Sleeping in multicultural societies: The longitudinal interplay between adolescents’ sleep health and intercultural interactions

Adolescents’ sleep is intertwined with their well-being and daily life experiences. Sleep health in youth, comprising qualitative (e.g., self-perception of sleep problems) and quantitative (e.g., sleep efficiency, the percentage of time spent asleep while in bed) aspects, is increasingly recognized as a public health concern. However, there is a lack of evidence regarding how adolescents’ interactions in contemporary societies, characterized by increasing cultural diversity, are intertwined with sleep health aspects. Thus, this study investigated the reciprocal longitudinal associations between sleep health, considering subjective (i.e., sleep problems) and objective (i.e., sleep efficiency) indicators and intercultural interactions of adolescents (quantity and quality) in two different life contexts (i.e., school and leisure time). A total sample of 1,543 adolescents (Mage = 15.69, SD = 1.22, 53.14% females) wore an actigraph for one week and completed questionnaires about intercultural interactions and sleep health four times across one year. Results of Random-Intercept Cross-Lagged Panel models showed that, at the within-person level, more negative intercultural interactions were associated with increased self-reported sleep problems over time in both contexts. At the between-person level, adolescents who reported more positive intercultural interactions across both contexts exhibited higher average sleep efficiency. These findings underscore the nuanced interplay between the quality of intercultural interactions and both subjective and objective indicators of sleep health, suggesting a conceptualization of adolescents’ sleep as a socially embedded phenomenon shaped by the cultural contexts in which young people live.