship between sleep, social media and mental health among youth in two recently published papers.

Professor Kelly Anderson, PhD, looked specifically at the role of social media in the equation through a systematic review of previously published studies.

“The literature highlighted how complex this relationship is,” said Anderson, who is also a Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Public Mental Health Research. “These things are likely bidirectional; they are likely all part of a larger process that are feeding back to each other. So, if you aren’t sleeping well, you are probably going to use social media more often, which is going to impact your mental health, which impacts your sleep and so on.”

This topic has become especially important during the pandemic, said Rea Alonzo, a master’s student and contributing author on the paper, published in the journal Sleep Medicine Reviews. “Youth may be resorting to using more social media, given the current social restrictions. Also, as youth continue with online learning, technology is more easily accessible to them and screen time may be escalated.”

The review found significant associations between excessive social media use and poor mental health outcomes, and between poor sleep quality and negative mental health. Frequent social media use was a risk factor for both poor mental health and poor sleep outcomes.

“The link between the three is what really interested us,” said Junayd Hussain, one of the contributing authors on the review. “Based on our research, it seemed as though at least part of the negative effects that social media use has on mental health may act through sleep disturbances.”

The authors noted that none of the studies in the review specifically looked at the interplay of all three factors and Anderson says it is an area that warrants further study.

“One of the main takeaways is that this is a very complex process, and we are going to need really good data to try to tease apart the contributions of each and the mechanisms underlying these relationships,” said Anderson.

Another recently published study from the department of epidemiology and biostatistics found that adolescents who experience difficulties sleeping are at higher risk of developing symptoms of anxiety and depression, and that this relationship is strongest among girls.

Analyzing data from the Canadian National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth, the study published in the Journal of Psychosomatic Research found that girls with persistent difficulties sleeping between the ages of 12 and 15 experienced higher rates of anxiety and depression.

“When present, these symptoms can persist into young adulthood and negatively impact relationships, quality of life and employment,” said Dr. Saverio Stranges, chair of the department of epidemiology and biostatistics, who was senior investigator on the study.  “This study highlights the potential role of difficulties sleeping for adolescents’ mental health. Our findings further emphasize the need for public health initiatives to promote sleep hygiene in this population subgroup facing a critical life transition.”

One of the ways to promote good sleep hygiene is to limit screen time before bed, said Stranges, whose collaborators included MSc graduate Sophia Nunes along with Western professors Karen Campbell, Neil Klar and Graham Reid.

“Adolescent sleep problems are a current public health concern,” said Nunes. “Up to 25 per cent of 12- to 15-year-old Canadians report difficulties sleeping more than once a week. From a public health perspective, this research contributes to the evidence on the important and potential long-term mental health impact of sleep problems in early adolescence.”

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Social Media Use and Sleep

Written by Dr. Michael Breus

Social media is ever-present in the lives of most Americans. Experts suggest that 72% of people use some form of social media, with many users accessing common platforms at least once a day.

Well-known social media sites such as Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram allow users to message, video chat, and share personal content in online communities. These platforms can be a place for connection, entertainment, and news.

Unfortunately, a growing body of research suggests sleep health in teenagers and children may suffer because of electronic devices and social media use. More studies are needed to understand the relationship between sleep health and social media use in adults as their online activity increases. However, initial research suggests an association between sleep disturbances and social media use.

Learning about how social media could be impacting your sleep can empower you to develop healthy social media habits that encourage a better night’s sleep.

How Does Social Media Affect Sleep?

Research investigating social media and sleep is ongoing, but experts suggest that there are several ways that social media could influence whether people sleep well.

Blue light emitted from electronic devices used for exploring social media sites, the fear of missing out when offline, and noisy alerts and notifications are all known culprits of poor sleep health in the digital age.

Blue Light and Melatonin

People who scroll through social media on electronic devices in the hours leading up to bedtime or at night may encounter a range of sleep problems due to blue light exposure. These include trouble falling asleep, waking up earlier than expected, disrupted sleep, and more time spent sleeping during the day.

Melatonin is a hormone that promotes sleepiness. Your body naturally produces melatonin in the evening, after the sun goes down, as a part of your sleep-wake cycle . However, electronic devices, such as phones, tablets, and laptops, emit blue light that interferes with this process.

In response to light, including blue light, your body suppresses melatonin production. This is why blue light exposure before bed makes it more difficult to fall and stay asleep.

Fear of Missing Out

Fear of missing out, sometimes called FOMO, is associated with sleep loss and may lead to poor sleep quality . FOMO is a recent phenomenon that describes a sense of exclusion or concern about missing out when disconnecting from online communities.

For social media users that experience FOMO, the urge to check social media applications may be irresistible and constant, including at night when it is time to fall asleep and immediately upon awakening in the morning.

Disturbed Sleep

The “always-on” functionality of smartphones and social media applications disrupt sleep patterns. Devices like televisions and laptops can be turned off for the night, while persistent social media and message alerts—which often include a physical vibration or audible indicator—may occur at any time, disturbing sleep.

Excessive messaging before bedtime can negatively affect sleep as well. Unrelenting notifications and alerts from social media and smartphone apps in the evening can make it difficult to relax and prepare for restful sleep. Research indicates that difficulty falling asleep due to constant notifications can lead to sleep deprivation .

Effects of Social Media on Youth

Nearly all U.S. adolescents have access to a smartphone, and the percentage of youth that describe themselves as being “constantly online” grows each year. The increased time spent engaging with online communities using social media can negatively affect adolescent sleep.

Research shows that teenagers that frequently use social media are at risk for waking up too early and may struggle with going back to sleep. Teens who use social media may take longer to fall asleep and have poor sleep quality.

Getting a healthy amount of sleep is important for people of all ages, including children and adolescents. Adequate sleep can help prevent injuries, poor physical and mental health, and problems with behavior and attention.

Recommendations to Sleep Better

Social media users looking for a better night’s sleep may benefit from adjusting their sleep habits. A bedtime routine and sleep environment that encourage healthy social media habits may reduce or prevent the harmful effects of social media on sleep.

• Avoid Screen Use Before Bed : Using electronic devices to interact on social media platforms at night can lead to poor sleep quality. Avoid or limit screen time use in the hours leading up to bedtime and once in bed.
• Silence Notifications : Alerts from social media and other device applications may disrupt sleep and lead to sleep problems including daytime sleepiness. Turn off notifications to keep your device quiet throughout the night and to deter you from checking updates or responding to messages.
• Relocate Bedside Devices: Consider moving devices that allow access to social media to another location in your bedroom or home while you’re in bed to avoid notifications and scrolling through social media sites from bed.
• Make Time to Unplug From Devices: Experts suggest taking scheduled social media breaks to reduce your time spent on devices. During the time you unplug from your device and social media accounts, you may find it helpful to connect with friends offline, exercise, or explore activities that allow you to relax.
• Support Healthy Social Media Use in Teens : If you are involved in the care of a teen or child that uses social media, it is important to model healthy boundaries around social media and electronic device use. This includes establishing rules for when and where your teen can use devices and social media and setting limits on how much time they spend engaged with their device.
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• https://www.apa.org/monitor/2017/03/cover-disconnected
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• https://www.uptodate.com/contents/insufficient-sleep-evaluation-and-management
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• https://www.cdc.gov/sleep/about_sleep/sleep_hygiene.html
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• https://www.apa.org/monitor/2018/11/cover-misuse-digital
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• https://www.healthychildren.org/English/family-life/Media/Pages/Tips-for-Parents-Digital-Age.aspx

About The Author

Clinical Psychologist, Sleep Medicine Expert

Michael Breus, Ph.D is a Diplomate of the American Board of Sleep Medicine and a Fellow of The American Academy of Sleep Medicine and one of only 168 psychologists to pass the Sleep Medical Specialty Board without going to medical school. He holds a BA in Psychology from Skidmore College, and PhD in Clinical Psychology from The University of Georgia. Dr. Breus has been in private practice as a sleep doctor for nearly 25 years. Dr. Breus is a sought after lecturer and his knowledge is shared daily in major national media worldwide including Today, Dr. Oz, Oprah, and for fourteen years as the sleep expert on WebMD. Dr. Breus is also the bestselling author of The Power of When, The Sleep Doctor’s Diet Plan, Good Night!, and Energize!

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The Impact of Social Media Use on Sleep and Mental Health in Youth: a Scoping Review

• Open access
• Published: 08 February 2024
• Volume 26 , pages 104–119, ( 2024 )

Cite this article

You have full access to this open access article

• Danny J. Yu 1 ,
• Yun Kwok Wing 1 ,
• Tim M. H. Li 1 &
• Ngan Yin Chan 1  

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Purpose of Review

Social media use (SMU) and other internet-based technologies are ubiquitous in today’s interconnected society, with young people being among the commonest users. Previous literature tends to support that SMU is associated with poor sleep and mental health issues in youth, despite some conflicting findings. In this scoping review, we summarized relevant studies published within the past 3 years, highlighted the impacts of SMU on sleep and mental health in youth, while also examined the possible underlying mechanisms involved. Future direction and intervention on rational use of SMU was discussed.

Recent Findings

Both cross-sectional and longitudinal cohort studies demonstrated the negative impacts of SMU on sleep and mental health, with preliminary evidence indicating potential benefits especially during the COVID period at which social restriction was common. However, the limited longitudinal research has hindered the establishment of directionality and causality in the association among SMU, sleep, and mental health.

Recent studies have made advances with a more comprehensive understanding of the impact of SMU on sleep and mental health in youth, which is of public health importance and will contribute to improving sleep and mental health outcomes while promoting rational and beneficial SMU. Future research should include the implementation of cohort studies with representative samples to investigate the directionality and causality of the complex relationships among SMU, sleep, and mental health; the use of validated questionnaires and objective measurements; and the design of randomized controlled interventional trials to reduce overall and problematic SMU that will ultimately enhance sleep and mental health outcomes in youth.

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Introduction

Youth population, which typically refers to individuals between the ages of 15 and 24, experience substantial changes in their neurobiology, physical development, behavior, and emotions, making it a vulnerable stage for the development of both sleep and mental health problems [ 1 , 2 , 3 ]. In Hong Kong, approximately 64.5% of adolescents sleep less than 8 h during weekdays [ 4 ] and 29.2% have reported insomnia symptoms [ 5 ]. Both cross-sectional and longitudinal studies have demonstrated that sleep loss and disturbances in youth lead to significant personal distress, increase risk of psychiatric illnesses, and risky behaviors such as drug abuse and dangerous driving [ 5 , 6 ]. In addition to sleep disturbances, mental health problems are highly prevalent among the youth population. Evidence suggested that nearly 75% of psychiatric illnesses have their age onset during adolescence [ 7 , 8 ].

