The Surprising Link Between Social Media Use, Nightmares, and Mental Health

[00:00:33] Hey guys! Welcome back to The Digital Diet Podcast. I’m your host, Marisha Pink, aka The Digital Diet Coach. Hope you are having an excellent week. I have been having a pretty good week. I have been sleeping better, especially now that my sleep hygiene and my sleep routine is back on track, as I was talking about in the previous episode. But with sleeping better comes having more dreams, and my dreams have been a bit weird and wonderful.

[00:01:03] Obviously, it means I’m spending more time in the REM sleep phase, which is the dream phase of sleep. And I have this dream book, which was given to me by a friend many, many years ago, because I love looking up the meaning of my dreams. I’m also secretly kind of hoping that I’m going to find that my dreams have revealed to me the lottery numbers or predicted some wonderful thing is going to happen in my future. But it hasn’t happened yet.

[00:01:28] I love dissecting the meaning of dreams. Sometimes it’s really obvious. It’s connected to something that is going on in your life or something that you may be worried about. And sometimes it’s completely random, and weird and wonderful, and features people that you’re not expecting to see crop up. The thing about dreams is that dreams are usually considered to be good. Dreams are not the same as nightmares, and the other night I had a nightmare.

[00:01:52] It’s been a while since I had one and this nightmare was really quite traumatic, actually. So it started off with me being in, like, the cabin, the front bit of a haulage truck. You know those big ones that you see on the motorway, on the highway, that are transporting goods. I was in the cabin and driving along a highway, and then we went off of the side of a road and rolled or bounced down the side of an embankment/ side of a mountain. In quite a dramatic way. Like, it would have been a massive stunt in the middle of a movie, if this had been a film.

[00:02:24] We rolled down the mountain and landed right at the bottom. Then everything was kind of still and, thankfully, I was alive. I was in there by myself. I was unhurt and I was just upside down in the cabin, waiting for someone to come and rescue me. Assuming that people would have seen me go over the side of the road and that they would trigger some kind of emergency response, and eventually someone would have to come and kind of cut me out. But I didn’t really feel like I was in any danger.

[00:02:50] Then the emergency services arrived. They were talking to me and I said, “Yeah, yeah, I’m fine. I’m conscious. I’m not hurt.” Then they said, “How’s Luna?” And Luna, at this point, I hadn’t seen her in my dream, but she was in the car with me, or in the truck with me as well.

[00:03:04] For anyone who’s new to the podcast, Luna is my mini dachshund, who I love. Luna is my dog child. Luna, normally in my car, is in a little bag, which has a quite clever mechanism so that you can put the seatbelt through it and it secures the bag in the car. So if we were to have an accident, she should also be a bit protected.

[00:03:23] But for some reason, her bag was not in this truck and she was loose. And I said, “Oh, well, she’s, she’s fine. She’s just in the back seat.” I don’t know why there’s a back seat in a haulage truck. But anyway, it’s a nightmare, keep with it! So she’s in the back and then I turned around and she came sort of trotting along the back seat. And I said, “There she is. You know, she’s fine.”

[00:03:39] Then when she turned around the other way, the whole of one side of her body was hollowed out and you could see the bone. She was bleeding. It was like this big, open wound and she didn’t seem to be distressed by it. But then I got really, really distressed in my sleep. So it was not a nice dream. It was in fact a nightmare.

[00:03:57] And when I woke up, I was really, really distressed. But right before I’d gone to sleep, I had been reading in the news about a crash on the A61, which is a bit further up north from where I live in the UK, that had killed six people. A family of four in a car and, I believe, two people on a motorbike. It was a really horrific crash and all six of them died.

[00:04:18] I suspect that that was probably the trigger for my horrible nightmare of having that big crash. And I don’t normally read the news or look at things late at night, especially if I think they’re going to be distressing. But, for whatever reason, I was looking online on social media and the story came up on one of the news accounts. I don’t even follow them. This is the magic and the beauty of the algorithm.

[00:04:41] While social media-related nightmares are relatively rare, there was a new study by researchers at the Flinders University that’s been published in BMC Psychology. I’ll put the link in the show notes. And the study has found that the more time you spend on social media, the greater the likelihood of having unpleasant, social media-related nightmares that cause distress, they cause sleep disruption, and they impact your peace of mind.

[00:05:05] Now, there were some common themes that came up in those dreams. Some of those themes included cyberbullying, online hate, dreams, or nightmares rather, about excessive social media use itself, and these feelings of helplessness, a loss of control, inhibition, victimisation and, ultimately, making mistakes while using social media. Infrequent though they may be, the most common nightmares actually involved this inability to log into social media and a disruption in relationships with other users.

