Students with lower self-control procrastinate with short-form video: sleep suffers/not grades

 

Young people who use social media to escape also tend to use short videos to put off responsibilities

 Who among us hasn’t put off doing something we know we need to do while scrolling through just a few more TikToks, Instagram reels or YouTube shorts? 

New research from the William Allen White School of Journalism & Mass Communications at the University of Kansas has found that college students with lower self-control, stronger habitual short-form video use and who tended to use them to escape and fulfill the need to belong were prone to procrastinating via such short clips. 

While the behaviors did not appear to negatively affect students' grades, procrastinatory short-form video use was found to be associated with worse sleep health and higher stress.

Researchers and parents alike have been warning of problematic media use for decades, whether it is too much TV or too much gaming. However, limited research has established the connection between short-form video use and its effects on young people’s well-being — although it is known unhealthy social media habits can foster procrastination, which in turn can lead to negative psychological and behavioral outcomes. 

In one of her classes, Yunwen Wang asked students what time they went to bed the night before.

“Very few students, only two in a classroom of over 100, went to bed before 10 p.m. I thought that was a very alarming moment, especially concerning how TikTok and YouTube shorts are gaining in popularity. In media psychology, a concept called ‘flow’ describes when audiences enter a moment of full immersion and lose track of time,” said Wang, assistant professor of journalism & mass communications at KU and an author of the study. “That happens when users enjoy the media and when the activity carries either high mental weight requiring concentration or little mental weight as the repetitive behavior creates automaticity, such as automatic scrolling of short-form videos. 

“In the past, there were diversified ways of interacting with different media, but now, because of the ease of use of these mobile apps and social media platforms, they are becoming more dominant over other hobbies that college students have,” Wang said. “Research on problematic media use isn’t a new thing, but by extending the area to these emerging platforms with short-form videos, we are addressing a gap in current research.”

For the study, Wang and co-author Danny Yihan Jia of Boston University surveyed more than 500 students from KU and Boston University. They asked students about their use of short-form videos, personal and health traits, and academic performance. The study was published in the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking.

Students were asked about how they viewed short-form videos, both in normal use and in procrastinatory ways. They were also asked about how frequently they engaged and their motivations for doing so, such as escapism, entertainment or to feel a sense of belonging. Researchers also considered the effects of short-form video use by asking about four aspects of sleep health and levels of stress.

Short-form videos and sleep quality

Results showed that students who had lower self-control and more habitual use of short-form videos also reported poorer sleep health and higher levels of stress. Sleep health was poorer in terms of perceived sleep quality overall, when they went to sleep, how often they woke up during the night and how well they functioned on days after a poor night’s sleep.

“We found that the lower the self-control, the more likely the students will develop procrastinatory short-form video use,” Wang said. “And the motivation to enjoy, escape and feel socially connected also contributed to the procrastination behavior. Ultimately, the more procrastinatory short-form video consumption, the higher the stress level and the worse the sleep health among these students.”

Effects on academic performance

Researchers also examined the association between short-form video use and academic performance. Students were asked about their grade point average on a 4.0 scale. Results, however, did not show an association between procrastinatory short-form video use and diminished GPA. That does not mean one should infer problematic short-form video use cannot or does not affect academic achievement, the researchers wrote, but it could indicate that they sampled from a high-achieving group of students or that the sample is not representative of the broader young population across the country.

Wang also emphasized that while the associations between procrastinatory short-form video use and lower sleep health and higher stress were strong, it should not be assumed that TikTok, Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts or the like are the sure cause. Some respondents indicated they use such media when they are having trouble sleeping. College students are often under stress for academic, social, financial and other reasons and may use such short-form videos to escape unpleasant realities of life.

However, the connections should also not be ignored or simply accepted as the state of media that young people consume today.

“College students especially are in an important transitional and developmental stage of life,” Wang said.

