Abstract
Internet gaming and social media use are prevalent and integral to many people’s lives. However, excessive engagement in either could lead to negative health impacts. This study aimed to investigate relationships between severities of internet gaming disorder (IGD) and problematic social media use (operationalized as social media addiction; SMA) with sleep quality and psychological distress among young adults. A cross-sectional study with snowball sampling was conducted among Hong Kong university students in 2019. All participants (n = 300; mean (SD) age = 20.89 (1.48); 122 males (40.67%)) responded to an online survey that included Chinese versions of the Internet Gaming Disorder Scale-Short Form (IGDS9-SF), Bergen Social Media Addiction Scale (BSMAS), Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI), and Depression Anxiety Stress Scales (DASS-21). Multiple linear regressions demonstrated that IGDS-SF9 scores demonstrated associations with psychological distress measures (standardized coefficient (β) = 0.295 for depression, 0.325 for anxiety, 0.339 for stress, all p < 0.001). BSMAS scores showed similar albeit numerically less robust associations (β = 0.235 for depression, p < 0.001; 0.219 for anxiety, p = 0.001; 0.262 for stress, p < 0.001). BSMAS scores demonstrated associations with poorer sleep quality (β = 0.292; p < 0.001) and IGDS9-SF scores (β = 0.157; p = 0.024) showed a significantly less robust association (p = 0.01 for comparing the two βs). These findings suggest that both severities of IGD and SMA associate with more psychological distress and poorer sleep quality, although the strengths of associations may differ.
Highlights
Serious health concerns have been linked to specific types and patterns of engagement in internet usage, leading to the concept of “internet addiction” [1,2]
The background information sheet included questions relating to age, gender, education level, height, weight, smoking history, monthly income, time spent on smartphone per day in the past month, time spent on internet gaming per day in the past month, and time spent on social media per day in the past month
DASS-21 domain scores and Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) score were entered as dependent variables; IGDS9-SF and Bergen Social Media Addiction Scale (BSMAS) were used as independent variables; age, gender, time spent on smartphones, time spent on gaming on the internet, time spent on social media, and smoking history were treated as confounding variables
Summary
Serious health concerns have been linked to specific types and patterns of engagement in internet usage, leading to the concept of “internet addiction” [1,2]. As a general concept, may lead to poor sleep quality and psychological problems [2,22,23,24] Both SMA [25,26,27,28,29] and IGD [30,31,32]. As internet gaming and use of social media may have different activity demands and behavioral patterns, with gaming typically requiring more rapid reactions and sustained attention over a continuous time period than using social media use, IGD and SMA may differentially impact sleep quality and psychological distress. The current preliminary study was designed to explore how severities of IGD and SMA relate to sleep quality and emotional distress in a population at risk of internet addiction (i.e., young adults) [34]. We hypothesized that both severities of IGD and SMA would relate to poorer sleep quality and more emotional distress
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