Influence of Electronic Use Media on Sleep Disturbance Severity among Adolescents

Abstract

Background: Adolescents' growth, cognitive development, learning, and general well-being are all affected by sleep, which is both a physiological phenomenon and a behavioral process. Adolescents' physiological and psychological development has a negative effect on their sleep, but it is also possible that access to electronic media and other outside variables like early school starts and the bedroom's surroundings also contribute to bad sleep.

Methodology: A descriptive design was used to guide this study. Data were collected for the period of October 10th, 2022, to December 20th, 2023. The study was carried out through different secondary schools in Holy Kerbala city to assess the effect of excessive use of electronic media on sleep disturbances among adolescents. The samples were selected non-randomly (a convenience sample) from separate areas of the center of Kerbala Holy Governorate, where the samples were chosen from the population only because they were available to the researcher. A sample of 382 total students was chosen to obtain the data. The sample of the study includes 139 females and 243 males.

Results : The study results reveal that the mean of hours students spend in internet is less than a half spend 2-5-hours in internet use (47.4%), followed by those who spend 6-10-hours in internet use (36.3%), those who spend 11-15-hours (9.2%), those who spend less than hour in internet use (5.8%), and those who spend 16-20 hours in electronic media use (1.3%). The study results reveal that the number of hours students spend on electronic media use every day and sleep hours positively predict excessive use of electronic media (p-value = .000, .024) respectively. The study results reveal that the sleep hours negatively predict sleep disturbance (p-value .004). On the other hand, excessive use of electronic media positively predict sleep disturbance (p-value = .000).

Conclusion : The majority of participants in the current study believe that sleep disturbances are strongly correlated with excessive use of electronic media and that the more excessive use of electronic media, the higher the incidence of sleep disturbances.