Research recommendations

The KU researcher said both institutions of higher learning and society at large could help by providing more holistic mental health and student health outreach services. Beyond simply informing young people that problematic use of social media could be harmful, those developing such approaches could collaborate with young people to learn more about their needs and how best to serve them.

While problematic media use is not new, the short-form video dynamic is relatively new, and more research could help add to the understanding of its detriments, which could inform strategies to understand motivations, reduce procrastinatory uses of media as well as help form healthier media habits, Wang said.

“The novel contribution of our work is understanding motivators and consequences of problematic media use and that we are bridging the gap by testing this paradigm on emergent platforms of short-form videos,” Wang said. “My research area is at the intersection of computer-mediated communication and human-computer interaction. The next emergent technology that could be studied would be agentic AI serving as social companions, friends, partners or collaborators. Students who grow up with it are going to become used to using it for everything from academics to asking general questions and perhaps then addressing those conditions like loneliness and friendship.”

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Journal

Cyberpsychology Behavior and Social Networking

DOI

10.1177/21522715251404199 

Teens spend nearly one-third of the school day on smartphones

Frequent checking linked to poorer attention

A new study from researchers at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill finds that middle and high school students spend nearly one-third of the school day on their smartphones, checking them dozens of times, often for social media and entertainment, with frequent checking linked to weaker attention and impulse control. 

The research examined how often adolescents use their phones during school and whether that behavior is related to their ability to focus and regulate attention. By objectively tracking smartphone use every hour over a two-week period, the study generated thousands of real-world data points, allowing researchers to see how phone use unfolds throughout the school day rather than relying on self-reports or daily averages. 

“Smartphones are no longer something students use occasionally during school—they’re present during every hour of the day,” said Eva Telzer, professor of psychology and neuroscience at UNC-Chapel Hill and lead author of the study. “Our findings show that frequent phone checking may undermine the very skills students need to succeed in the classroom.” 

The study found that students who checked their phones more frequently showed poorer cognitive control, a key skill for learning and academic success. 

“What surprised us most was the sheer amount of time teens are on their phones during school,” said Kaitlyn Burnell, research assistant professor at UNC-Chapel Hill and co-author of the study. “Students were on their phones every hour during school, spending one-third of the school day on their phones, with social media and entertainment accounting for over 70% of their time.” 

By capturing phone use moment to moment, the researchers were able to identify frequent checking, not just total screen time, as a critical behavior linked to attention fragmentation and weaker self-control. This distinction is important, as it suggests that interruptions caused by repeated phone checking may be particularly disruptive to learning. 

“As states and school districts across the country adopt new phone policies, our findings provide support for limiting access to smart phones during school hours” said Telzer. “Policies that restrict access to highly reinforcing platforms, including social media and entertainment apps, during instructional time may help protect students’ attention and academic engagement.” 

The findings provide concrete, objective evidence that can inform future school policies and digital literacy programs, offering a path toward more targeted approaches to managing smartphones in educational settings while preserving the benefits of technology when used intentionally.  

Teacher grading violations and subsequent student cheating

This study looks at how teachers' rule violations in grading affect students' ethical behavior. Using administrative data from high-stakes exams, combining teacher-assigned internal scores with externally graded national exam scores, the study tracks teacher grading violations and subsequent student cheating, exploring three potential mechanisms: imitation (learning that rules can be broken), positive reciprocity (responding favorably to favorable treatment), and negative reciprocity (retaliating against unfavorable treatment). 

Students are significantly more likely to cheat when teachers break the rules to their detriment (systematically undergrading), consistent with both imitation and negative reciprocity. However, when teachers systematically overgrade, responses vary by community structure. In heterogeneous communities, overgrading increases student cheating, suggesting imitation dominates. In homogeneous communities, students respond by cheating less, consistent with positive reciprocity dominating. This pattern holds across multiple homogeneity measures, including surname concentration and residential clustering. 

Survey measures of mutual respect and support between students and teachers confirm this pattern.

