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Always scrolling through your Insta feed or checking what people are up to on Snapchat? All that social media stalking could be doing bad things for your sleep, according to a new study from the Pittsburgh School of Medicine.
The research saw 1,788 adults aged 19-32 answer questionnaires to determine how much they used popular networks like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Google Plus, Instagram, Snapchat, Reddit, Tumblr, Pinterest, Vine and LinkedIn, as well as recording their sleep disturbances.
They found that individuals whose thumbs frequently surfed social networks were three times as likely to suffer from disturbances to sleep.
Lead author Jessica C Levenson PhD, a postdoctoral researcher in Pitt’s Department of Psychiatry, said: “This is one of the first pieces of evidence that social media use really can impact your sleep.”
“And it uniquely examines the association between social media use and sleep among young adults who are, arguably, the first generation to grow up with social media,” she concluded.
So ask yourself: is staring at Facebook for the 50th time today really worth losing a little bit of shut eye? Maybe it’s time we stopped stalking and started sleeping.
