Date
7-22-2025
Department
School of Behavioral Sciences
Degree
Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology (PhD)
Chair
Angela Rathkamp
Keywords
smartphone, social media, adolescents, sleep duration, sleep quality, sleep latency, smartphone use and sleep, social media usage and sleep
Disciplines
Psychology
Recommended Citation
May, Ryan R., "The Effect of Sleep Latency, Duration, and Quality in Adolescents When Altering Nighttime Smartphone and Social Media Use" (2025). Doctoral Dissertations and Projects. 7212.
https://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/doctoral/7212
Abstract
Smartphones and social media are quickly becoming standard technological tools for connection and socialization within the modern-day adolescent population. Inversely, sleep for adolescents/young adults is decreasing while sleep problems are rising. This research trend is prompting researchers to investigate how restricting or eliminating smartphone/social media use benefits sleep health. The current study hypothesized that when adolescents/ young adults aged 18-21 eliminate smartphone/social media usage one hour before bedtime there would be a significantly lower number of nighttime awakenings, a reduction in sleep onset, and a higher number of minutes slept for participants in the experimental group when compared to participants in the control group with unlimited smartphone/social media access. The study obtained 106 research participants (n=54 experimental group, n=52 control group) aged 18-21 that engaged in the weeklong study. The study showed the experimental group fell asleep 11.82 minutes faster than the control group, sleep latency reductions of 16.15 for the participants in the experimental group, and the experimental group increased their total number of minutes slept per night by 16.46 total minutes. Moreover, pre and post PSQI and PSAS scores in the experimental group revealed a statistically significant large effect thus indicating that stopping smartphone use one hour before bedtime significantly improved one’s perceived sleep quality and significantly improved one’s perceived problems falling asleep. Finally, both the experimental and control groups reported a decrease in nighttime awakenings.
