Association between the screen time spent watching short videos at bedtime and essential hypertension in young and middle-aged people: a cross-sectional study

Abstract Background Watching short videos is an integral part of the daily lives of young and middle-aged people. Nevertheless, the correlation between the screen time spent watching short videos at bedtime and essential hypertension in young and middle-aged people remains unclear. We aimed to explore the correlation between the screen time spent watching short videos at bedtime and essential hypertension among young and middle-aged people and construct a nomogram prediction model for assessing the probability of developing essential hypertension for these age groups. Methods This study included 4318 young and middle-aged people who underwent medical examinations at Hengshui People’s Hospital between January 2023 and September 2023. The collected data, including self-reported screen time spent watching short videos at bedtime and general information, were partitioned into a training set and a test set, with the former being divided into hypertensive and non-hypertensive groups. R programming language was used for statistical analysis and processing. Results The results of multifactorial logistic analysis showed that screen time of 0< time ≤ 1 h (95% confidence interval [CI]: 2.022–6.082, P4 h (95% CI: 21.382–78.15, P