0903 Real-Time Links Between Online Discrimination and Sleep Disturbances Among Minoritized Youth

Abstract Introduction Social media is a primary setting for adolescents’ daily social lives, particularly for racial, sexual, and gender minority teens who turn to online platforms for support. Yet online spaces can expose youth to online discrimination, a chronic, stressful, and threat-related experience that may disrupt sleep. Online discrimination can be direct (targeting the individual) or vicarious (witnessing others targeted), but prior research has focused largely on offline or direct experiences. Moreover, although emerging work connects discrimination to sleep disturbance, studies rely primarily on retrospective subjective reports, with little use of intensive monitoring to characterize nightly consequences. Given that sleep is fundamental to adolescent brain development and daily functioning, this study aims to investigate whether weekly direct and vicarious online discrimination impact subjective (sleep quality, nightmares) and objective sleep (total sleep time [TST], wake after sleep onset [WASO]) among racial, sexual, and gender minority adolescents. It is hypothesized that both forms of discrimination are linked to worse sleep quality, a higher likelihood of nightmares, less TST, and increased WASO in the same-week and one-week after. Methods Youth with minoritized identities enrolled into an eight-week intensive monitoring study, completed daily diaries, and wore actigraphy watches. Multilevel models tested same-week and one-week prospective effects, adjusting for age, SES, depressive symptoms, and average daily social media use duration. Results In a sample of adolescents with racial/ethnic or sexual and gender minority identities who contributed ≥2 weeks of EMA and actigraphy (N=58; mean age=15.2; 252 weeks of observations), we found that neither discrimination type was linked to same-week sleep quality, TST, or WASO (ps>.05). However, prospective analysis showed that direct discrimination was linked to an increased likelihood of nightmare (OR=10.56, 95% CI=2.34–47.66, p=.002) and increased WASO (β=20.79 min, SE=10.22, p=.047), whereas vicarious discrimination showed no significant concurrent or prospective effect (ps>.10). Conclusion Despite low base rates, direct discrimination online showed strong, delayed effects on nightmares and WASO prospectively. Findings highlight the threat-specific sleep nocturnal hyperarousal and REM-related emotional dysregulation among minoritized youth. Future work should examine dose–response patterns, event severity, and physiological mediators (e.g., HRV), and evaluate whether supportive online interactions buffer these effects. Support (if any)