Poster #237 - Smartphone Use and Sleep: Is Fear-of-missing-out keeping you up?

• In Event: 3-106 - Poster Session 11
  In Poster Session: PS 11 Section - Technology, Media & Child Development

Integrative Statement

Smartphones provide opportunities to stay in touch with friends, families, and strangers around the clock, through direct texting and social media applications. Unfortunately, all this social connectino is not necessarily positive, as problematic smartphone usage has been linked in previous literature to lower sleep quality and shorter sleep duration in adolescents (Lemola et al, 2015) and emerging adults (Murdock, 2013). Smartphones may affect sleep because they keep individuals awake, engaged in communication or wake them with alerts (Lemola et al, 2015). Fear-of-missing-out (FoMO; Przybylski et al, 2013), the uncomfortable sense that one is missing out on rewarding experiences that friends are having, is also associated with excessive smartphone usage as individuals seek to remain socially connected, even when not present (Elhai et al, 2016). Individuals may experience FoMO related anxiety (Cheever, et al, 2014), thus even when the smartphone is turned off, FoMO could continue to interfere with sleep. Prior research has begun to explore these relations, but the role of FoMO in the link between smartphone usage and sleep is unclear. The current study sought to examine FoMO as a mediator and moderator of relations between smartphone usage and sleep.

Participants were 223 undergraduate students (82% female; M age=19.57, SD=2.35) at a small, residential, liberal arts college in the mid-Atlantic US. Participants were recruited through the Psychology participant pool and received course credit. Smartphone usage was measured using the mobile devise items from the Media and Technology Usage Scale (Rosen, 2013), a scale that assesses problematic smartphone use (Cronbach’s = .87). Sleep quality was assessed using the Pittsburg Sleep Quality Index (Buysse, 1989), a 7 item measure used widely in sleep research (Cronbach’s = .74). FoMO was measured using the 10 item FoMO Scale (Przybylski, 2013), (Cronbach’s = .91). Participants reported whether they had any diagnosed sleep disorders or health conditions affecting sleep. In addition, participants answered questions regarding their smartphone use, including social media applications. Tests of mediation and moderation were conducting using the PROCESS macro (Hayes, 2012) for SPSS. All analyses included gender, class year, sleep dx, and health conditions as covariates.

The majority of students reported Linear regression analyses showed that smartphone usage predicted sleep quality, b=-.23, t(220)= 2.20, p=.03. FoMO was associated with both smartphone usage (r=.49 , p<.001) and sleep quality (r= -.21 , p=.007), however it did not mediate relations between smartphone usage and sleep quality. The interaction between smartphone use and sleep quality was significant, R2=.12, F(1, 218)= 8.49, p=.006., such that the relation between smartphone usage and sleep quality was strongest for individuals with high levels of FoMO. In fact, smartphone usage was not related to sleep quality for those with low levels of FoMO. The research suggests that FoMO may function as a moderator of the association between smartphone use and sleep. Given the limitations of the current study, further research is necessary to better understand the direction of effects and generalizability of the findings.

Authors

• Erika Bagley, Muhlenberg College
  Presenting Author

• Brenna Littleson, Muhlenberg College
  Non-Presenting Author