Reducing social media use for just one week can significantly lighten the mental load for young adults, according to new findings published in JAMA Network Open.

Users aged 18-24, frequent visitors of platforms like Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, and Snapchat, are not only highly active but also greatly susceptible to anxiety, depression, and sleep disorders.

The team of researchers aimed to move beyond studies based on self-reported data, which they consider less reliable, by using objective data obtained from actual digital tracking.

An Approach Based on “Digital Phenotyping”

To avoid the usual recall biases, the study employed a method known as “digital phenotyping“, which involves automatic measurement of actual smartphone usage including app usage time, movement via GPS and accelerometer, sleep patterns, and daily interactions.

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About 400 young American adults were monitored over two weeks of normal usage using a specific app. Following this baseline period, participants were offered the chance to try a one-week “detox” from social media, supervised by the researchers and focused on reducing their social media engagement.

This digital break was quite popular: about 80% of the participants tried it and managed to decrease their daily social media use from an average of 1.9 hours to just 30 minutes.

Significant Impact on Anxiety, Depression, and Sleep

The findings were somewhat unexpected even to the experts: a mere week of reduced social media use led to a 16.1% reduction in anxiety symptoms, 24.8% decrease in depression, and 14.5% improvement in sleep issues.

Interestingly, these benefits did not correlate with a reduction in overall screen time, which did not change significantly. The researchers suggest that the improvements were primarily due to a decrease in problematic behaviors such as social comparison and compulsive use, rather than simply spending less time on the phone.

Conversely, no significant changes were noted in feelings of loneliness. The researchers believe this might be due to the role that social platforms still play in social bonding for this age group.

A Promising Study… Yet Still Limited

While the study’s methodology mitigates several biases, it is not without its limitations, including voluntary participation, the lack of a control group, and no long-term follow-up to measure the sustained impact of the observed effects.

In their report, the authors acknowledge these limitations but emphasize that the results seriously suggest considering targeted reductions in usage as part of therapy for young adults…