Study shows late-night tweeting impacts NBA players' performance

Twitter, and social media in general, can be a valuable resource for a professional athlete. It can also be a curse if mishandled or misused, and even impact one's performance in a game.

A recent study takes a deeper look at this issue, as researchers at Stony Brook University analyzed the statistics of NBA players in games played the day after they made a late-night tweet between 11 p.m. and 7 a.m.

There were 112 verified NBA accounts that were followed as part of the study from the start of the 2009-10 season though to the end of 2015-16, with over 30,000 tweets tracked late at night.

The study showed that players were averaging one point fewer and shooting 1.7 percent worse from the field in games immediately following a late-night tweeting session. Fewer shots were also taken and less rebounds, steals, and rejections were recorded, although that could also be attributed to the two fewer minutes per game that players in the study played under these circumstances.

“Using late-night tweeting activity as a proxy for being up late, we interpret these data to show that basketball skills are impaired after getting less sleep,” Stony Brook's assistant professor of sociology Jason J. Jones told the New York Post's Marc Berman.

Another noteworthy statistic: players who don't tweet on a regular basis saw their shooting percentages dip by four percent in games following an instance of late-night posting.

Stony Brook professor Lauren Hale will present these findings and more in Boston on Monday at "SLEEP 2017," which is a conference on sleep and medicine.