There are multiple risk factors that commonly contribute to sleep and mental health problems, including being female, heavy school workload, physical inactivity, and worse general health [ 9 ]. Recently, a growing number of studies indicate that social media use (SMU) is associated with both sleep and mental health problems in youth [ 10 •]. In particular, identity development and peer acceptance during adolescence are important developmental needs, at which social media may apparently serve as a convenient means to meet these needs. A previous study reported that over 80% of adolescents (16–19 years) use electronic devices near bedtime [ 11 ]. On the other hand, excessive SMU can have detrimental health effects [ 12 , 13 ], and contribute to various negative repercussions such as cyberbullying [ 14 ], gender stereotypes [ 15 ], self-objectification [ 16 ], and exposure to inappropriate content, such as unsolicited violent and sexual contents [ 17 ]. The effect becomes more prominent in young people who are considered as digital native [ 18 ]. Nevertheless, SMU also comes with some potential benefits [ 19 ] such as increased self-esteem [ 20 ], increased social capital [ 21 ], identity presentation and sexual exploration [ 22 ], and social support [ 23 ].

Despite the emerging evidence supporting the link among SMU, sleep, and mental health, the relationship and directionality are complex and inconsistent. For example, two recent studies did not find significant associations among SMU, sleep, and mental health [ 24 , 25 •]. Nonetheless, a US study reported that greater SMU was significantly associated with sleep disturbances [ 26 ], and some also reported bidirectional relationship at which poor sleepers tend to use electronic devices as a sleep aid [ 27 ]. In general, it is believed that youth are at a higher risk of experiencing the negative impacts of SMU as they are more susceptible to peer pressure and fear of missing out (FOMO). FOMO refers to the perception of missing out on enjoyable experiences, followed up with a compulsive behavior to maintain these social connections with others to avoid being excluded from those experiences [ 28 , 29 , 30 ]. Hence, understanding the association and directionality among SMU, sleep, and mental health is crucial for developing public health strategies on how to cultivate healthy SMU habits and develop effective interventions targeting inappropriate and excessive SMU.

This scoping review summarized recent studies on SMU, sleep, and mental health in youth (Fig.  1 ) and explored the potential underlying mechanisms of how SMU affects sleep and mental health in youth (Fig.  2 ). Finally, we have put forward several potential avenues for future research and recommendations in this area. Search terms including #adolescent, #social media, #sleep, and #mental health were used to search for relevant studies that were published between January 2020 and July 2023 in MEDLINE. A summary of the study attributes, such as the authors, the country/region where the study was conducted, study design, the number of participants, sample age range, characteristics, as well as the measures used to assess SMU, sleep, and mental health are listed in Table  1 .

Structure of the scoping review

Potential pathways of social media use on sleep and mental health

Overview of SMU

SMU refers to the act of engaging with online platforms specifically designed for social interaction, whereas electronic media use (or digital use, digital media, internet use, screen time) is a broader term that encompasses various forms of media delivered electronically, including but not limited to social media. In this scoping review, we focus on SMU.

Over the past decade, subjective measures have been the primary tool to investigate individual perceptions, opinions, or personal experiences of SMU. For example, a self-report scale was developed to assess compulsive use of social media and its severity [ 31 ]. Besides, there are several platform-specific scales for social media addiction features such as salience, mood modification, tolerance, withdrawal, conflict, and relapse. The Bergen Facebook Addiction Scale, for instance, focuses specifically on addiction to Facebook [ 32 •], while the Bergen Social Media Addiction Scale has emerged to examine a broader scope, including social media platforms beyond Facebook [ 33 •, 34 ]. Indeed, more researchers used general metrics to measure SMU across multiple platforms collectively such as the Social Media Disorder Scale which measures aspects of social media addiction features, such as preoccupation with social media, excessive time spent, withdrawal symptoms, and negative consequences [ 35 , 36 , 37 ]. Other SMU experiences are also captured including social comparison on social media and negative experiences such as bullying, FOMO, and extensive negative feedback [ 32 •].

In addition, the duration and timing of SMU also have significant implications for sleep and mental health, as excessive or inappropriate use of social media at certain timing, for example at bedtime, can potentially contribute to negative biopsychosocial effects. The Socio-Digital Participation Inventory includes four items to measure the frequency of SMU on a seven-point frequency scale (1 = never, 2 = a couple of times a year, 3 = monthly, 4 = weekly, 5 = daily, 6 = multiple times a day, 7 = all the time) [ 25 •]. The total time spent on SMU (in daytime and night-time) are usually captured by questionnaires and social media time use diary [ 38 •]. In view of the limitation of self-reported measures, there has been a shift towards incorporating more objective measures in addition to subjective self-report scales. Increasing number of studies used time tracker via specific apps (installed on participants’ devices used for online activity) to reduce recall bias [ 33 •]. Other objective features, such as the number of followers, likes, comments, shares, bookmarks, and total interactions, which can be retrieved from various social media platforms [ 39 •] were also used to reflect social medica engagement. In addition, the content (e.g., educational vs non-educational) posted, read, and shared on social media platforms plays a significant role in shaping user experiences, engagement levels, and the overall impact of SMU. It is worth to note that no included studies attempted to measure multi-device SMU as it can be challenging due to the wide range of devices that people use to access social media platforms. Traditional research methods often rely on self-reporting, surveys, or tracking software installed on specific devices, which may not capture the full extent of multi-device usage. Some individuals may switch between multiple devices throughout the day, making it challenging to track their overall social media engagement accurately.

Overview of Recent Studies

Study characteristics.

A total of 33 studies were included in this scoping review, with 26 of them were cross-sectional in nature, indicating a snapshot overview of the relationship between SMU, sleep, and mental health. Moreover, only a few studies utilized representative samples [ 35 , 36 , 40 , 41 ], as outlined in Table  1 . It is also worth noting that the sample sizes varied significantly across studies, ranging from 54 to 195,668 participants.

Measurement of SMU

In terms of the measurement of SMU, all studies used either self-developed questionnaires (e.g., “in a typical school week, how often do you check social media?” and “on a normal weekday, how many hours you spend on social medias, write blogs/read each people blogs, or chat online?”) or validated self-report questionnaires (e.g., the 26-item Chinese Internet Addiction Scale-Revised and the Online Civic Engagement Behavior Construct). Different dimensions of SMU were measured such as overall and night-time SMU, problematic SMU, emotional investment in social media, racial discrimination, and racial justice civic engagement on social media. Only a limited number of studies incorporated more reliable measurements such as ecological momentary assessment [ 42 ] and total message count [ 43 ].

Measurement of Sleep and Mental Health

In terms of sleep outcome assessment, most of these studies employed subjective instruments such as sleep diary [ 32 •], self-developed self-report questionnaires (e.g., “How many hours did you sleep over the past week?”) [ 43 ], and validated self-report questionnaires (e.g., the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index and the Insomnia Severity Index) [ 44 , 45 •] to measure different sleep outcomes including sleep quality, sleep duration, sleep displacement, bedtime, and sleep-onset latency. In addition to these subjective instruments, 3 studies have utilized objective devices such as actigraphy and other wearable devices to capture objective sleep data [ 43 , 46 , 47 ]. While for mental health aspects, depression and anxiety are the main outcomes. Most of the recent studies utilized standardized questionnaires such as the Short Mood and Feelings Questionnaire, the Depression Anxiety Stress Scales 21, and the Suicidal Behaviors Questionnaire-Revised to measure the symptoms of depression and anxiety.

Synthesis of Recent Findings

Smu and sleep.

Both longitudinal and cross-sectional studies tend to support the association between SMU and sleep disturbances (Table  1 ). A total of 17 cross-sectional studies observed an association between SMU and various sleep parameters in youth. Of these studies, a total of 16 reported a significant association between different dimensions of SMU (internet addition, duration of screen use, inappropriate time use (near bedtime), with one additionally measure parent control of technology) and poor sleep outcomes (both subjectively and objectively measured sleep parameters, such as bedtime, sleep-onset latency, sleep duration, and sleep quality) [ 31 , 32 •, 35 , 36 , 40 , 42 , 43 , 44 , 45 •, 47 , 48 , 49 , 50 , 51 , 52 , 53 ]. Nevertheless, a study of 101 undergraduate students did not find that bedtime SMU was detrimental to sleep [ 46 ]. However, in the subgroup analysis, the authors found that youth with increased levels of depressive symptoms are at higher risk of experiencing negative impacts of bedtime SMU on sleep [ 46 ].

Among the three cohort studies, two indicated that higher levels of SMU predicted later bedtime and shorter sleep duration in youth after 1–2 years of follow-up [ 37 , 54 ]. These studies revealed that both frequent and problematic use of SMU could result in later bedtime [ 37 , 54 ]. In addition, Richardson and colleagues further found that SMU predicted greater daytime sleepiness in adolescence [ 54 ]. In addition, adolescents with evening chronotype preference and shorter sleep duration were found to have longer usage of social media, suggesting a potential bidirectional relationship between SMU and sleep duration [ 54 ]. Another cohort study conducted by Maksniemi and colleagues did not find a significant association between SMU and bedtime among 426 youth aged between 13 and 19 [ 25 •]. Interestingly, subgroup analyses indicated that significant associations were only observed in early adolescence (at age 13 and 14), but not in middle (at age 14 and 15) nor late adolescence (at age 17 and 18) [ 25 •]. This finding highlights the importance of considering the developmental stages of youth in order to unravel the complex relationship between SMU and sleep [ 55 ].

SMU and Mental Health

A total of 9 cross-sectional studies examined the relationship between SMU and mental health [ 33 •, 34 , 38 •, 39 •, 56 •, 57 , 58 , 59 , 60 ]. A greater amount of time spent on social media was associated with an increased risk of depression, self-harm, and lower self-esteem. On the other hand, adolescents who exhibited mental health issues tended to spend more time on social media platforms, suggesting a potential bidirectional relationship between SMU and mental health. However, it is important to point out that despite appealing hypotheses, actual effect size estimates of SMU on various mental health outcomes (e.g., self-esteem, life satisfaction, depression, and loneliness) were of small-to-medium magnitude as reported in previous meta-analytic studies, ranging from − 0.11 to − 0.32 [ 61 •, 62 ].

Four longitudinal cohort studies reported mixed findings between SMU and mental health [ 41 , 63 , 64 •, 65 ]. Two cohort studies conducted in the USA and China reported that frequent and problematic SMU were significantly associated subsequent mental health issues [ 64 •, 65 ]. Interestingly, the authors identified substantial sex differences in the mental health trajectories, with only girls showing a deteriorating linear trend ( β  = 0.23, p  < 0.05) [ 64 •]. On the contrary, the other two longitudinal studies conducted in Sweden and UK reported that although frequent SMU was associated with increased levels of mental problems at a single timepoint, there was no longitudinal association [ 41 , 63 ], which suggests that SMU may be only an indicator for mental health instead of a risk factor.