[00:05:39] And so these nightmares are obviously distressing at the time that they’re happening, but then they were also associated in the study with negative mental health outcomes. Things like anxiety, depression, having a lower peace of mind, poor sleep quality and, obviously, distress from the nightmares themselves.

[00:05:58] In the research, they introduced what they have called the Social Media Nightmare-Related Scale. And they use that to quantify the phenomenon, so work out how distressing nightmares related to social media might be. And what they found is that the intensity with which you use social media predicts the frequency with which you experience social media related-nightmares.

[00:06:21] For a little bit of context, it’s not a massive study. The study was in 595 Iranians who have all been users of at least one social media platform, who spent a minimum of 15 minutes on social media per day, during the month preceding the study. What I thought was interesting was that 87% of them named Instagram as their preferred platform. While only 11% of them favoured X, formerly Twitter. And 2% of them spent most of their time on Facebook.

[00:06:51] Although Instagram is quite visual as a platform, I thought it’d be really interesting to see what those results might have been, whether the frequency of the nightmares might have been increased, or there was a stronger correlation between social media use in frequency and intensity and the nightmares, if they had also observed more visual video platforms like YouTube and TikTok. Because, of course, on Instagram you can also post photos and static graphics.

[00:07:19] Nonetheless, they did find a link and the findings generally align with some existing theories that we have about dreams and nightmares. The first one is the Continuity Hypothesis of Dreaming, which is pretty straightforward. It suggests that the experiences that you have in your waking life shape your dreams. And that makes sense because that’s the first place I usually go to when I’ve had a dream or a nightmare, and I’m trying to understand why it’s happened. I’m trying to understand what is going on in my conscious and subconscious brain that’s made me think about these things and sort of transform them into dreams and nightmares, while I’ve been asleep.

[00:07:52] The second theory is known as the Neurocognitive Model of Nightmare Etiology. And that basically suggests that the stress in your nightmares reflects your waking life. That makes sense, given that most of the common nightmares were about making mistakes on social media, and not being able to log in, and it disrupting your relationships with other users. So essentially, the nightmares are brought on by the stress that you feel in your waking life, around maintaining your online presence.

[00:08:23] And there’s this mediating role that it plays because the studies found that the nightmares bring about the relationship between the intensity of social media use and negative mental health outcomes. That influence suggests that nightmares could actually be a pathway, or at least one of the ways, through which all this extensive online engagement actually leads to sleep difficulties.

[00:08:44] So everything is linked. And that’s important because we’re not just talking about having a nightmare, or having a bad dream that you shake off as soon as you wake up and you realise that it’s not real. What this study is saying is that your social media use can lead to, or have an impact on, the experience of bad dreams or nightmares. And that those nightmares can have a lasting impact on your sleep quality and also your wellbeing and your mental health, which is not cool.

[00:09:14] It does need to be investigated further, but I think it’s an important finding because we’re still living through a time of many rapid advancements in technology and media, including things that will become more visual and have a greater impact on our day-to-day lives. So things like the rise in AI , the proliferation of virtual reality and VR headsets, and virtual worlds.

[00:09:39] And as we start to become a society that increasingly depends on these technologies and integrates them deeper into all aspects of our lives, I think it’s fair to forecast that dreams, and of course nightmares, featuring technological and media content will start to become more frequent. It’s a new phenomenon.

[00:09:57] And honestly, although it’s very early on and it’s a subject that needs to be investigated more to understand not just correlations between these things, but also causation. I think it’s enough to remind us that social media really has quite a significant impact on our wellbeing, on our mental health, in ways that we don’t even probably understand yet.

[00:10:18] And whilst I love dreams, and I love understanding what my dreams mean, I don’t enjoy nightmares. As I imagine most of you don’t either. I don’t want to think that I am likely to start experiencing more nightmares and I don’t want those nightmares to have an impact on my mental health.

[00:10:35] So I was really thinking about how you can try to protect yourself, if you will, against the likelihood of experiencing social media nightmares, or starting to have them more frequently, and protect your mental health. And it really comes down to two things.

[00:10:51] The first thing is to reign in your social media use and try not to exceed 30 minutes a day. In Episode 16, I talked really extensively about how to work out how much time you should be spending on social media. Because there are various different factors that will impact it, and there may even be some benefits depending on what you use social media for and how you use it in your life.

[00:11:15] I’ll put a link to Episode 16 in the show notes, but essentially that 30 minutes comes from research published in the Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology that said that you should try to limit your social media engagement to 30 minutes a day. I should caveat, again, that it was a very small study in a population of US undergraduate students.

