Today's Edition
(THE NEW YORK TIMES)
Dialling down the use of social media for a week reduced symptoms of anxiety, depression, and insomnia in young adults, according to a study published Monday in the journal JAMA Network Open.
Researchers followed 295 volunteers, ages 18 to 24, who opted to take a break from social media. Instructed to stay off social media as much as possible, the group on average reduced it to a half-hour per day from just less than two hours. Before and after, the participants answered surveys measuring depression, anxiety, insomnia, loneliness and a number of problematic social media behaviours.
Overall, they reported positive changes: on average, symptoms of anxiety dropped by 16.1%; symptoms of depression by 24.8%; and symptoms of insomnia by 14.5%.
The improvement was most pronounced in subjects with more severe depression.
There was no change in reported loneliness - perhaps, the authors wrote, because the platforms play a constructive social role.
Dr John Torous, an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and a co-author of the study, said reducing social media "certainly would not be your first-line or your only form of care,” but the study showed it could be useful as an adjunct treatment.
Dr Torous urged caution in interpreting the results as treatment advice. The subjects had volunteered for the detox, and they had minimal mental health symptoms to begin with, so the magnitude of the improvement was not drastic. Also, there was, he said, "tremendous heterogeneity in the differences in how people responded,” and not everyone benefited.
The mental health benefit seemed to come from avoiding problematic social media behaviours rather than a change in overall screen time, the authors said. Indeed, the participants, on average, spent slightly more time on their phones during the detox week.
Many specialists have urged caution about concluding that screen time is a central factor in declining mental health, saying that studies have yielded mixed results and that what seems to matter is what young people do online, not how much time they spend there.
Several psychologists said the new study was of limited value because its design allowed for bias. Notably, it was not a randomised controlled trial, in which subjects were assigned to a treatment group (one that reduced social media use) and a control group (one that continued usual social media habits). Instead, participants opted to take a break from social media - and may have anticipated improvement.
