The Effect of social media on the Sleep Quality of University Students

Abstract

Introduction: One of the greatest effects of COVID-19 pandemic is the escalating culture of technology being practiced worldwide where there is huge change of shift in social media usage. The main objective of this research is to measure the sleep quality of AIMST students and to analyse the relationship between sleep quality and the social networking sites.

Method: The design of this study is cross-sectional study which was conducted from with 347 AIMST students in 2022 in Sungai Petani, Kedah. There were four questionnaires used which consist personalized demographic questionnaire was created to assess social media use and confounding variables followed by the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI), Social Media Use and Need Scales and social media engagement questionnaire (SMEQ). The SMEQ questionnaire will be used to identify the relationship between social media usage and quality of sleep. Then, the data collected was analysed using SPSS with P-values less than 0.05 were considered significant.

Results: Among the students 117 (33.7%) were male and 230 (66.3%) were female with 333 students were between 18 to 24 years old and the rest of them were 25 to 29 years. The most common social media being used by AIMST students were WhatsApp with 309 (89.0%) being actively used. The Pearson’s correlation results showed that there was a positive correlation between sleep quality and social media usage.

Conclusion: In conclusion, the social media usage effects the sleep quality of students immensely. This is greatly influenced by the amount of time they spend on and social media and habits of engaging in social media.