The Longitudinal Effects of Social Media on Sleep Among Youth: A Scoping Review

Social media has become an integral part of our everyday lives. Worldwide, almost 5 billion use social media sites. This marks an increase of over 200 million in the last year (Kemp, 2023). Although research has linked social media use to sleep disturbances, findings remain inconsistent, largely due to heterogeneity in measurement and reliance on self-report. Furthermore, research has assumed a causal pathway from social media use to subsequent sleep, but the preponderance of evidence is cross-sectional limiting directional claims. This scoping review synthesises longitudinal evidence published over the last five years that investigates the impact of social media use on downstream sleep in young people. The majority of studies provide at least some evidence of a negative impact of social media use on bedtime and sleep onset latency, particularly in relation to problematic social media use and excessive use near bedtime. However, the reliance on self-report and non-validated measures of both social media use and sleep limits the strength and breadth of conclusions. Future research should prioritise moving beyond frequency-based metrics of social media to explore how the content of social media use and times of day when used (i.e. nighttime) influences sleep quality longitudinally. Studies should also focus on identifying at-risk groups and account for confounding variables such as socio-economic status and mental health issues. Drawing on the extant evidence, we offer recommendations for clinicians to support a coordinated approach to reducing nighttime and problematic social media use, with the goal of improving sleep outcomes in youth.