SMU, Sleep, and Mental Health

A total of 7 studies measured both sleep and mental health outcomes [ 31 , 45 •, 46 , 47 , 48 , 50 , 59 ]. Five of these studies reported significant associations among SMU, sleep, and mental health outcome [ 31 , 45 •, 46 , 50 , 59 ]. It was reported that SMU was significantly associated with poor sleep quality and increased mental health issues [ 31 , 45 •, 46 , 50 , 59 ], and sleep was found to mediate the negative impacts of SMU on mental health and emotional symptoms in adolescents [ 45 •]. Poor sleep was also shown to be significantly associated with mental health outcomes [ 31 , 50 , 59 ]. Furthermore, adolescents with higher level of depressive symptoms were at higher risk of experiencing negative impacts of bedtime SMU on sleep outcomes [ 46 ]. Indeed, these findings preliminarily unveiled the complex interplay among SMU, sleep, and mental health.

Nevertheless, it is essential to highlight that recent research has also recognized the positive impacts of SMU on mental health, particularly in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, at which physical social interactions were significantly disrupted [ 56 •, 58 ]. Adolescents in Australia and UK were found to use social media as an active coping strategy to relieve external stressors (e.g., exam pressure), to seek support for suicidal ideation or self-harm behavior, and to support others via social media [ 56 •, 58 ].

This scoping review synthesized recent publications from the past 3 years that investigated the impact of SMU on sleep and/or mental health outcomes in youth. The majority of the studies provide supporting evidence for an association between SMU, poor sleep quality, and adverse mental health outcomes. Problematic SMU or addiction, as well as the duration of SMU, were identified as the most prevalent aspects of social media examined in the included studies. Sleep duration, bedtime, and insomnia emerged as the most commonly assessed sleep problems, while depression and anxiety were the most frequently measured mental health outcomes. However, it is important to note that despite the significant associations identified among these variables, the directionality of the relationship remains unclear in view of inconsistent findings across studies.

Underlying Mechanism Between SMU and Sleep

Numerous mechanisms have been proposed to elucidate the relationship between social/digital media usage and sleep quantity and quality [ 66 ]. Hyperarousal, a core mechanism in explaining insomnia [ 67 ], plays a role in explaining how night-time SMU disrupts sleep. Active engagement in media activities can directly induce physiological and psychological arousal, leading to longer sleep onset latency [ 68 ]. This effect is particularly noticeable when individuals actively engage in interactive digital media, such as social messaging and social media, as opposed to passive media consumption like television viewing [ 69 •], likely due to the heightened arousal associated with interactive activities [ 70 ]. Interestingly, a study found that engaging in phone conversations near bedtime was associated with longer sleep duration, while the use of social media and texting displayed a negative association [ 71 ]. It has been hypothesized that conversing with a friend may positively influence emotional well-being, thereby promoting sleep [ 72 ]. However, social networking, despite its potential for fostering friendships, may also trigger FOMO and social media stress. In addition to the psychological arousal induced by electronic media usage, the light emitted from device screens is another hypothesis explaining the detrimental effects of digital media on sleep. Specifically, the light emitted by electronic devices, especially blue light (at a wavelength of 480 nm), has a significant impact on the suppression of melatonin, a hormone that promotes sleep [ 73 ]. Moreover, a recent study indicated that high-risk adolescents whose parents with bipolar affective disorder have lower level of nocturnal melatonin secretion. It might be possible that adolescents with certain risk factors (even without psychopathologies) may be particularly hypersensitive and vulnerable to light suppression of melatonin secretion [ 74 ], which are considered as high-risk group that require early intervention. Furthermore, it is plausible that an interaction or interplay might exist between arousal and light exposure, and the combination of these conditions could potentially heighten the risk of sleep disturbances. Additionally, the direct displacement of sleep resulting from engagement in social media activities may also lead to shorter sleep duration. Although initial evidence suggests a negative impact of both content and light emitted by electronic devices on sleep, the precise underlying mechanism remains poorly established. Last but not least, some preliminary studies have also investigated other sleep- and circadian-related factors such as chronotype preference and daytime sleepiness in mediating and/or moderating the relationship between SMU and sleep [ 32 •, 44 , 54 ], albeit the findings have been inconclusive. Future studies are warranted to thoroughly explore the role of these factors in the interplay between SMU and sleep.

Underlying Mechanism Between SMU and Mental Health

It has been suggested both behavioral and cognitive factors mediate the impact of SMU on mental health. Among the behavioral factors, sleep has been identified as one of the notable mediators of the association [ 31 , 44 , 45 •, 46 , 50 , 59 , 75 ]. Physiologically, prolonged SMU before bedtime delays sleep onset, reduces sleep duration, and mediates the association between eveningness and sleep as well as daytime sleepiness [ 44 ], which have been identified as risk factors for mental illness [ 76 , 77 , 78 ]. This complex interplay between sleep and mental health has also been documented in interventional studies. Our previous clinical trial demonstrated that a brief insomnia prevention program, adapted from cognitive-behavioral therapy for insomnia, significantly decreased the severity of depressive symptoms in adolescents at 12-month follow-up [ 79 ], suggesting the potential mediating role of sleep in mental health. While for the cognitive factors, FOMO has been recognized as a possible mediator. In particular, Elhai et al. reported that FOMO mediated relationship between anxiety and smartphone use frequency, as well as problematic SMU [ 80 ]. Besides FOMO, recent literatures have also identified several other cognitive factors that mediate the relationship between SMU and mental health, such as self-esteem [ 38 •], body satisfaction [ 57 ], and emotional investment [ 59 ].

In addition to these behavioral and cognitive factors, cyberbullying is also one of the important mediators of SMU and mental health in youth [ 81 ]. Cyberbullying has become a prevalent phenomenon worldwide, with victimization rates in children and adolescents ranging from 14 to 57.5%, and lifetime perpetration rates ranging from 6.0 to 46.3% [ 82 , 83 ]. Previous meta-analytical study demonstrated that cyberbullying significantly increased the risks of developing depression, self-harm, suicidal attempts, and ideation [ 84 ]. Moreover, over the COVID-19 pandemic, stressors associated with disasters have also been reported to potentially exacerbate the negative effects of SMU on mental health, thereby increasing the risk for mental health issues [ 85 , 86 ].

In summary, there have been significant developments in recent years in understanding the magnitude and mechanisms that underlie the association between SMU and mental health. However, most of the studies employed a cross-sectional design, which prevented from a thorough understanding of the causality. Experimental and interventional studies are warranted to better comprehend the underlying mechanisms, establish causality, and improve the negative outcomes.

Future Direction

There are several potential avenues for future investigation. Firstly, prospective cohort studies using representative samples are needed to elucidate the magnitude and directionality of relationships among SMU, sleep, and mental health, which is of clinical practice implication for precision intervention. To capture the varying dynamics among SMU, sleep, and mental health across different age groups of adolescents (early and late adolescents), it is recommended that prospective studies may need to have a follow-up period that will better cover the entirety of adolescence period [ 41 ]. Secondly, the lack of consistency in the methodologies employed by different studies measuring SMU has been a major contributing factor to the conflicting findings found in the current literature. It is imperative to use validated questionnaires to measure the SMU. More importantly, objective measurements (e.g., screen time monitors on smartphones [ 87 ], ecological momentary assessments [ 88 ], and wearable devices [ 89 ]) should also be incorporated. Apart from timing, it is equally important to capture the content, and number of devices that subjects engage with. Thirdly, future research should consider conducting randomized controlled trials at different levels (e.g., individual, school, and family) to reduce overall and problematic SMU and to ultimately improve sleep and mental health outcomes in youth. The design of the intervention may benchmark to existing guidelines such as the American Academy of Paediatrics recommendations 2016 on media use [ 90 ], and the WHO guidelines on physical activity and sedentary behavior [ 91 ], in which both guidelines recommend limiting the amount of recreational screen time, and avoiding SMU 1 h before bedtime. Intervention formats may consider psychoeducation, cognitive and behavioral techniques, and motivational interviewing. Finally, priority may be given to conduct observational and interventional studies on SMU in vulnerable populations, such as youth experiencing mood or sleep problems, as well as those who are high-risk offspring of parents with sleep and mood disorders, as these populations are more susceptible to experience significant negative impacts from inappropriate and excessive SMU [ 92 ].

Despite the heterogeneity observed in the recent studies, both cross-sectional and cohort studies highlight the impact of SMU on poor sleep and mental health, albeit there are some inconsistent findings. Research has progressed from focusing solely on “screen time” to exploring the social, emotional, and cognitive dimensions of SMU. When measuring sleep outcomes, researchers have investigated the sleep duration and quality and also consider factors such as chronotype and pre-sleep arousal, which will enable a better understanding of how social media impacts sleep in a broader context. Similar advancements have also been made in the field of SMU-related mental health research. Recognizing the interconnections among SMU, sleep, and mental health is crucial for public health and will contribute to improving sleep and mental health outcomes while promoting rational SMU. Future studies should evaluate the effectiveness of interventions on reducing SMU, with ultimate goal to improve sleep and mental health.

Data Availability

Since this review article solely relies on published articles and does not include individual participant data, therefore no data sharing is available.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Mr. Lin, Colin Qin Li, and Mr. Sin, Calvin Chun Hei for their help during the literature review.

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Yu, D.J., Wing, Y.K., Li, T.M.H. et al. The Impact of Social Media Use on Sleep and Mental Health in Youth: a Scoping Review. Curr Psychiatry Rep 26 , 104–119 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11920-024-01481-9

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More LOLs, Fewer Zzzs: Teens May Be Losing Sleep Over Social Media

Emily Vaughn

Girl texting on smartphone at home martin-dm/Getty Images hide caption

Girl texting on smartphone at home

Today's teens have a lot on their plate. They strive for perfect grades, college-essay worthy volunteer gigs, trophies in multiple sports — and many of them still find hours a day to spend on social media.

"This is an incredibly stressful time to be a teenager," says pediatrician Megan Moreno , a researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

To get everything done, teens are "sacrificing their in-person time," Moreno says.

And it may be they're trying to make for up it online. A new report from the U.K. says that more than 1 in 5 teens there spend five hours or more per day on social media. And the heavier users of social media get to bed later and get poorer quality sleep.

While those statistics might send some parents scrambling straight to the wall outlet to unplug the Wi-Fi router, Moreno says that social media is too often described as either entirely good or bad, when the reality is more complicated for teens.

"Social media is the way that they stay in touch with each other," she says.

She says researchers should focus instead on understanding "where social media fits in within this culture of constant connection."

