Volume 6, Issue 4

Background. Academic burnout and poor sleep are common among university students, and both are linked to psychological distress. Few studies have examined whether sleep quality helps explain the association between burnout and distress in student populations outside Western Europe, North America and East Asia. Methods. In a cross-sectional survey conducted between March and May 2025, 1,184 undergraduate students at four public universities in Ankara, Istanbul, Izmir and Erzurum completed the Maslach Burnout Inventory–Student Survey, the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index and the Kessler Psychological Distress Scale. Mediation was tested with structural equation modeling and bias-corrected bootstrap confidence intervals, adjusting for sociodemographic and academic covariates. Results. Overall, 61.8% of students reported poor sleep quality and 26.9% reported very high psychological distress. Academic burnout was associated with poorer sleep quality (β = 0.36) and with greater distress (direct β = 0.40). Sleep quality partially mediated the association between burnout and distress (indirect β = 0.12, 95% CI 0.09–0.15), accounting for 23% of the total effect. Exhaustion was the burnout dimension most strongly associated with poor sleep, and the indirect effect did not differ significantly between women and men. Conclusions. Poor sleep is a plausible pathway linking academic burnout to psychological distress among Turkish university students. Campus mental health services could combine burnout prevention with sleep-focused interventions, although longitudinal studies are needed to establish the direction of these associations.

Concern that social media harms adolescent mental health has shaped public debate and policy, from school phone bans to proposed age limits, yet the research evidence remains contested. Large cross-sectional studies typically find small negative associations between time spent on social media and well-being, while longitudinal and experimental studies yield smaller, inconsistent or null effects at the population level. This review argues that much of the apparent contradiction reflects three features of the literature rather than the simple presence or absence of harm. First, reliance on self-reported screen time, which correlates only moderately with logged use, obscures what adolescents actually do online. Second, average effects conceal substantial heterogeneity: a minority of adolescents, particularly those with existing vulnerabilities, appear to experience meaningful harm, while others benefit from social connection and identity exploration. Third, associations vary with developmental timing, with evidence of heightened sensitivity in early adolescence that differs by gender. We summarize evidence on specific mechanisms, including sleep displacement, cyberbullying, appearance-based social comparison and problematic use, and contrast them with documented benefits for social support. We conclude that research and policy should move beyond total screen time toward measures of content, context and individual susceptibility, and we outline priorities for study design, researcher access to platform data and the evaluation of regulatory interventions.