A new study found that NBA players who tweeted between 11 p.m. and 7 a.m. the night before a game scored fewer points and pulled down fewer rebounds the following day. The researchers concluded:
“…acute sleep deprivation, as measured via late-night Twitter activity, is associated with changes in next-day game performance among professional National Basketball Association athletes. More broadly, the use of late-night social media activity may serve as a useful general proxy for sleep deprivation in other social, occupational, and physical performance-based contexts.”
A professional athlete in any sport is, by definition, one of the best in the world at what they do. If late night social media activity can negatively impact performance in their sport, how do you suppose it impacts your performance on that exam, that meeting with a student, that important presentation, etc.?