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About

Over the last two decades, social media have become an important part of our daily life. According to Digital Report 2022 (Hootsuite, 2022), 4.62 billion people (58.4% of the world population) are active social media users and spend on average two hours and 27 minutes on social media daily. From the beginning of the last decades, behavioral scientists have been concerned about the possibility of maladaptive use of social media. Problematic social media use (PSMU) has co-morbidity with mental health and sleep problems. Evidence about the association between PSMU, mental health, and sleep is inconsistent. There is a need to clarify the inconsistent evidence linking these PSMU, mental health, and sleep. Therefore, the aim of my research is to investigate longitudinal bidirectional relationship between problematic social media use, sleep problems, and mental health and their underlying mechanisms.

There will be five studies in this research (Study 1: Systematic review with meta-analysis to investigate the association between social media use, mental health, and sleep; Study 2: Longitudinal study to investigate the impact of sleep on PSMU through motives for social media use; Study 3: Longitudinal study to investigate the impact of mental health on PSMU through motives for social media use; Study 4: Longitudinal study to investigate the impact of PSMU on mental health through sleep; and Study 5: Cross-sectional study to explore the latent profile of social media users who need psychological assistance related to PSMU). This research will be included one baseline and three follow-up surveys. Participants will be social media users from Australia and Bangladesh who are between 18 and 30 years old. This study will explore missing links between the association between problematic social media use, motives for social media use, sleep, and mental health and clarify how these factors are related to each other, and will be helpful to develop recommendations to reduce social media dependency and improve sleep and psychological well-being among young adults.

Bio

Oli Ahmed is a PhD Student at the National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health at the Australian National University. He was awarded both a Master of Science and a Bachelor of Science degree in Psychology from the University of Dhaka, Bangladesh. Before commencing his PhD, Oli worked at the University of Chittagong, Bangladesh for more than three years as a faculty member. His research interests are social media addiction, mental health, and applied psychometrics.