Do cognitive behavioral programs for social media addiction improve sleep hygiene and concentration in university students compared with control groups?

The trials exist, but each one measures a different piece

The study that comes closest to the question is a CBT trial with tertiary institution students in Nigeria. It targets social media addiction in the right kind of population, and its framing notes that heavy social media use is linked to sleep disturbance and other physical and psychological problems [3]. But the outcomes reported are about addiction itself; sleep hygiene and concentration are not measured, and no control group is described. So it can tell us that CBT was applied to this problem in this population, not that sleep or focus improved relative to untreated students.

A second trial randomized university students to digital addiction training or a control condition and found significant improvements in sleep quality and in digital addiction scores, along with changes in orexin-A, a hormone involved in wakefulness [2]. This is the strongest sleep result in the set, and it does include a control group. The catch is the intervention: it was training about digital addiction broadly, covering social network, smartphone, and internet use, not a cognitive behavioral program aimed at social media addiction. It also did not measure sleep hygiene habits or concentration.

A third study tested a brief cognitive behavioral intervention for digital addiction among nursing students in Saudi Arabia, tracking dependence with a digital addiction scale [4]. Its background notes that heavy device use may affect concentration and sleep quality, but those were not the outcomes assessed, and there was no control group. That makes it useful context and weak evidence for the causal question.

Why sleep and focus are hard to pin down in this literature

Part of the difficulty is that "social media addiction," "digital addiction," and "internet addiction" get used somewhat interchangeably across these studies, even though the interventions differ. A program that teaches students about digital addiction generally [2] is not the same as structured cognitive behavioral therapy targeting social media habits [3]. When the intervention changes, a sleep improvement in one trial does not automatically transfer to the other.

The outcome measures are just as mismatched. Sleep quality, as measured in the digital addiction trial [2], is a rating of how well someone slept; sleep hygiene means the daily habits and routines that support sleep, such as consistent bedtimes and limiting screens at night. None of these studies measured sleep hygiene as a separate outcome. Concentration is mentioned as a concern in the background of two studies [1][4] but is not reported as a measured result in any of them. So the honest summary is that the outcomes the question asks about were mostly not the outcomes that were tested.

The population gap: secondary school is not university

One study did measure concentration and sleep as outcomes, comparing CBT, group counseling, and a comparison condition among senior secondary school students screened for elevated social media addiction [1]. That design is the closest to what the question asks for, since it has both the outcomes and a comparison group. But the students were in secondary school, not university, so its results cannot be assumed to hold for university students, whose schedules, independence, and social pressures differ.

Put together, the set splits neatly: the study with the right outcomes and a comparison group has the wrong population [1]; the study with the right population and a control group has the wrong intervention and outcomes [2]; and the study with the right intervention and population lacks the outcomes and a control group [3]. No single study closes the loop.

What a student or advisor should take from this

If you are deciding whether a CBT-style program is worth trying for social media overuse, the evidence is encouraging but indirect. CBT has been applied to social media addiction in tertiary students [3], and a digital-addiction program with a control group improved both addiction scores and sleep quality in university students [2]. That pattern is consistent with the idea that addressing problematic use can help sleep, but it does not show that a social media-focused CBT program improves sleep hygiene or concentration, because those specific combinations were not tested here.

The clearest gap for future work is a controlled trial in university students that delivers CBT for social media addiction and measures sleep hygiene habits and concentration directly, rather than inferring them from addiction scores. Until then, claims that such programs sharpen focus or fix sleep routines should be treated as plausible but unproven.

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