[00:11:34] But the authors did conclude that bringing your use down to around 30 minutes a day should lead to better mental health, and positively impact your overall wellbeing, which is obviously what we want. We are trying to avoid nightmares and trying to keep mental health tip top and peak.

[00:11:49] The participants who kept to that 30-minute limit in the study ended up reporting significantly lower levels of anxiety, depression, loneliness and stress. And they also indicated that they didn’t experience FOMO or fear of missing out nearly as often as the participants that didn’t have to stick to the limit in the study. So 30 minutes is kind of the sweet spot, as far as we understand so far from the research.

[00:12:15] And if the time that you spend on social media is way in excess of that. Don’t worry, I have something else to help you. There is a whole episode called, “How to curate your social media experience and cut down on the amount of time that you spend on social platforms” It’s Episode 21 and I will link to it in the show notes. In that episode, you will hear five specific action steps that you can take to reduce the amount of time that you spend on social media and try to bring it closer to that 30 minutes a day.

[00:12:42] The second thing is to really be mindful of what content you consume, especially right before bed. It makes sense. If you look at bad stuff, you’re going to dream about bad stuff. And in the last episode where I was talking about sleep hygiene, one of the tips from Dr. Matt Walker, and from myself, was to try and step away from devices one hour before bed.

[00:13:05] If you do that, at least the last thing that you’re thinking about before you go to sleep is not whatever you saw on the news when you were doomscrolling, or when you were on social media. Because the thing is, you also only have partial control over what you see. Thanks to the algorithms and all the sponsored posts or ads that come up in your feed.

[00:13:26] Even if you only followed happy bunnies and lovely ducklings and, I don’t know, whatever other lovely, sweet, nice happy accounts, if you will. The algorithms do their own thing and you may end up seeing sponsored posts or ads that are maybe a little bit less joyful. So you don’t have complete control. But you can influence what you see.

[00:13:46] So, again, in that same episode, Episode 21 about curating your social media experience, there are also six practical tips that are there to help you curate your social media experience, so that it is better. It’s more positive. And that can have some degree of influence over what you will ultimately see, and what the algorithms will suggest to you and what sponsored content will show up.

[00:14:10] As I said, I’ll put the link in the show notes. Definitely worth a listen and will help you to think about how you can mindfully use social media, which has loads of other benefits. But, for the purposes of today’s conversation, just won’t increase the likelihood of you having nightmares. And to test out if this actually has any effect, here is your challenge for this week.

[00:14:30] I want you to keep a dream journal for the week and see if you notice anything about the content and the frequency of your dreams or nightmares. Super easy, just keep a notebook and a pen beside your bed so that you can write down your dreams as soon as you wake up. I don’t know about you. I will usually remember my dreams as soon as I wake up, especially the ones that were super realistic and felt like they weren’t dreams or they weren’t nightmares, and they really happened.

[00:14:56] But as time goes on, if I don’t write them down. Or I don’t go and look them up. Or I don’t talk to someone about the dream or the nightmare that I had. I’ll forget them. So keep that notebook and pen beside your bed, so that you can write them down as soon as you wake up.

[00:15:08] And then at the end of that week, I want you to review your screen time stats for the social media apps that you use, and reflect back on what you’ve written about your dreams and nightmares. See if there are any patterns that you notice. Do you notice that you are dreaming more frequently? And that correlates with more intense or more frequent use of social media platforms, as suggested by the study. Does it go down if you don’t use social media as much? And when it’s more intense, are the dreams and the content of what you’ve written down, more like nightmares than they are lovely, fluffy little dreams?

[00:15:44] And I’m really curious about this one, because as I said, I love trying to understand dreams and interpret dreams and see what they mean. So I really want you to come and share your experiences with me in The Digital Diet Lounge, which is my dedicated community space for all things digital wellness and women. I will put a link to that in the show notes as well. And I will do the same. I will let you know what other weird and wonderful dreams I am having over the course of this week.

[00:16:09] I am so excited to hear what other people are dreaming about. I really wish you all dreams and not nightmares but, you know, things could get interesting, depending on how much you use social media, if the study is to be believed. I’m really looking forward to hearing about your experiences. I will have my dream book at the ready, so I can try and decipher them and see what they mean, and we can have a little bit of fun with this one.

[00:16:30] That’s it for today’s episode. It’s a very short and sweet one. You can find the show notes for the episode over on my website at thedigitaldietcoach.com/030. And I will be back with you next week. In the meantime, I just want to take this time to say that I know that you’re busy. I know that your time is incredibly valuable. So I am incredibly grateful that you choose to send a little bit of your day with me. I appreciate each and every one of you that listens to this podcast and I hope that you’ll join me next week.