The interaction of emotion regulation and sleep quality: does social media usage duration play arole?

The bidirectional association of emotion regulation with sleep quality has received increased attentionin recent years. In this research, we investigated the correlation between the habitual use of differentemotion regulation strategies (i.e., Expressive Suppression and Cognitive Reappraisal) and differentcomponents of sleep quality. Considering that previous research revealed that using social mediacould influence emotion regulation and sleep quality in different ways, we controlled for the effectof social media usage duration on the interplay of emotion regulation strategies and sleep qualitycomponents. Our results showed that the habitual use of Cognitive Reappraisal was associated withimproved daytime functioning; while, the tendency to use Expressive Suppression in various situationswas associated with shorter sleep duration. Our findings supported the view that the habitual useof Cognitive Reappraisal and Expressive Suppression have different well-being consequences. Wealso observed that using any of the strategies was negatively correlated with more frequent use ofsleeping medications. Additionally, we did not observe any correlation between social media usageduration and other variables. We proposed that understanding the role of social media usage onthe interplay between sleep quality and emotion regulation requires a comprehensive evaluation ofindividual differences in using social media as well as a careful analysis of the social media platforms’characteristics.