“Using Facebook, and to a lesser degree YouTube, Twitter, or blogging does not appear to have any impact on how much or how little students sleep,” according to University of New Hampshire (UNH) adjunct professor Chuck Martin whose marketing research class conducted the sleep study.
Students at the UNH Whittemore School of Business surveyed 1,247 UNH students from a range of majors. The research shows that there is no correlation between the amount of sleep college students get and the time they spend using social media, such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, MySpace, LinkedIn and blogs.
Previous research conducted by Martin’s marketing students showed that social media use does not impact academic performance.
Reference: “Social Networking Usage and Sleep Among College Students” is available for download at http://www.unh.edu/news/docs/sleep.pdf.