The Impact of Social Media Use on Sleep Quality and Performance Among Collegiate Athletes

Background: Social media (SM) use among young adults has increased significantly in recent years and has been linked to poor sleep quality. College athletes pose a unique risk for poor sleep given their many demands. Currently, limited research is available on the impact of SM use on sleep quality, or the competition performance of college athletes. Hypothesis: College athletes who use more SM will have worse sleep quality and worse competition performance. Methods: A cross-sectional study design was employed among local NCAA Division III athletes. Data was collected via a SM use form, lifestyle survey, and PROMIS sleep disturbance questionnaire. SM volume (hours of SM use per day over 7 days) was recorded using the iPhone screen time function. The main outcome measures were sleep quality, using the PROMIS T-score, and performance, collected through publicly available competition results. Participants were divided into 3 groups based on their SM volume; 1) moderate SM users (SM time ≤ 2hours/day), 2) active SM users (SM time 5hours/day). For sleep quality, an ANCOVA was used to identify differences in the 3 groups while controlling for covariates (i.e. injury status, caffeine use, number of roommates, academic load, catastrophic life event, life balance and sleep medication use) that might impact sleep and performance. For performance, a binary logistic regression model was used to determine the independent association between each variable and competition performance after adjusting for confounders. Results: 87 athletes (age:19.5±1.2 years, 40 males, 47 females) completed the survey. All males participated in track and field, while the females consisted of 37 track athletes and 10 swimmers. Controlling for the effect of lifestyle variables, a difference in sleep quality was identified among the three groups (p=0.025), (Table 1. A pairwise comparison indicated that the sleep quality of super active SM users was worse than moderate SM users (p=0.033) (Figure 1). For competition performance, an independent association was found between increased Facebook time and poor performance after adjusting confounders (aOR: 0.989, 95%CI: 0.978-0.999, p=0.038), (Table 2,3). Conclusion: High SM use appears to have a negative impact on sleep quality. Also, greater SM use may hinder competition performance among college athletes. These findings may have implications for developing SM use guidelines for college athletes to improve their sleep quality and performance. Tables/Figures: Table: see textTable: see textTable: see textFigure: see text