Shots - Health News

Teens sleeping too much, or not enough parents can help.

The new study, which was released Tuesday in the journal BMJ Open, was based on self-reported survey data from nearly 12,000 teenage participants in the U.K. Millennium Cohort Study — a nationally representative group of individuals born in 2000 and 2001. The study sought to gather baseline data about teenage social media use in the U.K. to inform guidelines for safe social media use — akin to the U.S. guidelines set by the American Academy of Pediatrics.

The study found a wide range in how many hours per day teens are spending on social media. Girls overall were more likely to be heavy users. At the low end, 22.8% of females and 43.8% of males used social media for less than an hour per day, and at the high end, 28.4% of females and 13.7% of males used social media for five or more hours per day.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the study found a link between high social media usage and poor sleep patterns. Specifically, teens who report heavier social media use go to sleep later.

And, the study authors note, late bedtimes are linked with poorer academic and mental health outcomes. A body of research has found an association between heavy screen use among teens and depression, though the link is debated.

The Scientific Debate Over Teens, Screens And Mental Health

Holly Scott , a researcher at the University of Glasgow and the study's primary author, isn't sounding the alarm. She says, "it's easy to look at the results of this and think, 'We should just get teenagers to spend less time on social media.' I think that's an understandable response, but what I really encourage people to do is look beyond that."

She says people should pay attention to the "important emotional and cognitive and social factors" at play with when teenagers are using social media.

Moreno agrees. She says her patients describe using social media to keep in touch with family members who live far away, or double checking a homework assignment with a teacher or classmate after school, in addition to keeping up connections with friends.

"Many kids can't find time to hang out with their friends because they're all in forty different activities," Moreno says.

Scott emphasizes that the study is pointing to a correlation between social media and poor sleep, but not necessarily demonstrating cause and effect.

"Certainly some teens do say that they struggle to get off of social media at night — they might be worried about missing out on things, or affecting their friends by not answering messages — and they stay up late from that," she says. But, "maybe for some of those young people they are a have a naturally later body clock, and are passing their free time at night on social media until they're ready to fall asleep," she says.

And Scott says the baseline of data they've captured, especially the large number of teens towards the low-end of daily social media usage, is counterintuitive. "There's an assumption that all teenagers are spending all their time on social media," Scott says, but the numbers show a wide range. She says that's critical information to have when it comes to building public health recommendations.

Moreno says that context also matters when making recommendations. "Social media is a reflection of our culture. When we see studies that say, 'Hey, these kids aren't sleeping as well as they used to,' we need to be able to say, "Okay, there's a correlation with social media, but what does that mean to us as a culture? How did we allow this to be the case?' "

The American Academy of Pediatrics guidelines which were updated in 2016 suggest parents work with their kids to create a family media use plan. That might mean setting a family-wide curfew for social media, or focusing on doing more of their screen-time activities together.

At Your Wits' End With A Screen-Obsessed Kid? Read This

Moreno also emphasizes the power of positive reinforcement if you're trying to help a teen change their behavior: "I think taking the time to remind people of the things that they're doing well — if it gives you that feeling of feeling good — then you're more likely to keep doing that than if you're only focused on the things that you need to fix."

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How Social Media May Be Causing Sleep Deprivation

Facebook and other social media platforms can be a bottomless pit. Once you start clicking, you get sucked deeper and deeper into endless news feeds, pictures, videos, and comments.

Checking your phone before going to bed can be especially harmful. Before you know it, you've spent two hours looking at vacation pictures of your best friend's brother's girlfriend's cousin. Now, it's 3 a.m. and you have to go to work in a few hours.

If you have a teenager, she's probably spending more time on social media than you know.

How Much Sleep Do You Need?

• Infants (4 to 11 months): 12 to 15 hours
• Toddlers (1 to 2 years): 11 to 14 hours
• Preschool (3 to 5 years): 10 to 13 hours
• School age (6 to 13 years): 9 to 11 hours
• Teenagers (14 to 17 years) - 8 to 10 hours
• Adults (18 to 64): 7 to 9 hours
• Older Adult (65+): 7 to 8 hours

SOURCE: National Sleep Foundation

Here's a look at 3 signs that social media may be causing sleep deprivation for you and your family-and what you can do about it:

1. You experience information overload before bed.

Whether you're on Twitter or Facebook, the information you come across can be just about anything. A friend's new baby. Pictures of celebrities without makeup. Videos on how to cut a banana without peeling it.

Access to information can be wonderful. But when you're trying to get quality sleep, too much information can keep your mind racing. You might be emotionally charged by something you just read or saw. Or the content you see is just too interesting, and you have a hard time putting your gadget away.

Wind down by reading a book or journaling. If you have tomorrow's to-do list running through your head, get it out of your head and down on a piece of paper.

2. You're looking at a bright screen before bed.

Having electronics in the bedroom makes it more likely that you're exposed to bright lights before bed.

Being exposed to bright lights in the evenings can disrupt your natural sleep cycle , according to the National Sleep Foundation. The body's internal body clock uses light to determine if it's time to be awake or go to sleep.

Solution: If possible, keep technology out of the bedroom.

Or at the very least, have a technology curfew as suggested in the first point.

3. You're being awakened by beeps, tweets, and chirps.

If you're like most, you leave your phone close to your bed when you go to sleep. Maybe you have a practical reason for it-the phone is your alarm clock. Or maybe you're just a little addicted, and want to check your email before you even brush your teeth.

Having the phone close by during sleep can be disruptive, especially if your notifications are making sounds, flashing lights, or vibrating. And the temptation to check the notification can keep you up.

If you do use your phone as an alarm clock, test to make sure that the alarm still goes off when the phone is in sleep mode.

Problem of Sleep Deprivation Cause and Effect Essay

Introduction.

• What is Sleep Deprivation?

Causes of Sleep Deprivation

• Effects of Sleep Deprivation

Managing Sleep Deprivation

Works cited.

The functioning of the human body is influenced by a number of factors, which are mainly determined by the health status of an individual. Oftentimes, people seek medication when the body deviates from its normal and usual functioning mechanisms. Through different activities and processes, the body is able to use energy and replenish itself. Sleeping is one of the activities that has a direct effect on the functioning of the body.

This sleep deprivation essay explores how the functioning of the human body is influenced by various factors, primarily determined by an individual’s health status. While most people do not understand the implications of sleep, human effectiveness solely depends on the amount of time dedicated to sleeping. However, for various reasons, people fail to get enough sleep daily, weekly, or on a regular basis.

What Is Sleep Deprivation?

This cause and effect of sleep deprivation essay defines sleep deprivation as a condition occurring among human beings when they fail to get enough sleep. Sleep deprivation is defined as a condition that occurs when human beings fail to get enough sleep. Many experts argue that sleep deficiency is widespread even though most people do not consider it to be a serious issue, which affects their (Gaine et al.). Sleep deprivation has become a major problem in the United States, with almost 47 million suffering from the condition (Wang and Xiaomin). This lack of sleep can lead to a variety of physical and mental health issues, impacting daily functioning and quality of life.

The present essay about sleep deprivation defines sleep deprivation as a condition that occurs among human beings when they fail to get enough sleep. Many experts argue that sleep deficiency is widespread even though most people do not consider it to be a serious issue that affects their lives. Sleep deprivation has become a major problem in the United States, with almost forty-seven million suffering from the condition (Wang and Xiaomin). Among other reasons, one may get insufficient sleep in a day as a result of various factors. Some people sleep at the wrong time due to busy daily schedules, while others have sleep disorders, which affect their sleeping patterns. The following segment of the paper discusses the causes of deprivation.

Sleep deprivation may occur as a result of factors that are not known to the patients. This is based on the fact that sleep deprivation may go beyond the number of hours one spends in bed. In some cases, the quality of sleep matters in determining the level of deprivation.

In this context, it is possible for one to be in bed for more than eight hours but suffer from the negative effects of sleep deprivation. Whilst this is the case, there are people who wake every morning feeling tired despite having spent a recommended number of hours in bed (Griggs et al.14367).

Sleep deprivation can be caused by medical conditions, which may include but are not limited to asthma, arthritis, muscle cramps, allergies, and muscular pain. These conditions have been classified by researchers as common medical conditions that largely contribute to most of the cases of sleep deprivation being witnessed in the United States.

Similarly, these medical conditions have a direct impact on not only the quality but also the time one takes in bed sleeping. It is worth noting that sometimes people are usually unconscious to realize that their sleep is not deep enough (Wang and Xiaomin). This also explains the reason why it is not easy for a person to recall any moment in life when he or she moved closer to waking up.

Treatment of cases like sleep apnea is important because it affects the quality of sleep without necessarily awakening the victim. This is because medical surveys have revealed fatal effects of sleep apnea, especially on the cardiovascular system. Besides these, one is likely to experience breathing difficulties caused by insufficient oxygen.

Even though the treatment of sleep deprivation is important, it has been found that some drugs used to treat patients may worsen the case or lead to poor quality of sleep. It is, therefore, necessary for the doctor to determine the best drugs to use. Discussions between doctors and victims are imperative in order to understand patients’ responses (Conroy et al. 185).

Sleep deprivation is also caused by sleep cycle disruptions, which interfere with the fourth stage of sleep. Oftentimes, these disruptions are described as night terrors, sleepwalking, and nightmares.

Though these disorders are known not to awaken a person completely, it is vital to note that they may disrupt the order of sleep cycles, forcing a person to move from the fourth stage to the first one. Victims of these disruptions require attention in order to take corrective measures.

In addition, there are known environmental factors which contribute to several cases of sleep deprivation. However, doctors argue that the impact on the environment is sometimes too minimal to be recognized by people who are affected by sleep deficiency (Gaine et al.). In other words, these factors affect the quality of sleep without necessarily arousing a person from sleep.

Common examples include extreme weather conditions, like high temperatures, noise, and poor quality of the mattress. As a result, they may contribute to a person’s awakening, depending on the intensity when one is sleeping.

Moreover, the impact of these factors may develop with time, thus affecting one’s quality of sleep. In addition, most of the environmental factors that contribute to sleep deprivation can be fixed easily without medical or professional skills. Nevertheless, the challenge is usually how to become aware of their existence.

Lastly, sleep deprivation is caused by stress and depression, which have been linked to other health disorders and complications. Together with some lifestyles in America, these factors are heavily contributing to sleep deficiency in most parts of the world. Even though they might not be acute enough to awaken an individual, their cumulative effects usually become significant.

There are countless stressors in the world that affect youths and adults. While young people could be concerned with passing exams, adults are normally preoccupied with pressure to attain certain goals in life. These conditions create a disturbed mind, which may affect a person’s ability to enjoy quality sleep.

