Effects of online social networks on sleep quality, depression rate, and academic performance of high school students

Introduction: Social Networks has entered teenagers' lives increasingly. Over 90% of teenagers use social networks during day and night. Evidences suggest that there's an increasing connection between social networks use and different aspects of teenager's health, including sleep quality and mental health. The aim of is this study is to do a survey effects of online social networks on sleep quality, depression and education performance in high school students of Semnan city (Iran). Materials and Methods: This is an applied study which was done cross-sectional in Semnan city in 1396. Relatively, statistical society of this study was high school students of Semnan. The Pittsburgh sleep quality questionnaire and PHQ mental health and a questionnaire retrieved from young internet addiction standard questionnaire, were used for data gathering. Cronbach alpha was used to calculate the reliability of the instruments of 0.81. Results: Results showed that there was a meaningful relationship between academic performance of students and the amount of using social networks (P = 0.000). Also there was a meaningful relationship between sleep quality and depression of students with their amount of social network use. Other results of study showed that 41% of students used Telegram social network. Also 36.4% of students used social network for 1 or 2 hours during a day. Conclusion: According to the results of study, using social networks during the day by students, had negative impact on their academic performance. Also the period of time spent daily on using social networks by students, reduced their sleep quality and increased their depression