Passing on the Zzz's: Adolescent sleep attitudes are associated with sleep behaviors and parental prioritization of sleep.

OBJECTIVES: The purpose of this study is to examine adolescent attitudes about the importance of sleep and how they relate to adolescent sleep behaviors and parent sleep attitudes. METHODS: Participants included families with adolescents aged 10-17years and a parent (N = 170 dyads) who completed a virtual assessment. Adolescents reported on their sleep impairment and sleep hygiene behaviors, and all participants completed a newly developed scale to assess attitudes toward the importance of prioritizing sleep over other activities/responsibilities. RESULTS: Results suggest that older adolescents reported more negative sleep attitudes, and adolescents reported more negative sleep attitudes compared to adult/parent participants. More negative sleep attitudes were associated with poorer sleep hygiene behaviors. Parent sleep attitudes significantly predicted their adolescent's sleep attitudes, even after adjusting for family income, education, and adolescent age and sex. CONCLUSIONS: This is the first study to our knowledge to quantitatively examine adolescent sleep attitudes. Findings suggest that sleep attitudes are important for adolescent sleep, and may develop within the family system via parental socialization. Future research and implications for intervention are discussed.

Sleep restriction reduces positive social emotions and desire to connect with others.

Feeling connected with others and experiencing positive interpersonal interactions is associated with physical health and psychological functioning. Despite the importance of social experiences, experimental studies investigating how sleep impacts social connections and positive social experiences are limited. The current study sought to examine how sleep loss impacted social motivation and emotions. Healthy emerging adults (N = 53; 83% female, ages 18-28 years) were randomly assigned to one night of sleep restriction (4h time in bed) or typical sleep (8 h time in bed). Following the experimental night, participants reported on their desire to pursue social connections, and completed a reflection task where they wrote about something generous someone did for them. After the reflection, participants reported on their positive and negative social emotions (gratitude, connectedness, guilt, indebtedness). Coding of the reflections was conducted to extract emotional tone and social words used. Sleep restricted participants reported reduced motivation to pursue social connections, and less gratitude and feelings of connectedness after the reflection compared to the control condition. Sleep restricted participants also used fewer socially-oriented words (i.e. words focused on other people) when reflecting on this interpersonal event. No differences emerged in guilt or indebtedness or emotional tone of the reflection. Findings suggest that sleep loss may decrease desire to engage in social interactions and reduces positive social emotions. These findings expand the limited body of research on sleep and social functioning by examining the impact of partial sleep restriction on social motivation, and on the experience of social emotions within a positive interpersonal context.