Sleep deprivation has a host of negative effects which affect people of all ages. The commonest effect is stress. Most people who suffer from sleep deficiency are likely to experience depression frequently as compared to their counterparts who enjoy quality sleep (Conroy et al. 188). As a result, stress may lead to poor performance among students at school.

Research has revealed that students who spend very few hours in bed or experience disruptions during sleep are likely to register poor performance in their class assignments and final exams. Additionally, sleep deprivation causes inefficiency among employees.

For instance, drivers who experience this disorder are more likely to cause accidents as compared to those who are free from it (Griggs et al.14367). This is based on the fact that un-refreshed people have poor concentration and low mastery of their skills.

Besides stress and anxiety, sleep deprivation has a wide-range of health-related effects. For instance, medical experts argue that people who spend less than six hours in bed are likely to suffer from high blood pressure. Quality sleep gives the body an opportunity to rest by slowing down the rate at which it pumps blood to the rest of the body (Wang and Xiaomin).

Inadequate sleep implies that the heart has to work without its normal and recommended rest. Additionally, sleep deprivation is known to affect the immune system. People who experience this disorder end up with a weakened immune system, leaving the body prone to most illnesses. This reduced immune response accumulates and may become fatal with time.

Sleep paralysis is also a common effect of inadequate sleep. This is due to disruption of the sleep cycle. It primarily occurs when the body is aroused during the fourth stage of the sleep cycle. In this case, the body is left immobile as the mind regains consciousness. Due to this conflict, one may experience pain and hallucinations.

Based on the negative effects of sleep deprivation, there is a need to manage this disorder among Americans. Firstly, it is necessary for people to seek medical advice concerning certain factors which could be contributing to this condition, like stress and infections (Wang and Xiaomin).

Proper counseling is also vital in stabilizing a person’s mental capacity. Physical exercises are also known to relieve a person from stressful conditions, contributing to sleep deficiency. Lastly, it is essential to ensure that the environment is free from noise and has regulated weather conditions.

Sleep deprivation remains a major problem in America, affecting millions of people. As discussed above, sleep deprivation is caused by a host of factors, ranging from environmental to health-related issues. Moreover, sleep deficiency has countless effects, most of which may become fatal in cases where the disorder is chronic.

Conroy, Deirdre A., et al. “ The Effects of COVID-19 Stay-at-home Order on Sleep, Health, and Working Patterns: A Survey Study of US Health Care Workers. ” Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine , vol. 17, no. 2, Feb. 2021, pp. 185–91.

Gaine, Marie E., et al. “ Altered Hippocampal Transcriptome Dynamics Following Sleep Deprivation. ” Molecular Brain, vol. 14, no. 1, Aug. 2021.

Griggs, Stephanie, et al. “ Socioeconomic Deprivation, Sleep Duration, and Mental Health During the First Year of the COVID-19 Pandemic. ” International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, vol. 19, no. 21, Nov. 2022, p. 14367.

Wang, Jun, and Xiaomin Ren. “ Association Between Sleep Duration and Sleep Disorder Data From the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey and Stroke Among Adults in the United States .” Medical Science Monitor , vol. 28, June 2022.

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Generation Anxiety: smartphones have created a gen Z mental health crisis – but there are ways to fix it

Those born after 1995, argues Jonathan Haidt in his new book, were the first people in history to go through puberty with a portal to an alternative universe in their pockets – and the toll this has taken on their wellbeing has been devastating

S uppose that when your first child turned nine, a visionary billionaire whom you’d never met chose her to join the first permanent human settlement on Mars. Unbeknown to you, she had signed herself up for the mission because she loves outer space, and, besides, all of her friends have signed up. She begs you to let her go.

You hear her desire, so before saying no, you agree at least to learn more. You learn that the reason they’re recruiting children is because they will better adapt to the unusual conditions of Mars than adults. If children go through puberty and its associated growth spurt on Mars, their bodies will be permanently tailored to it, unlike settlers who come over as adults.

You find other reasons for fear. First, there’s the radiation, against which Mars does not have a protective shield. And then there’s the low‐gravity environment, which would put children at high risk of developing deformities in their skeletons, hearts, eyes, and brains. Did the planners take this vulnerability of children into account? As far as you can tell, no.

So, would you let her go? Of course not. You realise this is a completely insane idea – sending children to Mars, perhaps never to return to Earth. The project leaders do not seem to know anything about child development and do not seem to care about children’s safety. Worse still: the company did not require proof of parental permission.

No company could ever take our children away and endanger them without our consent, or they would face massive liabilities. Right?

A t the turn of the millennium, technology companies created a set of world-changing products that transformed life not just for adults all over the world but for children, too. Young people had been watching television since the 1950s but the new tech was far more portable, personalised and engaging than anything that came before. Yet the companies that developed them had done little or no research on the mental health effects. When faced with growing evidence that their products were harming young people, they mostly engaged in denial, obfuscation, and public relations campaigns. Companies that strive to maximise “engagement” by using psychological tricks to keep young people clicking were the worst offenders. They hooked children during vulnerable developmental stages, while their brains were rapidly rewiring in response to incoming stimulation. This included social media companies, which inflicted their greatest damage on girls, and video game companies and pornography sites, which sank their hooks deepest into boys. By designing a slew of addictive content that entered through kids’ eyes and ears, and by displacing physical play and in-person socialising, these companies have rewired childhood and changed human development on an almost unimaginable scale.

What legal limits have we imposed on these tech companies so far? Virtually none, apart from the requirement for children under 13 to get parental consent before they can sign a contract with a company. But the law in most countries didn’t require age verification; so long as a child checked a box to assert that she was old enough (or put in the right fake birthday), she could go almost anywhere on the internet – and sign into any social media app – without her parents’ knowledge or consent. (The law is being tightened in the UK, due to the 2023 Online Safety Act , and is under review in the US.)

Jonathan Haidt

Jonathan Haidt is a leading American social psychologist. He is professor of ethical leadership at the New York University Stern School of Business. Born in New York in 1963, he studied philosophy at Yale University and psychology at the Universities of Pennsylvania and Chicago. His books include The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom and The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion . His most recent title was the bestselling The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure , acclaimed in the New York Times and the Atlantic as a compelling, unprecedented, frightening analysis of how a generation of students has been politically and socially stunted by trigger warnings, cancel culture and a false and deepening belief in its own fragility.

Thus, the generation born after 1995 – gen Z – became the first generation in history to go through puberty with a portal in their pockets that called them away from the people nearby and into an alternative universe that was exciting, addictive and unstable. Succeeding socially in that universe required them to devote a large part of their consciousness to managing what became their online brand, posting carefully curated photographs and videos of their lives. This was now necessary to gain acceptance from peers, the oxygen of adolescence, and to avoid online shaming, the nightmare of adolescence. Gen Z teenagers got sucked into spending many hours of each day scrolling through the shiny happy posts of friends, acquaintances and distant influencers. They watched increasing quantities of user-generated videos and streamed entertainment, fed to them by algorithms that were designed to keep them online as long as possible. They spent far less time playing with, talking to, touching, or even making eye contact with their friends and families, thereby reducing their participation in social behaviour that is essential for successful human development.

The members of gen Z are, therefore, the test subjects for a radical new way of growing up, far from the real‐world interactions of small communities in which humans evolved. Call it the Great Rewiring of Childhood. It’s as if they became the first generation to grow up on Mars. And it has turned them into the Anxious Generation.

T here was little sign of an impending mental illness crisis among adolescents in the 2000s. Then, quite suddenly, in the early 2010s, things changed. In just five years between 2010 and 2015, across the UK, the US, Canada, Australia and beyond, the number of young people with anxiety, depression and even suicidal tendencies started to rise sharply. Among US teenagers, those who reported experiencing a long period of feeling “sad, empty, or depressed” or a long period in which they “lost interest and became bored with most of the things they usually enjoy” – classic symptoms of depression – surged by roughly 150%. In other words, mental illness became roughly two and a half times more prevalent. The increases were similar for both sexes and happened across all races and social classes. And among a variety of mental health diagnoses, anxiety rates rose the most.

More recent data for 2020 was collected partly before and partly after the Covid shutdowns, and by then one out of every four American teen girls had experienced a major depressive episode in the previous year. Things got worse in 2021, but the majority of the rise was in place before the pandemic.

I addressed some of these issues in The Coddling of the American Mind , a book [about modern identity politics and hypersensitivity on university campuses] I wrote in 2017 with free speech campaigner Greg Lukianoff. The day after we published, an essay appeared in the New York Times with the headline: “ The Big Myth About Teenage Anxiety .” In it, a psychiatrist raised several important objections to what he saw as a rising moral panic around teenagers and smartphones. He pointed out that most of the studies showing a rise in mental illness were based on “self‐reports”, which does not necessarily mean that there is a change in underlying rates of mental illness. Perhaps young people just became more willing to self‐diagnose or talk honestly about their symptoms? Or perhaps they started to mistake mild symptoms of anxiety for a mental disorder?

Was the psychiatrist right to be sceptical? He was certainly right that we need to look at multiple indicators to know if mental illness really is increasing. A good way to do that is to look at changes in figures not self‐reported by teens. For example, the number of adolescents brought in for emergency psychiatric care, or admitted to hospitals each year because they deliberately harmed themselves, either in a suicide attempt, or in what is called non‐suicidal self-injury, such as cutting oneself without the intent to die.

The rate of self‐harm for young adolescent girls nearly tripled from 2010 to 2020. The rate for older girls (ages 15–19) doubled, while the rate for women over 24 actually went down during that time. So whatever happened in the early 2010s, it hit preteen and young teen girls harder than any other group. Similarly, the suicide rate for young adolescents increased by 167% from 2010 to 2021.

The rapid increases in rates of self‐harm and suicide, in conjunction with the self‐report studies showing increases in anxiety and depression, offers a strong rebuttal to those who were sceptical about the existence of a mental health crisis. I am not saying that none of the increase in anxiety and depression is due to a greater willingness to report these conditions (which is a good thing) or that some adolescents began pathologising normal anxiety and discomfort (which is not a good thing). But the pairing of self‐reported suffering with behavioural changes tells us that something big changed in the lives of adolescents in the early 2010s.

Anxiety: the numbers

Proportion of British 18- to 24-year-olds now report recently experiencing depression or anxiety, compared with one in four in 2000.

Number of children and young people in England are waiting for mental health support, meaning one in every 50 children is on the waiting list.

Proportion of gen Z in the UK feel anxious frequently or all the time– a big jump from the one-third of gen X and one-quarter of baby boomers who said the same.

Proportion of 18- to 24-year-olds report feeling stressed and not having a ‘good quality of life’.

One in eight young people aged 17-24 report having self-harmed last year and an estimated 100,000 people were admitted to hospital as a result of self-harm.

