Do you watch short videos in bed and go to sleep late? Scientists in China asked 538 university students about their habits. Students who could not stop watching short videos often put off going to bed.

But feeling sad or stressed was more closely linked to another problem. These students were weaker at planning and controlling what they do. The study only shows a link, not a cause.

Have you ever kept scrolling through short videos even though you knew you should sleep? Researchers in China surveyed 538 university students online about short-video addiction, bedtime procrastination, self-control, executive function, and emotional distress. Bedtime procrastination means delaying going to bed for no good reason, even when you are able to sleep. Students who were more addicted to short videos tended to put off bedtime more, and the link was strong.

However, emotional distress was more closely related to weaker executive function, which includes planning and controlling attention, than to late bedtimes. The researchers suggest improving self-control, not just reducing screen time. The study appeared in Frontiers in Psychology.

You decide it is time to sleep, and then you keep scrolling through short videos anyway. A survey published in Frontiers in Psychology looked at this habit among 538 Chinese university students. Researchers from Wenzhou University and Zhengzhou Institute of Science and Technology used an anonymous online questionnaire to measure five things: short-video addiction, bedtime procrastination, weak self-control, reduced executive function, and emotional distress.

Bedtime procrastination means putting off sleep for no outside reason, which makes it different from insomnia. All five factors rose and fell together, and short-video addiction was strongly correlated with bedtime procrastination. The most telling result came when everything was analyzed at once. After executive function was taken into account, the link between procrastination and distress almost vanished.

Problems with planning and self-regulation may therefore matter more than late bedtimes themselves. All the data were self-reported, most respondents were female first-year students from one province, and the statistical model did not fit the data fully. Because the survey was a single snapshot, the direction of cause is also open. Videos might wear down executive function, or people with weaker executive function might be drawn to videos.