Dance the Night Away: How Automatic TikTok Use Creates Pre-Sleep Cognitive Arousal and Daytime Fatigue

Abstract

TikTok is one of the most popular apps. TikTok's endless stream of content, the lack time stamps or notifications of ever being “all caught up,” and concealing the phone's clock make it easy to lose track of time on TikTok. However, there is a lack of knowledge about how TikTok use may therefore interfere with our circadian rhythms, particularly our sleep hygiene. By focusing on pre-sleep cognitive arousal, this study aimed to close this knowledge gap by investigating the association between automatic TikTok use and daytime fatigue. We also investigated how individual preferences for sensation seeking and delayed gratification moderated this relationship. Within a sample of 1,050 TikTok/Douyin users in China, automatic TikTok use was associated with increased daytime fatigue that was mediated by higher levels of cognitive arousal before sleep. This relationship was aggravated by a preference for sensation seeking, and attenuated by a preference for delayed gratification. Above and beyond these early empirical insights, we also provide an early explanatory framework that is meant to systematize both existing and future knowledge about the use of TikTok.