‘Twitter teens are sleep deprived’

TEENS who use social media for three hours or more per day have problems falling asleep and then struggle to get up for school the next morning, experts say.

Their new study found that using sites such as Facebook and Twitter also led to frequent wakings and problems getting back to sleep.

Published in BMJ Open, the research involved 1,872 teenagers aged 13 to 15 who were asked about the times they went to sleep, whether they had trouble falling back to sleep after waking in the night and what time they got up the next morning.

They were also asked how many hours per day they spent on social networking or messaging sites or apps such as Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp.

Just over a third of the group (33.7%) were low users of social media (less than one hour per day), while 31.6% were average users (one to three hours a day), 13.9% were high users (three to five hours a day) and 20.8% were very high users (more than five hours a day).

The study found that heavy social media users were 23% more likely to fall asleep late on school nights (after 11pm) compared to average users, while very heavy users were more than twice as likely to fall asleep late.

Heavy users were also 56% more likely to sleep in on school days (after 8am) when they needed to be up, while very heavy users were 97% more likely.

Furthermore, very heavy users were 36% more likely to wake up throughout the night and have trouble getting back to sleep, while heavy users were 8% more likely.

A similar pattern occurred on weekends and holidays.