There is a pressing need to update sleep models, education and treatment to better reflect the realities of sleep in a 24/7 connected social world. Progress in this area has been limited to date by available measurement tools, which have largely restricted their focus to recording the frequency or duration of individuals’ social media use, without capturing crucial sleep-relevant aspects of this inherently social and interactive experience. This study uses data from 3,008 adolescents (aged 10-18 years) to rigorously develop and validate a new 10-item self-report measure that quantifies the extent to which individuals struggle to disengage from social media interactions at night: the index of Nighttime Offline Distress (iNOD). The current findings indicate considerable individual differences, with most participants reporting little difficulty disconnecting but a minority experiencing unhelpful bedtime concerns around Staying Connecting and Following Etiquette to varying extents. Those with higher scores on these subscales tended to report using social media for longer after they felt they should be asleep, with shorter sleep duration and poorer sleep quality. Results also indicated that extended periods of wakefulness in bed before attempting to sleep are common amongst today’s adolescents, pointing towards a potentially fragmented process of sleep displacement for those who may struggle to disconnect - and to stay disconnected - from social interactions in order to allow sufficient uninterrupted sleep opportunity. These findings can inform current models for understanding normal and disordered sleep during adolescence, whilst highlighting specific social concerns as important potential targets for sleep education efforts. The iNOD equips researchers and clinicians with a short validated self-report measure that can support efforts to move evidence and practice in this area forwards.
Measuring Failures Proneness: Scale Development and Preliminary Validations
