Sleep Debt in Student Life: Online Attention Focus, Facebook, and Mood

The amount of sleep college students receive has become a pressing societal concern. While studies show that information technology (IT) use affects sleep, here we examine the converse: how sleep duration might affect IT use. We conducted an in situ study, and logged computer and phone use and collected sleep diaries and daily surveys of 76 college students for seven days, all waking hours. We examined effects of sleep duration and sleep debt. Our results show that with less sleep, people report higher perceived work pressure and productivity. Also, computer focus duration is significantly shorter suggesting higher multitasking. The more sleep debt, the more Facebook use and the higher the negative mood. With less sleep, people may seek out activities requiring less attentional resources such as social media use. Our results have theoretical implications for multitasking: physiological and cognitive reasons could explain more computer activity switches: related to less sleep.