The Impact of Online Racial/Ethnic Discrimination on Sleep and Anxiety

Objective: The rise in social media used has caused concerns of the mental health problems among adolescents and young adults, of this sleep and anxiety have received increased concern. Racial/ethnic minority groups are more likely to experience stressors like discrimination and are at an increased risk of facing discrimination online. Some studies have shown that experiencing discrimination online did affect sleep quality and contributed to anxiety symptoms. It is of importance to further understand this. The purpose of this study is to examine and see if there is an association between sleep quality and anxiety symptoms among young adults’ facing ethnic/racial discrimination online. The research aims are, 1. To examine whether racial/ethnic discrimination on social media is related to sleep and anxiety symptoms. 2. To examine whether social media use is indirectly related to sleep problems via anxiety symptoms. 3. To examine whether racial/ethnic discrimination moderates the indirect relationship between social media use and anxiety symptoms. Method: The participants are going to be taken from a larger study. The participants were 508 college students that identify as racially or ethnically minoritized, they completed an online survey examining mental health symptoms and cultural factors among college students. Of these, 78.3% (N=398) were female and had a mean age of 19.61 (SD=2.08). Results: Analyses are going to be conducted using IBM SPSS Version 27, and descriptive statistics will be used. Along with that Pearson’s correlation will be used to examine bivariate associations between sleep, anxiety, and online discrimination.