Previously submitted to: JMIR Mental Health (no longer under consideration since Oct 12, 2025)
Date Submitted: Oct 12, 2025
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Combining Short-term Online Mindfulness with Natural Sounds to Reduce Pre-Sleep Problematic Social Media Use: A Cross-over Randomized Control Trial.
ABSTRACT
Background:
Pre-sleep problematic social media use (PSMU) among tertiary students has been shown to impair sleep quality, academic performance, and daytime functioning, highlighting the urgent need for effective interventions.
Objective:
This study was designed to assess whether short-term online interventions, such as one or two weeks of mindfulness-based intervention (MBI), natural sounds (NS), or their combination, could effectively alleviate pre-sleep PSMU among college students.
Methods:
The experiment adopted a randomized 2×2 crossover design. Participants were 154 students enrolled at a university in China, ranging in age from 17 to 24 years (mean 18.78, SD 0.79). The sample consisted of 92 females (59.74%), 54 males (35.06%), and 8 individuals (5.19%) who opted not to disclose their gender. During the first week, participants were randomly allocated to one of two groups: the MBI (N = 78) or the NS intervention (N = 76). In the second week, each group was further randomized: the week-one mindfulness group was divided into Group A (M+M) and Group B (M+N), while the week-one NS group was divided into Group C (N+N) and Group D (N+M).
Results:
Both the MBI and NS led to significant short-term reductions in pre-sleep PSMU after one week (mindfulness: t(50) = -2.59, p = .012, Hedges’ g = -0.32; natural sounds: t(46) = -3.74, p < .001, Hedges’ g = -0.50). Over the two-week period, two weeks of NS produced a marginal effect (p = .078). Group A showed no significant change (W0–W2: t = –0.24, p = .81), whereas Group B produced significant improvement (W0–W2: t = 2.27, p = .025, 95% CI [0.42, 6.10]). Group C showed a marginal effect (W0–W2: t = 1.77, p = .078), while Group D yielded the largest gain (W0–W2: t = 2.72, p = .007, 95% CI [1.09, 6.91]).
Conclusions:
One week of online MBI or NS significantly alleviated pre-sleep PSMU among college students. However, two weeks of MBI did not yield significant results. Two weeks of NS produced a marginal effect, warranting further investigation. Importantly, the combined two-week intervention of MBI and NS demonstrated significant improvements, effectively alleviating pre-sleep PSMU among Chinese university students.
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