Proportion of secondary school pupils in the UK stayed away from school last year owing to anxiety.

The arrival of the smartphone in 2007 changed life for everyone. Of course, teenagers had mobile phones since the late 1990s, but they were basic flip phones with no internet access, mostly useful for communicating directly with friends and family, one‐on‐one. Some adolescents had internet access via a home computer or laptop but it wasn’t till they got smartphones that they could be online all the time, even when away from home. According to a survey conducted by the US non-profit group Common Sense Media , by 2016, 79% of teens owned a smartphone, as did 28% of children between the ages of eight and 12.

As teenagers got smartphones, they began spending more time in the virtual world. A Common Sense report, in 2015 , found that teens with a social media account reported spending about two hours a day on social media and around seven hours a day of leisure time online. Another 2015 report , by the Washington thinktank Pew Research, reveals that one out of every four teens said that they were online “almost constantly”. By 2022, that number had nearly doubled, to 46%. These “almost constantly” numbers are startling, and may be the key to explaining the sudden collapse of adolescent mental health. These extraordinarily high rates suggest that even when members of gen Z are not on their devices and appear to be doing something in the real world, such as sitting in class, eating a meal, or talking to you, a substantial portion of their attention is monitoring or worrying (being anxious) about events in the social metaverse. As the MIT professor Sherry Turkle wrote in 2015 about life with smartphones: “We are forever elsewhere.”

Faced with so many virtual activities, social media platforms and video streaming channels, many adolescents (and adults) lost the ability to be fully present with the people around them, which changed social life for everyone, even for the small minority that did not use these platforms. Social patterns, role models, emotions, physical activity, and even sleep patterns were fundamentally recast, for adolescents, over the course of just five years.

W hen I present these findings in public, someone often objects by saying something like: “Of course young people are depressed – just look at the state of the world in the 21st century. It began with the 9/11 attacks, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the global financial crisis. They’re growing up with global warming, school shootings in the US and elsewhere, political polarisation, inequality, and ever-rising student loan debt. Not to mention wars in Ukraine and the Middle East.”

But while I agree that the 21st century is off to a bad start, the timing does not support the argument that gen Z is anxious and depressed because of rising national or global threats. Even if we were to accept the premise that the events from 9/11 through to the global financial crisis had substantial effects on adolescent mental health, they would have most heavily affected the millennial generation (born between 1981 and 1995), who found their world shattered and their prospects for upward mobility reduced. But this did not happen; their rates of mental illness did not worsen during their teenage years. Also, had the financial crisis and other economic concerns been major contributors, adolescent mental health would have plummeted in 2009, the darkest year of the financial crisis, and it would have improved throughout the 2010s as the unemployment rate fell, the stock market rose, and the global economy heated up.

There is just no way to pin the surge of adolescent anxiety and depression on any economic event or trend that I can find.

When Covid arrived in 2020, the disease and the lockdowns made sociogenic illness more likely among people of any age. Covid was a global threat and a stressor. The lockdowns led teens to spend even more time on social media, especially TikTok, which was relatively new. But the steep rise in anxiety and depression among adolescents was in place well before the pandemic.

The other explanation I often hear is that gen Z is anxious and depressed because of climate change, which will affect their lives more than those of older generations. Their concern is legitimate, but impending threats to a nation or generation (as opposed to an individual) do not historically cause rates of mental illness to rise. When countries are attacked, either by military force or by terrorism, citizens usually rally around the flag and one another. They are infused with a strong sense of purpose and suicide rates drop. When young people rally together around a political cause, from opposing the Vietnam war in the 1960s through peak periods of earlier climate activism in the 1970s and 1990s, they become energi sed , not dispirited or depressed.

People don’t get depressed when they face threats collectively; they get depressed when they feel isolated, lonely, or useless.

Parents I talk to about smartphones, social media and video games tell stories of “constant conflict”. They try to lay down rules and enforce limits, but there are so many arguments about why a rule needs to be relaxed, and so many ways around the rules, that family life all over the world has come to be dominated by disagreements about technology. Maintaining family rituals such as mealtimes can feel like resisting an ever-rising tide.

A mother I spoke with in Boston told me about the efforts she and her husband had made to keep their 14- year-old daughter, Emily, away from Instagram. They could see the damaging effect it was having on her. To curb her access, they tried various ways to monitor and limit the app on her phone. However, life became a permanent struggle in which Emily eventually found ways around the restrictions. In one episode, she got into her mother’s phone, disabled the monitoring software, and threatened to kill herself if her parents reinstalled it. Her mother told me:

“It feels like the only way to remove social media and the smartphone from her life is to move to a deserted island. She attended summer camp for six weeks each summer where no phones were permitted – no electronics at all. When we picked her up from camp she was her normal self. But as soon as she started using her phone again it was back to the same agitation and glumness.”

Platforms such as Instagram – where users post content about themselves, then wait for the judgments and comments of others, and the social comparison that goes with it – have larger and more harmful effects on girls and young women than on boys and young men. The more time a girl spends on social media, the more likely she is to be depressed or anxious. Girls who say that they spend five or more hours each weekday on social media are three times as likely to be depressed as those who report no social media time. The difference is far less marked with boys. Girls spend more time on social media, and the platforms they are on – particularly Instagram and Snapchat – are the worst for mental health. A 2017 study in the UK asked teenage girls to rate the effects of the most popular social media platforms on different parts of their wellbeing, including anxiety, loneliness, body image, and sleep. Teenagers rated Instagram as the worst of the big five apps, followed by Snapchat. YouTube was the only platform that received a positive overall score.

The 2021 song Jealousy, Jealousy by Olivia Rodrigo sums up what it’s like for many girls to scroll through social media today. The song begins: “I kinda wanna throw my phone across the room/ ’Cause all I see are girls too good to be true.” Rodrigo then says that “co-comparison” with the perfect bodies and paper-white teeth of girls she doesn’t know is slowly killing her.

Psychologists have long studied social comparison and its pervasive effects. The American social psychologist Mark Leary says it’s as if we all have a “sociometer” in our brains – a gauge that runs from nought to 100, telling us where we stand in the local prestige rankings. When the needle drops, it triggers an alarm – anxiety – that motivates us to change our behaviour and get the needle back up. So what happened when most girls in a school got Instagram and Snapchat accounts and started posting carefully edited highlight reels of their lives and using filters and editing apps to improve their virtual beauty and online brand? Many girls’ sociometers plunged, because most were now below what appeared to them to be the average. All around the developed world, an anxiety alarm went off in girls’ minds, at approximately the same time.

A 13-year-old girl on Reddit explained how seeing other girls on social media made her feel, using similar words to Olivia Rodrigo:

i cant stop comparing myself. it came to a point where i wanna kill myself cause u dont want to look like this and no matter what i try im still ugly/feel ugly. i constantly cry about this. it probably started when i was 10, im now 13. back when i was 10 i found a girl on tiktok and basically became obsessed with her. she was literally perfect and i remember being unimaginably envious of her. throughout my pre-teen years, i became “obsessed” with other pretty girls.

Instagram’s owner, Facebook (now Meta), itself commissioned a study on how Instagram was affecting teens in the US and the UK. The findings were never released, but whistleblower Frances Haugen smuggled out screenshots of internal documents and shared them with reporters at the Wall Street Journal . The researchers found that Instagram is particularly bad for girls: “Teens blame Instagram for increases in the rate of anxiety and depression… This reaction was unprompted and consistent across all groups.”

If we confine ourselves to examining data about depression, anxiety, and self-harm, we’d conclude that the Great Rewiring has been harder on girls than on boys. But there’s plenty of evidence that boys are suffering too.

A key factor was boys taking up online multiplayer video games in the late 2000s and smartphones in the early 2010s, both of which pulled them decisively away from face-to-face or shoulder-to-shoulder interaction. At that point, I think we see signs of a “mass psychological breakdown”. Or, at least, a mass psychological change. Once boys had multiple internet-connected devices, many of them got lost in cyberspace, which made them more fragile, fearful, and risk averse on Earth. Beginning the early 2010s, boys across the western world began showing concerning declines in their mental health. By 2015, a staggering number of them said that they had no close friends, that they were lonely, and that there was no meaning or direction to their lives.

T he overwhelming feeling I get from the families of both boys and girls is that they are trapped and powerless in the face of the biggest mental health crisis in history for their children. What should they – what should we – do?

When I say that we need to delay the age at which children get smartphones and social media accounts, the most common response is: “I agree with you, but it’s too late.” It has become so ordinary for 11-year-olds to walk around staring at their phones, swiping through bottomless feeds, that many people cannot imagine that we could change it if we wanted to. “That ship has sailed,” they tell me.

Yet we are not helpless. It often feels that way because smartphones, social media, market forces, and social influence combine to pull us into a trap that social scientists call a collective action problem. Children starting secondary school are trapped in a collective action problem when they arrive for their first day and see that some of their classmates have smartphones and are connecting on Instagram and Snapchat, even during class time. That puts pressure on them to get a smartphone and social media as well.

It’s painful for parents to hear their children say: “ Everyone else has a smartphone. If you don’t get me one, I’ll be excluded from everything .” Many parents therefore give in and buy their child a smartphone at age 11, or younger. As more parents relent, pressure grows on the remaining kids and parents, until the community reaches a stable but unfortunate equilibrium: Everyone really does have a smartphone.

How do we escape from these traps? Collective action problems require collective responses: parents can support one another by sticking together. There are four main types of collective response, and each can help us to bring about major change:

1. No smartphones before year 10 Parents should delay children’s entry into round-the-clock internet access by giving only basic phones with limited apps and no internet browser before the age of 14.

2. No social media before 16 Let children get through the most vulnerable period of brain development before connecting them to an avalanche of social comparison and algorithmically chosen influencers.

3. Phone-free schools Schools must insist that students store their phones, smartwatches, and any other devices in phone lockers during the school day, as per the new non-statutory guidance issued by the UK government. That is the only way to free up their attention for one another and for their teachers.

4. Far more unsupervised play and childhood independence That’s the way children naturally develop social skills, overcome anxiety, and become self-governing young adults.

These four reforms are not hard to implement – if many of us do them at the same time. They cost almost nothing. They will work even if we never get help from our legislators or from the tech giants, which continue to resist pressure to protect young users’ safety and wellbeing. If most of the parents and schools in a community were to enact all four, I believe they would see substantial improvements in adolescent mental health within two years. Given that AI and spatial computing (such as Apple’s new Vision Pro goggles) are about to make the virtual world far more immersive and addictive, I think we’d better start today.

This is an edited extract from The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt, published by Allen Lane (£25). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com . Delivery charges may apply

In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email [email protected] or [email protected] . In the US, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 988, chat on 988lifeline.org , or text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis counselor. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org

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• v.16(2); 2021 Apr

Social Media Use and Sleep Disturbance among Adolescents: A Cross-Sectional Study

Azar pirdehghan.