"Feel" as a Determinant of College Choice: Evidence from Campus Tour Weather

 The feeling or impression that students get about enrolling in a particular college may be an important determinant of their college application decision. 

Combining institutional records on college campus tour participants over the last decade with hourly weather information, this study leverages tour weather as a plausibly exogenous shock to students' "feel" for attending the toured college, finding that poor tour weather reduces participants’ likelihood of applying. 

Tour participants, for example, are 10 percent less likely to apply when their tour is hot and 8 percent less likely when precipitation occurs during their tour. Using administrative data documenting where all tour participants enroll in college, however that tour weather has little to no impact on the quality or type of college that participants ultimately attend. Nevertheless, the results suggest that students' "feel" for attending a college can play an important role in the college application decision.

Can School Matching Improve Student Achievement?

 This study examines two approaches to improving urban school systems: changing who gets to go to existing schools (reallocation) and restructuring school portfolios through closures and reconstitution (resource augmentation). 

Using data from New York City high schools, the authors estimate models of school effects allowing for both vertical school quality differences and horizontal student-specific match effects. 

While sophisticated reallocation policies that optimize student-school matches can generate modest educational gains, they are constrained by limited seats at highly effective schools. Simple resource-augmentation policies targeting replacement of low-performing schools achieve comparable improvements with less systemic disruption. 

Analysis of NYC's school closures reveals that basic graduation rate metrics effectively identify struggling schools, suggesting complex value-added models may be unnecessary for targeting closure decisions. Our findings indicate that capacity constraints, rather than poor school matching, primarily drive educational inequality.

Teenagers don’t just influence each other – they learn from each other

Why are adolescents so sensitive to their peers’ behaviour? And is this sensitivity necessarily negative, as the term peer pressure often implies? In his PhD dissertation, UvA behavioural scientist Andrea Gradassi demonstrates that adolescents are particularly influenced by classmates to whom they are socially close, such as friends, as well as by peers who occupy high-status positions within the classroom social network.

‘The goal of this dissertation was to examine peer influence, particularly during adolescence,’ Gradassi explains. ‘Traditionally, psychology has tended to frame peer influence at this stage of life as passive and harmful.’

Gradassi challenges this narrow perspective by asking a more fundamental question: why are adolescents so responsive to their peers in the first place? From an evolutionary standpoint, learning from others is highly adaptive. Observing peers allows individuals to avoid costly trial-and-error learning. As Gradassi puts it: ‘If you look at what your peers are doing and they are successful, that behaviour may also be useful for you.’

Real experiments in the classroom

A distinctive feature of Gradassi’s research is its grounding in realistic social environments. Rather than relying solely on laboratory settings, he conducted experiments in Dutch secondary schools.

‘We went into schools and mapped the relationships among students,’ he explains. Using social network analysis, Gradassi identified friendships, popular students and socially central figures within each classroom. These data were then used to design experiments that measured peer influence systematically.

In one study, students completed tasks such as estimating the number of animals in an image. After submitting their initial response, they were shown the answer of a selected classmate and given the opportunity to revise their own.

The findings were clear: adolescents were more strongly influenced by friends than by socially distant classmates. ‘When the other person was a friend, students adjusted their answers more,’ Gradassi notes. This suggests that classroom learning is shaped not only by accuracy, but also by social closeness and trust.

Social status also played a significant role. Adolescents were more likely to incorporate information from peers who occupied central positions in the social network—students who were well connected and socially prominent.

Importantly, influence extended beyond popularity alone. Peers perceived as academically competent also exerted greater influence on others’ learning decisions. Together, these findings demonstrate that educational outcomes are shaped not only by individual ability, but also by the structure of social relationships within the classroom.

Older adolescents respond to more positive influence

One of the most striking findings in Gradassi’s dissertation concerns prosocial behaviour. In a large-scale study involving 456 Dutch adolescents, participants were given the option to donate money to charity or keep it for themselves. Based on prevailing theories, Gradassi expected selfish behaviour to increase with age.

