The Effects of Sleep, Stress, and Screen Time on Visual Episodic Memory in Adolescents

Abstract

Visual episodic memory refers to one’s ability to remember the images and visuals of past experiences. Protecting one’s visual episodic memory is important to support learning, problem-solving, and overall cognitive health in adolescence. Today’s teens are living in a “Digital Age” marked by increasing screen usage and stress levels, and decreasing sleep, experiences which negatively affect brain structures and may possibly influence visual episodic memory. To further understand these connections, we designed and conducted a survey-based study, which explored the effects of sleep, stress, screen time, and social media use on visual episodic memory in 16 adolescents. This study was designed in such a way that most of the participants who enrolled completed the study, indicating that this study’s approach is feasible and could be applied to future studies. However, in this study, no significant relationships were found between sleep, stress, screen time, and social media use on the percent of correct answers or reaction time on a visual episodic memory test (developed by CogniFit). This study has potential limitations, such as a small sample size and the influence of confounding variables, highlighting the complexity of isolating variables that affect cognition. More studies are needed to confirm if there is a lack of correlation.