1 School of Public Health and Research Center for Health Sciences, Hamadan University of Medical Sciences, Hamadan, Iran.

Edris Khezmeh

2 Department of Community and Preventive Medicine, School of Public Health and Research Center for Health Sciences, Hamadan University of Medical Sciences, Hamadan, Iran.

Soheila Panahi

3 Department of Psychiatry, School of Medicine, Hamadan University of Medical Sciences, Hamadan, Iran.

Objective: Recently, social media use has become prevalent in the daily lives of many adolescents. This study was performed to address adolescents’ sleep quality and depression in relation to social media use.

Method : This cross-sectional cluster-sampling study was directed on 576 high school students in 2019 in Hamadan, Iran. Three standard self-reported questionnaires were used for recording sleep patterns (Pittsburgh Sleep Questionnaire Index (PSQI)), depression (Beck), and Electronic Media Use. Data was analyzed using SPSS. P-values less than 0.05 were considered as being significant.

Results: Among the adolescents 290 (50.3%) were female and the age median was 17. The average time of all Smart devices used was 7.5±4.4 hours per day. Among all students 62.3 % (359) said that they had their cell phone on in their bedroom when they sleep. In boys, the amount of social media use was significantly more than girls and poor sleep quality had a statically significant relationship with social media use (P-Value = 0.02). Additionally, there was a reverse correlation between the average use of electronic devices and sleep duration (Spearman’s rho = 0.17; P-Value = 0.03), and a direct correlation between the average use in social media and depression (Spearman’s rho = 0.171; P-Value < 0.001).

Conclusion: In this important age group a high level of electronic devices use and its relationship with sleep quality, daily dysfunction, sleep duration and depression is worthy of issue awareness among health managers, parents and teachers for providing interventional programs, based on standard updated guidelines, in order to reduce the problem and familiarize adolescents and their parents, at home or school, with restrictions on using devices to view and participate in social media.

Electronic Media Device Use (EMDU) such as computers, smartphones, television, and video games has recently become prevalent in the lives of adolescents all over the world ( 1 ). Extensive use of handheld Smart devices is increasing but based on several studies the use has been different; from 50% to more than 90 % ( 2 - 5 ).

This irregular electronic device use has been associated with several harmful outcomes including a higher body mass index (BMI) ( 6 ), neck or shoulder pain ( 7 ), symptoms of unclear vision and eye strain ( 6 ), reduced daytime functioning ( 8 ), and parent-child relationship problems ( 9 ).

Sleep disturbances are considered among the main ten caution signs of adolescent suicide ( 10 ) and improving troubled sleep may be a protective factor in the prevention of mental problems specially, depression ( 11 , 12 ).

Previous research has demonstrated that sleep disturbance might be an important risk factor in several mental health problems in adolescents ( 13 , 14 15 ). Limitation in device use, up to two hours a day, was recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics ( 16 ).

Several studies have demonstrated that use of the abovementioned electronic devices causes sleep damage by keeping late bedtimes, limiting the sleep hours, and sleep quality disturbances ( 8 , 17 - 20 ).

Jiewen Yang et al., in their study for finding the association between problematic Internet use and sleep in adolescents, found that problematic Internet users were at a higher risk (2.41) of sleep disturbance, and they recommended that improving the sleep patterns of adolescents and Internet use was needed ( 21 ).

In another study, Hiu Yan Wong and colleagues suggested that both severities of Internet gaming disorder and social media addiction are associated with more psychological distress and poorer sleep quality ( 22 ).

In Iran, Poorolajal and colleagues assessed 4,261 university students and found that one-third of medical students suffered from problematic Internet use which was associated with poor general health (OR=12.1) and risk of suicidal behavior (OR = 2.7) ( 23 ).In a study by Azizi performed on 360 university students, it was declared that social networking addiction of the students was at a moderate level and there was a negative correlation between the overall use of social networks and academic performance of the students (r = − 0. 210, p < 0.01) ( 24 ).

Considering the high prevalence of social media use and the importance of sleep patterns and the effect on the physical and psychological health in adolescents, including insufficient studies on this important age group in Iran, our study was designed to address the adolescent-sleep-quality-relationship with social media use in order to plan interventional programs for reducing the problem, and to familiarize adolescents and their parents, at home or in school, with restrictions on using devices to enter social media environments based on standard updated guidelines.

Materials and Methods

Procedure and Sample

Details about the method was already mentioned in previous article ( 25 ) as they were in parallel with each other in a common survey.

The sample size was calculated at 720 individuals out of 6,830 high school students. Considering that p = 0.25 for prevalence of sleep disturbance ( 26 ) (d = 0.1, z = 1.96, cluster effect = 1.5, and attrition rate = 20%) the following sample size formula was used:

We applied a self-reported questionnaire consisting of 4 parts. The first part of the questionnaire was included in the demographic questions. In the second part we applied the Farsi version of the Pittsburgh Sleep Questionnaire Index (PSQI). The standard self-reported valid and reliable (α: 0.83) questionnaire for recording sleep quality ( 27 ) and the Farsi language version is available. The questionnaire, itself, has optimal psychometric properties for assessment of subjective sleep quality in clinical and research settings. Cronbach's alpha coefficient was shown at 0.77 in previous research ( 27 ) and questions could be answered by a 3-level scale (never, sometimes; 2 or 3 times in a week, often; more than 3 times in a week). A standard instruction was used for determining the score of sleep quality in different subscales.

The instrument for recording the amount of an electronic device used in bed before sleep on a regular school night was applied similar to what Lemola and Hysing had used in previous research ( 2 , 8 ). Cronbach’s alpha was 0.70. Media use in bed was checked using four items: how often participants play video games, watch TV, talk on the cell phone, and spend time online or surfing the Internet before going to sleep. Answers were classified ranging from 1 (never), 5 (most of the time) to always (5–7 days per week). A higher sum score represents more electronic media consumption before going to sleep.

For the Electronic Media Use during a day, students were asked to indicate how many minutes and hours they [ 1 ] watch TV, [ 2 ] play video games, and [ 3 ] spend time online during weekdays ( 2 ).

Beck Depression’s Inventory questionnaire was used in for measuring depression as a valid and reliable questionnaire. The internal consistency was demonstrated at 0.9 and the retest reliability ranged from 0.73 to 0.96 ( 28 ).The educational status was defined based on semester average score: ≥ 17 was considered fine, 14-16 moderate, and < 14 was evaluated as poor.

Ethical Consideration

All necessary ethical consideration was mentioned in previous article ( 25 ).

The study commenced after approval from the institute’s ethical committee (ID: IR.UMSHA.REC.1397.978).

Statistical Analysis

The data were entered into SPSS. Analysis strategy was explained formerly ( 25 ).

The mean age of the 576 assessed students was 16.53 ± 0.69 years (Min- Max: 15-19); 286 (49.7%) were boys where 132 (22.9%) were studying mathematics, 319 (55.4%) were in experimental fields, and the rest were in humanities.

Bedtime was 1a.m. and after in 34.8 % (201) of the students, sleep latency was more than 15 minutes in 36.6% (218), and sleep duration was 6 hours or less in 26.3% (152).

The average of all devices used was 7.5±4.4 hours per day. In boys, the time spent using social media was significantly more than girls, and computer games in girls was statistically more than boys ( Table 1 ).

Average Use of Electronic Devices in High School Students

Results obtained about ‘before bedtime electronic devices use’ showed that watching TV was more frequent in girls (P-Value < 0.001) and overindulgence of watching TV was significantly related to severe, and very severe, daily dysfunction (P-Value = 0.002). However, watching TV was less in depressed adolescents (P-Value = 0.026). Playing computer games was more frequent in girls and adolescents who have been studying in the mathematics field (P-Value < 0.001), which could increase moderate and severe daily dysfunction (P-Value = 0.025). Sending SMS text messages or talking on the cell phone, just before bedtime, were more prevalent in girls and students studying in the humanities. Finally, sleep disorder and moderate to severe daily dysfunction were significantly related to more frequent use of the Internet or social media. Details about ‘before bedtime electronic devices use’ and related variables have been shown in ( Table 2 ).

Before Bedtime Watching TV or Playing Computer Games and Related Variables in High School Students

To avoid crowding the table, frequency of variables that didn’t have a significant relationship with electronic device use were not shown.

Among all students, only 34 persons (5.9%) reported that they did not have a cell phone, and 62.3% (359) said that they did have a cell phone and that it was on in their room while they were sleeping ( Figure 1 ).

Mobile Status while Sleeping in High School Students

In the analysis for determining the relationship between the amount of social media use and sleep quality, and total sleep disorder, results showed that in adolescents with poor sleep quality their average social media use was 36 minutes more than the others. Poor sleep quality had a statistically significant relationship with a high amount of social media use (P-Value = 0.02) ( Table 3 ). In addition, results showed that the higher the average hours use of social media, the greater overall score of sleep disorder was seen (P-Value < 0.001) ( Table 4 ). The reverse correlation between average use of electronic devices and sleep duration (Spearman’s rho = -0.17; P-Value = 0.03) ( Figure 2 ) and a direct correlation between average use of social media and depression (Spearman’s rho = 0.171; P-Value < 0.001) ( Figure 3 ) was reported.

Relationship between Amount of Social Media Use and Sleep Quality and Total Sleep Disorder in High School Students

Before Bedtime Mobile Use and Related Variables in High School Students

Reverse Correlation between Average Use of Electronic Devices (TV, Mobile and Computer Games) and Sleep Duration in High School Students

Direct Correlation between Average Use of Social Media Use and Depression in High School Students

This study on 576 high school students in 10 th to 12 th grades, assessed the relationship between electronic devices use and sleep pattern in adolescents.

The average use of devices (TV, cell phone, and computer games) was more than 7 hours a day and especially, for social media use, was more than 2 hours per day; longer than recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics, and which has been accepted internationally ( 16 ).

Nearly a third of the adolescents’ sleep duration was 6 hours or less and it was correlated with the amount of time Smart devices were used. There is strong evidence linking poor sleep, including shorter sleep duration ( 29 ), daily dysfunction ( 30 ), and longer sleep latency ( 31 ), with general Smart devices and Internet use. Therefore, in this important age group high levels of electronic devices use is worthy of assessment among health managers, parents and teachers.

Several studies have investigated the effect of Internet use and computer games in adolescents. For instance, in a research, 10.8% of the adolescents were moderate or severely addicted to the Internet and the risk of Internet overuse and addiction was higher in boys including adolescents who experienced recent stressful events ( 32 ). Mikiko Tokiya et al. indicated that sleep disturbance in more than half of the students in their research and a significant relationship between insufficient sleep and Internet addiction was shown in Japanese adolescents. That study found a higher percentage of sleep disturbances in private high school students and adolescents with depressed moods among other related variables ( 33 ).

