Date of Award

2024

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Psychology (Ph.D.)

Department

Psychology

First Advisor

Mark Terjesen

Second Advisor

Raymond DiGiuseppe,

Third Advisor

Imad Zaheer

Abstract

Social media has been a well-researched topic over the past 15 years, with findings supporting its usefulness as well as its harmfulness. Some of these studies have focused on well-being, both psychological and physical, and how social media may impact these aspects. Social media applications such as Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and Twitter have been comprehensively studied in various areas, with many focusing on their impact on mental health. Although these studies have often found that social media usage negatively impacts mental health, there have been some conflicting findings. TikTok, a much newer application, has been far less researched and has only essentially been the focus of studies in the past three years. These studies are beginning to investigate the application’s impact on mental well-being, but more research is required to better determine its impacts. Until recently, few studies had focused on TikTok usage and younger individuals, despite adolescents and young adults being the majority of TikTok users. The following study investigated the relationships between social media applications usage (with a greater focus on TikTok usage), psychological well-being, executive functioning, sleep quality, and sleep hygiene among 469 university students. These topics have not been researched together in a study prior to this. Findings indicated that there are significant negative relationships between TikTok and total social media usage with psychological well-being, Twitter usage and sleep hygiene, and TikTok and total social media usage with executive functioning. Other implications for practice and future research are discussed.

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