Fear of COVID-19 and Sleep Problems in Turkish Young Adults: Mediating Roles of Happiness and Problematic Social Networking Sites Use

There is burgeoning evidence showing the negative impact of fear of COVID-19 on various mental health outcomes. Little is known about the underlying mechanism of the relationship between fear of COVID-19 and sleep problems in times of health crisis. This study aims to examine whether fear of COVID-19 was associated with sleep problems through happiness and problematic social networking sites (SNS) use. Participants included 506 young adults (67.6% females; mean age = 28.23 +/- 8.73 years) drawn from the general public in Turkey. Results showed that fear of COVID-19 had a sgnificant predictive effect on happiness (beta =-.15, p < .01), problematic SNS use (beta = 0.32, p < .01), and sleep problems (beta = .36, p < 0.01). Most importantly, happiness (effect = 0.02, 95% CI [0.01, 0.04]) and problematic SNS use (effect = 0.07, 95% CI [0.04, 0.11]) mediated the impact of fear of COVID-19 on sleep problems. These findings suggest that happiness and problematic SNS use are important factors that can help explain the association between fear of COVID-19 and sleep problems among young adults. Intervention and prevention programs can be developed to reduce the effect of fear the of COVID-19 pandemic on sleep problems of young adults by considering the roles of happiness and SNS use in the context of health crises or other stressful situations.