Durkee et al. in another study, for finding the relationship between Pathological Internet Use (PIU) and Risk-Behaviors among European adolescents, showed that adolescents with poor sleep pattern and risky behaviors showed the strongest associations with pathological Internet use, tobacco use, poor nutrition and physical inactivity. In the study, poor sleeping habits were considered as the strongest factors related to PIU. Moreover, the prevalence of maladaptive Internet users (MIU) was significantly higher among females, whereas PIU was significantly higher in males ( 34 ).

In a study performed by Gholamian et al. it was reported that nearly one third of high school students are mild to severely addicted to the Internet in Iran and anxiety, depression, and stress among the Internet addicted was significantly higher than among the normal Internet users ( 15 ).

The results of these studies in different cultures can confirm the effect of EMDU on sleep patterns similar to the present research. Whereas, there were some differences in instruments for measuring the dependency of students to EMDU, different grades of the students, and various assessed variables.

Among all students involved in the present study more than 60% reported that they have a cell phone and it is on, in their room, while they are sleeping. The other studies have shown different results based on location and grade of students. In Lenhart et al. findings show 86% of the adolescents fell asleep with their phones, under their pillows, or in their hands ( 35 ). In a survey conducted by Haug et al. over 85% of the adolescents used at least one Smart device every day, and more than half of them used them more than 2 h per day ( 36 ), and its use for leisure was higher in use than studying. Although the reasons for use (studying or leisure) was not specified in our study, using for leisure can be considered a negative side effect of device use which should attract the specific attention for behavior control by adolescents’ health officials.

In a recent study, there was particular attention paid to the consequences of excessive social media use on depression besides sleep disturbance ( 25 ). The significant relationship between excessive social media use and poor sleep quality, daily dysfunction, sleep disorder and depression was shown in the findings. One study indicated that social media use at night and emotional interests in social media are two important elements in relation to adolescent sleep and wellbeing ( 37 ). Hallmarks in social media use such as sleep interruptions from incoming text messages ( 30 ), the pressure of being available, and feeling stressed and guilty in missing a new message, content or call ( 38 ), has been mentioned as reasons for depression referred to in previous studies. Age vulnerability of adolescents for anxiety and depression ( 39 , 40 ), besides the interfering digital screen exposure at bedtime with melatonin production ( 41 ), and the stress of availability ( 42 ) in social media use can be considered as the most important reasons for increasing risk of depression by excessive use of social media.

The average use of electronic devices (TV, cell phone and computer games) was more than 7, and especially for social media, was more than 2 hours per day. This high level of social media use was positively associated with sleep quality, daily dysfunction, sleep duration and depression. Additionally, more than 60% of students said that they have a cell phone and it is on, in their room, while they are sleeping. In boys, the amount of using social media was significantly more than girls and watching TV was more frequent in girls and was significantly related with severe, and very severe, daily dysfunction. Computer games were more frequent in girls, and it could increase moderate and severe daily dysfunction. Sending SMS text messages or talking on the cell phone just before bedtime was more prevalent in girls.

There were, however, some limitations in the study. The importance of sleep health and electronic devices, especially social media use, in adolescents as an important age group and the high number of the sample size were advantages of our study. The limitations will need to be considered in future research. First, this is a cross-sectional study and lower sleep quality is not necessarily the consequence of using social media, so we cannot demonstrate causality in our interpretation. Second, our sample was limited to adolescents in specific grades (10 th to 12 th grade high school students), so results may not be generalized to all adolescents. Third, for determining the consequence of excessive electronic devices and social media use we cannot rely on such a weak correlation despite statistical significance. As a result, more empowered studies are recommended in the future. The next recall bias might be considered in the study because the students, who had sleep problems, probably remembered their excessive use of electronic devices and social media use, more than others. Finally, identifying reasons for using social media such as leisure time or learning are needed in future studies, and interventional programs for reducing the social media use and modifying sleep problems must be considered in adolescents health care packages.

The present study investigated associations between electronic devices and social media use and two important health outcomes (i.e. sleep quality and depression) among Iranian students in Hamedan, Iran. The results showed a high level of social media use which was positively associated with sleep quality, daily dysfunction, sleep duration and depression. Additionally, more than half of the students said that they have cell phones and it is on in their room while they are sleeping. Hence, in this important age group it is worthy of concern for health officials, parents and teachers to provide interventional programs in order to reduce the problem and familiarize adolescents and their parents, at home or school, with restrictions when using devices to view social media sites based on present standard updated guidelines.

Acknowledgment

We gratefully acknowledge all managers and staff in the Central Department of Education, and all managers of the participating high schools in Hamadan Province that helped in the collection of all the data.

Conflict of Interest

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Coddling Plus Devices? Unequivocal Disaster for Our Kids.

In “The Anxious Generation,” Jonathan Haidt says we’re failing children — and takes a firm stand against tech.

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By Tracy Dennis-Tiwary

Tracy A. Dennis-Tiwary is a professor of psychology and neuroscience, director of the Emotion Regulation Lab at Hunter College.

• Published March 26, 2024 Updated March 27, 2024
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THE ANXIOUS GENERATION: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness , by Jonathan Haidt

Imagine that your 10-year-old daughter gets chosen to join the first human settlement on Mars. She’s ready to blast off but needs your permission.

You learn that the billionaire architect of the mission hasn’t considered the risks posed by the red planet’s toxic environment, including kids developing “deformities in their skeletons, hearts, eyes and brains.”

Would you let her go?

It’s with this “Black Mirror”-esque morality play that Jonathan Haidt sets the tone for everything that follows in his erudite, engaging, combative, crusading new book, “The Anxious Generation.” Mars is a stand-in for the noxious world of social media. If we’d say no to that perilous planet, we should of course say no to this other alien universe.

Instead, we hem and haw about the risks, failing to keep our kids safely grounded in nondigital reality. The result can no longer be ignored: deformities of the brain and heart — anxiety, depression, suicidality — plaguing our youth.

Haidt, a social psychologist, is a man on a mission to correct this collective failure. His first step is to convince us that youth are experiencing a “tidal wave” of suffering. In a single chapter and with a dozen carefully curated graphs, he depicts increases in mental illness and distress beginning around 2012. Young adolescent girls are hit hardest, but boys are in pain, too, as are older teens.

The timing of this is key because it coincides with the rise of what he terms phone-based childhood. From the late 2000s to the early 2010s, smartphones, bristling with social media apps and fueled by high-speed internet, became ubiquitous. Their siren call, addictive by design and perpetually distracting, quickly spirited kids to worlds beyond our control.

It wasn’t phones alone. A second phenomenon coincided with the rise of the machines: the decline of play-based childhood. This change started in the 1980s, with kidnapping fears and stranger danger driving parents toward fear-based overparenting. This decimated children’s unsupervised, self-directed playtime and restricted their freedom of movement.

With parents and children alike stuck in “Defend mode,” kids were in turn blocked from discovery mode, where they face challenges, take risks and explore — the building blocks of anti-fragility, or the ability to grow stronger through adversity. Compared to a generation ago, our children are spending more time on their phones and less on, well, sex, drugs and rock n’ roll. While fewer hospital visits and teen pregnancies are obvious wins, less risk-taking overall could stunt independence.

That’s why parents, he argues, should become more like gardeners (to use Alison Gopnik’s formulation) who cultivate conditions for children to independently grow and flourish, and less like carpenters, who work obsessively to control, design and shape their offspring. We’ve overprotected our kids in the real world while underprotecting them in the virtual one, leaving them too much to their own devices, literally and figuratively.

It’s this one-two punch of smartphones plus overprotective parenting, Haidt posits, that led to the great rewiring of childhood and the associated harms driving mental illness: social deprivation, sleep deprivation, attention fragmentation and addiction. He has a lot to say about each of these.

Here is where his ideas and interpretation of research become contentious. Few would disagree that unhealthy use of social media contributes to psychological problems, or that parenting plays a role. But mental illness is complex: a multidetermined synergy between risk and resilience. Clinical scientists don’t look for magic-bullet explanations. They seek to understand how, for whom and in what contexts psychological problems and resilience emerge.

Haidt does recognize that nuance complicates the issue. Online — but not in the book — he and colleagues report that adolescent girls from “wealthy, individualistic and secular nations” who are “less tightly bound into strong communities” are accounting for much of the crisis. So perhaps smartphones alone haven’t destroyed an entire generation. And maybe context matters. But this rarely comes through in the book.

The final sections offer advice for reducing harmful, predatory aspects of technology and helping parents, educators and communities become more gardener and less carpenter. Some tips will be familiar (ban phones from school; give kids more independence). Other advice might give readers pause (no smartphones before high school; no social media before 16). Yet, taken together, it’s a reasonable list.

Still, Haidt is a digital absolutist, skeptical that healthy relationships between youth and social media are possible. On this point, he even rebuffs the U.S. Surgeon General’s more measured position. We’re better off banning phones in schools altogether, he asserts. Because, as he quotes a middle school principal, schools without phone bans are like a “zombie apocalypse” with “all these kids in the hallways not talking to each other.”

Whether or not you agree with the zombie apocalypse diagnosis, it’s worth considering the failure of prior absolutist stances. Nancy Reagan’s Just Say No drug campaign? A public health case study in what not to do. During the AIDS crisis, fear mongering and abstinence demands didn’t prevent unsafe sex. Remember the pandemic? Telling Americans to wear masks at all times undermined public health officials’ ability to convince them to wear masks when it really mattered.

Digital absolutism also risks blinding us to other causes — and solutions. In 1960s Britain, annual suicide rates plummeted. Many believed the drop was due to improved antidepressant medications or life just getting better. They weren’t looking in the right place. The phaseout of coal-based gas for household stoves blocked the most common method of suicide: gas poisoning. Means restriction, because it gives the despairing one less opportunity for self-harm, has since become a key strategy for suicide prevention.

“I’ve been struggling to figure out,” Haidt writes, “what is happening to us? How is technology changing us?” His answer: “The phone-based life produces spiritual degradation, not just in adolescents, but in all of us.” In other words: Choose human purity and sanctity over the repugnant forces of technology. This dialectic is compelling, but the moral matrix of the problem — and the scientific foundations — are more complex.

Yes, digital absolutism might convince policymakers to change laws and increase regulation. It might be a wake-up call for some parents. But it also might backfire, plunging us into defense mode and blocking our path of discovery toward healthy and empowered digital citizenship.

THE ANXIOUS GENERATION : How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness | By Jonathan Haidt | Penguin Press | 385 pp. | $30

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