Elsevier

Computers in Human Behavior

Volume 55, Part A, February 2016, Pages 121-126
Computers in Human Behavior

Full length article
The association between the use of social network sites, sleep quality and cognitive function during the day

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2015.09.004Get rights and content

Highlights

  • We examined associations between social media use, sleep and cognitive function.

  • Social network sites (SNS) dependence was assessed with a 9-item questionnaire.

  • Withdrawal and Compulsion were the components of our questionnaire.

  • SNS dependence was correlated with decreased sleep quality and cognitive function.

  • Sleep quality mediated the effect of the dependence on SNS on cognitive failures.

Abstract

Previous studies have suggested that excessive use of the internet can affect the daily cognitive functioning of users. Furthermore, it has been argued that excessive users of the internet could demonstrate addiction behaviour patterns. Social network sites (SNS) are currently one of the most popular applications of internet use and have almost one billion active users. Studies which examined the dependence on the use of internet have found significant association with sleep deprivation. This study examined associations between questionnaire measures of SNS use, sleep quality and everyday cognitive failures in 324 users of SNS. The sample ranged from 18 to 58 years old and was drawn from 29.6% males and 70.4% females from diverse countries and educational backgrounds. Additionally, behaviours indicating potential dependence on SNS were examined with a new-developed questionnaire. Results indicated that increased dependence on SNS was correlated with decreased sleep quality and with increased everyday cognitive failures. The correlation of SNS use with cognitive failures was mediated by sleep quality. Finally, the final nine items of the new developed questionnaire indicated Withdrawal and Compulsion as two distinct but correlated aspects of possible dependence on SNS.

Introduction

The use of the internet constitutes an integral part of daily life activities, especially among young adults (Jones, Johnson-Yale, Pérez, & Schuler, 2007). However, since 1996 an increasing number of researchers have described individuals, using the internet to such an extent, that they started to demonstrate behavioral and psychological patterns seen in other forms of addiction such as drugs, alcohol or gambling (Brenner, 1997, Greenfield, 1999, Young, 1996). The use of internet applications, such as Social Network Sites (SNS) has been increasingly observed since 2004. According to Boyd and Ellison (2007) SNS are:

“Internet applications that allow people to design a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, interact with a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and view profiles of their list of connections and those made by others within the system” (p. 211).

Studies suggest that SNS are mainly used by young adults (Sheldon, 2008) and that their usage has dramatically increased during the last few years (Kuss & Griffiths, 2011). The increase of SNS and the time spend on them led to the question whether excessive use could lead to dependence symptoms (Echeburua & de Corral, 2010). Studies have demonstrated that using SNS to address loneliness and stress (Xu & Tan, 2012) and to maintain and establish new relationships (Wan, 2009, Walsh et al., 2007) significantly predicted dependence symptoms.

Recent studies have used either adapted versions of the Internet Addiction Test (Young, 1998a; e.g. Cam and Isbulan, 2012, Wan, 2009) or have developed their own scales (e.g. Alabi, 2012, Andraessen et al., 2012, Koc and Gulyagci, 2013) to measure SNS addiction. Participants who were identified in these studies as SNS addicted varied from 1.6% to 34% mainly because these studies had used specific and convenient samples (university students and adolescents) and different measures to evaluate SNS addiction. Additionally, they assessed addiction only on one SNS (Griffiths, Kuss, & Demetrovics, 2014). Alternatively, the current study examines dependence on more than one SNS by examining a sample from different educational backgrounds and age groups.

Studies, found that television, computer games and the internet can lead to declination of sleep quality (Choi et al., 2009, Van den Bulck, 2004). Furthermore, a recent literature review (Lam, 2014) suggested that participants who reported sleep problems had 1.5 more chances to be classified as Internet Addicted compare to those who did not report any sleep disturbance.

Moreover, Andraessen et al., 2012 suggested that dependence on SNS was associated with late sleep and late waking hours. Similarly, Wolniczak et al. (2013) found that the participants who were identified as SNS dependent, had 1.3 times greater prevalence of poor sleep quality, than participants who did not report any SNS dependence symptom. However, Wolniczak et al. (2013) examined only Peruvian undergraduate students and investigated dependence on one SNS (Facebook®).

It has been argued that sleep quality affects the functioning of the prefrontal cortex of the brain which is linked to cognitive activities, such as creativity, integration and planning (Cursio, Ferrara, & De Gennaro, 2006). Furthermore, Wilkerson, Boals, and Taylor (2012) examined the relationship of insomnia and everyday cognitive failures in a large sample (N = 941) of young adults (college students) and suggested that insomnia and poor sleep quality were associated particularly with cognitive failures related to distractibility, blunders and poor memory for names. Interestingly, Stickgold and Walker (2007) suggested that sleep quality affects the new learning process, which relates to the ability of the brain to store new learned task to long-term memory and subsequently leads to everyday cognitive failures.

Therefore the aims of this study were to investigate the following research questions: (i) Is there any significant correlation between dependence on SNS, sleep quality and everyday cognitive failures? (ii) Does sleep quality mediate the relationship between SNS dependence and everyday cognitive failures?

We predicted that increased dependence on SNS would be associated with poor sleep quality and an increased level of cognitive failures and that sleep quality would explain the relationship between dependence on SNS and the frequency of everyday cognitive failures.

Section snippets

Participants

A total of 340 participants completed the questionnaires. However, some of the participants were excluded from the present study (n = 16), because they reported specific reasons (e.g. noisy housemates, medication) for not being able to have adequate sleep during the past month. The final sample (N = 324) consisted of 101 males (Mage = 26.11, SD = 6.54) and 231females (Mage = 24.76, SD = 6.37) ranging from 18 to 58 years old from diverse countries (Greece = 61%, UK = 22.6%, other = 16.4) and

Reduction of number of items

An initial PCA was conducted on the 21 items of SMUQ to examine the communality and the significance of correlations values between the items. Two items were excluded from the final analysis due to non-significant correlation (p > .05). Furthermore, 10 items were excluded from the final analysis due to the low communalities values (MacCallum, Widaman, Zhang, & Hong, 1999), suggesting that the variance that these items shared with the remained items was low (Field, 2013).

PCA and final solution of SMUQ

A PCA was conducted (

Discussion

This study was conducted to examine the relationship between dependence on SNS, sleep quality and frequency of everyday cognitive failures. Increased dependence on SNS use was associated with decreased sleep quality and an increased number of cognitive failures during the day.

These results were in accordance with previous findings, which suggested that, excessive use of SNS (Andraessen et al., 2012, Wolniczak et al., 2013), was highly associated with poor sleep quality. Presumptive

Conclusion

The number of SNS users has increased dramatically, reaching one billion users during the last decade. However, recent studies have reported negative consequences in daily functioning and addiction-like symptoms related to SNS use. This study examined the relationship between the dependence on SNS, sleep quality and everyday cognitive failures. A new scale was designed to measure SNS dependence and comprised of questions related to Withdrawal and Compulsion symptoms. Results suggested that

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