New research shows that social media not only affects mental health during waking hours, but can also negatively impact sleep and its quality.

A recent study links social media use to poor sleep quality and a higher prevalence of nightmares. It is the latest study in a series of research linking frequent social media use by teenagers to worrying mental health outcomes.

But at the same time, this is the first research to focus on the negative psychological effect that social media can have on sleep quality and the related sleep disorders it can cause.

Other worrying findings from using social media platforms like TikTok, Instagram, X and Facebook include a higher incidence of depression, increased loneliness and isolation, and a higher risk of cyberbullying and suicide.

"As social media becomes more intertwined with our lives, its impact may even influence our dreams. In fact, we found that individuals who spend more time on social media platforms during the day are more likely to experience nightmares," says Reza Shabahang, lead author of the study and a research psychologist at Flinders University in Australia.

This occurs, in part, because the content one sees on social media "about bullying, political fights, distressing news and social comparisons adds emotional distress, which can lead to nightmares," adds Shelby Harris, a clinical psychologist and neuroscientist at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York (United States), who was not part of the research.

The results of the current study are consistent with other research on sleep quality related to social media platforms and reveal another way in which their use can negatively affect overall health. Even so, social media-related nightmares are still thought to be rare.

Finally, it should be noted that the study has limitations, such as being self-reported and cross-sectional, which does not prove that its results are causal.

When social media becomes a nightmare

The new study followed what Shabahang's research team defined as the "social media-related nightmare scale," a grading that was constructed based on previous ratings of nightmares, related literature, and other studies that explored external influences on sleep quality.

Following this scale, 595 participants noted the frequency of their social media activity and the frequency and intensity with which they experienced technology-related nightmares.

The most common nightmares included conflicts with other social media users, disturbing news, compulsive scrolling, inability to access one's own social media account, and feelings of victimization, helplessness, and loss of control.

These social media-related nightmares "were associated with increased anxiety, decreased calmness, poor sleep quality, and distress about the nightmares," said Asad Khan, lead author of a related study and a biostatistician at the University of Queensland's School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences in Australia.

It's true that sometimes people can experience these adverse effects due to other external factors. However, Pamela Rutledge, director of the Center for Media Psychology Research in California, who was not involved in the research, says: “What is new about this study is that these issues are in the specific context of social media.”

Rutledge says the study is effective in part because it is based on the “sleep continuity hypothesis,” a model of sleep that posits that what we experience during the day is reflected in our dreams.

According to this model, “people who engage most with social media (especially in an anxious or negative way) would be the ones who would have the most nightmares related to it,” says Deirdre Leigh Barrett, a researcher on dreams and sleep at Harvard Medical School in the United States and former president of the International Association for the Study of Dreams.

This approach is key, because the way people use these platforms is likely to directly affect the quality of dreams.

For example, Shabahang notes that people who use social media primarily to connect with family and friends are less likely to experience negative dreams than those who compulsively use it to engage in controversial online debates or to follow accounts that regularly highlight distressing news.

Regardless of one's intentions, disturbing information or negative interactions are often fostered through social platforms.

This happens because their algorithms are "specifically designed to physiologically and psychologically arouse emotions and fuel media addiction, making the brain and body want even more information from social media," says Maida Lynn Chen, a sleep medicine physician and director of the Pediatric Sleep Disorders Center at Seattle Children's Hospital in Washington, United States.

Social media and sleep quality: their impact

Beyond nightmares and unpleasant, distressing dreams, the Flinders study along with other related research shows that poorer sleep quality and sleep disruptions are generally also more common among people who overuse social media apps.

"A large body of research supports the association between overall screen time and poorer sleep health in children and possibly also in adults," says Anthony Levasseur, a sleep researcher at the Centre for Advanced Research in Sleep Medicine in Montreal, Canada.

In fact, Khan's 2024 study of more than 200,000 social media users shows that social media habits and behaviours that interfere with work and school responsibilities and negatively impact interpersonal relationships can also cause enough stress to increase the likelihood of poor sleep.

On the other hand, another study proves that when teenagers hear about missed opportunities or events on social platforms, they experience what is known as FOMO (fear of missing out) intense enough to lose sleep.

"Any socially or emotionally triggering experience can lead to rumination, which could affect both the ability to fall asleep and the ability to stay asleep," adds Lauren Hale, co-author of a recent related study and director of the Population Health and Clinical Outcomes Research graduate program at Stony Brook University in New York.

According to Hale, sleep is also affected by social media use in more practical ways, such as through notifications, noises and vibrations, or other alerts that interrupt or prevent sleep.

More clearly, Chen graphs "if you have your eyes open doing something else, you are not sleeping." He also says that highly engaging content with fast-paced images leads to a more alert brain “that is not ready for sleep.”

Another problem related to too much screen time and sleep is “the disruption of the circadian rhythm due to the blue light emitted by electronic devices,” says Ben Carter, professor of medical statistics at King's College London (United Kingdom).

This light stimulates the blue-light-sensitive retinal ganglion cells, which are photoreceptors in the eye that communicate with the gland responsible for the production of melatonin, explains Levasseur. “This ends up suppressing the production of melatonin, which is the hormone that stimulates sleepiness,” he explains.

Although research shows that some people are more sensitive to blue light stimulation than others, it has been proven that affected melatonin levels increase alertness at bedtime, making it more difficult to fall asleep or stay asleep.