SALT LAKE CITY – Medical professionals have begun to report research lending credence to Gov. Spencer Cox’s ongoing battle with social media providers.
Suicide is one of the leading causes of death for teenagers and young adults in America, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Based on recent data collected by the National Alliance on Mental Health, about one in five U.S. high school students has attempted or seriously considered suicide.
Now research by the medical journal Sleep Health suggests that sleep deprivation is linked to suicidal thoughts in children, teens and young adults.
While diagnosed medical sleeping disorders account for some of those problems, experts say the majority result from simple bad sleeping habits and lack of adequate hygiene.
“Enforcing a reasonable bedtime for your teenage children is essential as a parent,” says Dr. Nilong Vyas, a pediatrician with Sleepless in New Orleans. “It’s recommended that they get at least nine hours of sleep each night.”
One simple way of ensuring that young people get adequate rest is to keep digital devices with social media applications out of their hands overnight, she adds.
Cox has been feuding with social media companies for nearly a year, since he threw down the gauntlet at a meeting of the National Governors Association in Salt Lake City in October of 2022.
Cox recommended removing cell phones from public school classrooms and holding social media companies accountable by requiring parental controls and permissions to create social media accounts.
He also called on parents to set reasonable limits for teens using those applications.
When the 2023 general session of the Utah Legislature failed to follow-up on the governor’s suggestions, he and Attorney General Sean Reyes filed a federal lawsuit against social media providers in June.
While lawyers debate the issue of limiting social media access – which is tangled up with 1st Amendment freedoms – medical professionals are becoming increasingly alarmed.
While acknowledging that social media has some beneficial impacts, researchers at the prestigious Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN have reported that a 2016 study of more than 450 teen nationwide found that greater social media use, nighttime social media use and emotional investment in social media – such as feeling upset when prevented from logging on – were linked with poor sleep quality as well as higher levels of anxiety and depression.
More recent research has supported those findings.
“People so often think of sleep disorders as being a symptom of other mental health problems like depression or anxiety,” says Melynda Casement, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Oregon.
“But sleep problems alone can also contribute to anxiety, mood disorders and suicide risk,” she adds.
By looking at emergency department records for a nationally representative sample of children, Casement and her colleagues found that youths who had a sleep disorder were three times more likely to be seen in an emergency facility with suicidal thoughts than those who did not have a sleep disorder.
“This tells us – and should tell all medical professionals that treat young children – that we should screen for sleep quality and quantity,” Vyas says, “as well as counseling good sleep habits and hygiene.”
Vyas is also a medical review expert at the National Sleep Foundation in Washington, D.C.
The National Sleep Foundation is an independent, non-profit group dedicated to publishing authoritative, timely research about sleep and health.