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You try to log in to your Facebook account, but you forget your password, then you try to recover it and fail, and suddenly you lose control of all your online accounts, while someone makes nasty comments about you that you can't respond to.
Worse, your favorite celebrity has blocked you. This is a fictional scenario of a nightmare in which you are besieged by social media-related fears. Social media-related dreams have become a common occurrence in our sleep. No wonder, as our phones have become more ingrained in our daily lives, to the point that we sometimes fall asleep with our hands still holding the phone. Does social media even follow us into our dreams?
The impact of social media on dreams
There have been dozens of studies on the impact of smartphone and social media use on various aspects of our daily lives, including sleep and its quality. However, few have focused on the impact of social media on dreams, given the difficulty of studying the phenomenon and researchers’ reliance on what people remember from their dreams, rather than on data that can be directly observed and measured.
But a recent study published in March, titled “Social Media Nightmares: A Possible Explanation for Poor Sleep Quality and Decreased Emotional Well-Being in the Age of Social Media,” explored the relationship between social media use, sleep quality, mental health, and disturbing dreams.
This was done by creating a 14-item scale to detect nightmares related to social media with strong psychometric properties. The study included 595 people, and focused on nightmares related to themes of helplessness, loss of control, discouragement, harm, and making mistakes in the field of social media.
The study results linked nightmares related to social media to higher levels of anxiety and poorer sleep quality, and the researchers found that the intensity of social media use was an important predictor of the frequency of these nightmares.
On the other hand, the type of content you follow affects your dreams. If your use of social media is limited to communicating with family and friends, you may be less likely to have bad dreams than someone who uses it to participate in exciting arguments or follow painful content and political battles.
As our consumption of social media increases and becomes more intertwined with our daily lives, its impact may extend to our dreams, not just our waking lives, explains Reza Shabhang, a psychology researcher at Flinders University in Australia and lead author of the study.
Continuity of the dream
The results of this study can be linked to previous research that supports what is known as the continuity hypothesis, which suggests that we tend to dream about what we experience or think about while awake, with dreams incorporating elements of memory and experience.
On the other hand, a study published in 2008 revealed that older participants who grew up watching black-and-white television had more gray, colorless dreams than those who watched color television, indicating the role that media plays in influencing our dreams.
Research on the effects of social media on dreams may be relatively new, but the impact of video games is well established, thanks to the work of many scientists, including Jane Gackenbach, a psychologist at Grant MacEwan University in Canada, whose studies of the relationship between video games and dreams date back to the 1990s. Her studies have shown that video game-related dreams are frequent, that players have dreams about their games in vivid detail, and that they have control over some aspects of the dream.
Why do we take our phones to bed?
Fear of missing out, also known as FOMO syndrome Fomo FOMO The initials of Fearing Of Missing Out is a term that could explain this strong relationship with phones.
Many people often find themselves prisoners of these feelings and are unable to leave their phones even in bed, at those moments when the mind is supposed to calm down in preparation for sleep. Instead, they turn into long hours of browsing social media, switching between short videos, and fast-paced engaging content that leads you to a more alert brain.
The impact of this behavior is not limited to nightmares and disturbing dreams, as the blue light emitted from your phone screen disrupts the biological clock rhythm, as it stimulates the ganglion cells sensitive to blue light, which leads to inhibiting the melatonin hormone responsible for stimulating the feeling of drowsiness.
On the other hand, having your phone in the bedroom, with all the sound notifications and vibrations it emits, can interrupt your sleep, leading to less sleep.
Chronic sleep deprivation affects your daily performance at work or school, and leads to medical problems including weakened immunity, increased risk of heart disease, poor cognitive function, decreased metabolic health, and increased rates of obesity and associated risks such as diabetes.
How to prevent social media from affecting your sleep?
Experts advise that you refrain from using your phone and social media for a period ranging from half an hour to an hour before going to bed.
Also, make sure to stick to your daily sleep and wake times, even during your vacation. Don't use your bedroom for other activities, such as working, eating, or watching TV. Make sure your sleeping environment is cool, quiet, and comfortable.
Watching a few short videos may be your favorite way to relax after a long day, but remember that it has the opposite effect and may deprive you of the precious hours of sleep that your mind and body need.
