New Delhi, January 17: The amount of time spent on Facebook or other social media doesn’t affect how much sleep college students get each night, a new study has revealed.
The research led by University of Hampshire researchers shows no correlation between the amount of sleep college students get and the time they spend using social media.
“The study indicates that using social media is hardly what keeps students up at night,” said UNH adjunct professor Chuck Martin, whose marketing research class conducted the study.
“Using Facebook, and to a lesser degree YouTube, blogs or Twitter, do not appear to have any impact on how much or how little students sleep,” Martin added.
During the study, researchers defined light users of social media as those who use social media for 31 or fewer minutes. Heavy usage was defined as usage exceeding 60 minutes. Light sleepers were defined as those who sleep seven hours or fewer.
Students who were heavy sleepers were defined as those sleeping nine or more hours. Social networks were defined as Facebook, YouTube, blogs, Twitter, MySpace and LinkedIn.
They found that of heavy users of social media, 60 percent get a light amount of sleep per night. Of light users of social media, 60 percent also get a light amount of sleep per night.
Those who use social networks for 61 or more minutes a day are equally as likely as those who use social networks for 31 or fewer minutes per day to sleep seven or fewer hours per night.
Slightly more than one out of 10 (12 percent) of both heavy and light users of social media sleep nine or more hours per night.
–Agencies