Instead, the data revealed the opposite pattern: more responsive to positive peer influence. ‘When older adolescents saw someone donating money, they were more likely than younger adolescents to follow that example,’ Gradassi explains.

These findings suggest that peer influence can be a force for good. Positive role models may become increasingly influential during later adolescence, highlighting opportunities to harness peer dynamics in constructive ways.

Social networks and social media

Gradassi’s findings are particularly relevant in an era in which social influence is amplified online. Social media platforms continuously map social connections and can intensify peer dynamics.

Understanding who influences whom—and under what circumstances—is therefore crucial for educators, policymakers and adolescents themselves. ‘It is important to inform the public about how these social dynamics operate,’ Gradassi concludes.

Depression, suicidal ideation among college students increased over past 15 years

 Results of an analysis of health survey data from more than 560,000 U.S. college students concludes that depression symptoms have steadily increased over the past 15 years, particularly among women, minorities and students experiencing financial stress. 

The study, led by researchers at Johns Hopkins Children’s Center along with McDaniel College and University of Maryland, specifically found that the rate of self-reported depression symptoms continued to grow over the 15 years of the analysis period (2007–2022), extending a trend reported by many researchers for the past two decades. 

According to Carol Vidal, M.D., Ph.D., M.P.H., child and adolescent psychiatrist at the Children’s Center, thoughts of suicide, or “suicidal ideation,” increased across all demographic groups regardless of race, age, gender or financial stress, but reports of other symptoms, such as restlessness and lack of concentration rose most steeply among female, financially distressed and minority students. 

A report about the  new study, published in the Journal of Affective Disorders, concluded that the findings highlight growing mental health disparities among college students. The report adds that the consistently steeper increases among women, students of racial minority groups, and those experiencing financial stress reveal that the rise in symptoms of depression is not uniform, and that the growth of suicide ideation across all groups signals an urgent need for prevention and targeted support strategies on college campuses.

For the study, researchers analyzed data from the Healthy Minds Study, a long-running research project led by several universities across the country that surveys college students about their mental health.

Depression symptoms were assessed using the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9), a tool used by psychiatrists and other mental health providers to diagnose and monitor the severity of depression. The questionnaire asks about nine symptoms, including suicidal ideation, poor appetite and trouble sleeping. The students are asked to give each symptom a score from 0 to 3 — 0 meaning never and 3 meaning they experience that symptom every day. 

Points are then added together for a total score. An overall score of 0 to 4 means the person likely is not experiencing depression. A score of 20 to 27 indicates severe depression. 

In the new analysis, average overall PHQ-9 scores increased every year. The highest symptom increase was seen in suicidal ideation, which increased by nearly 154%. The next highest was restlessness, which increased by nearly 80%. Trouble concentrating increased by over 77%. 

Vidal says that some minority students and those experiencing financial stress are considered vulnerable populations, and are more likely to encounter both acute life events and chronic stressors that can lead to psychological and physiological changes, including elevated stress hormones. 

The study also showed that sleep disturbance and appetite problems grew significantly faster among women compared with men. But Vidal says that men are generally less likely to report mental health symptoms. She noted that suicide rates are higher among men than women. 

Students who reported financial stress specifically saw higher PHQ-9 scores in symptoms of poor appetite, feelings of worthlessness and suicidal ideation. Minority racial and ethnic groups overall, but especially Hispanic students, saw higher PHQ-9 scores in symptoms of sleep problems. Women showed an average overall increase of 0.041 points each year in losing interest in activities that were once enjoyable, compared with a 0.028-point increase per year among men. 

Vidal says colleges, universities, parents and health care providers can all play a role in addressing differences in mental health indicators by being alert to those differences, addressing underlying stressors among the most vulnerable populations and seeking services when needed. . 

DOI: 10.1016/j.jad.2025.121002

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