Reducing social media use for just one week can reduce mental health symptoms such as anxiety and depression in young people, a new study shows.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Here's a candidate for today's least surprising but most useful news. This is a story about social networks. New research shows that limiting social media use for even a week can significantly reduce mental health symptoms in young people. You'll want to share this on Facebook, NPR's Ritu Chatterjee reports.
RHITU CHATTERJEE, BYLINE: Most studies of social media influence ask users to remember how much time they spend on their phones or these platforms. But the data is often unreliable, says psychiatrist Dr. John Torus.
JOHN THORUS: If you ask me, can you guess how much time you spend in front of a screen? – I don't think I would be right.
CHATTERJEE: Torus directs the department of digital psychiatry at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. In the new study, he and his colleagues took part in about 400 young people aged 18 to 24 years.
THORUS: We said that for the first two weeks we just want you to use social media as usual. The only difference is that we are going to install this application.
CHATTERJEE: An app called MindLAMP.
THORUS: And with your permission, we're going to record information from your phone about your social media usage, say your travel patterns, your steps, your sleep.
CHATTERJEE: That gave them the baseline. At the end of two weeks, they gave participants standardized questionnaires measuring symptoms of depression, anxiety, insomnia and levels of loneliness. They then asked participants if they wanted to try a week-long social media detox.
ELOMBE CONRAD: So 80% of the participants chose to detox.
CHATTERJEE: This is Dr. Elombe Conrad (ph), co-author of the study. Participants spent about two hours a day on social networks – Facebook, Snapchat, TikTok.
CONRAD: During the detox, that time was reduced to about 30 minutes a day.
CHATTERJEE: That was enough to reduce anxiety symptoms by 16% by the end of the week, Conrad says.
CONRAD: We saw a 24% reduction in depressive symptoms and a 14.5% reduction in insomnia symptoms.
CHATTERJEE: The results, published in JAMA Network Open, are impressive, says psychologist Mitch Prinstein.
MITCH PRINSTEIN: Hey, it usually takes eight to 12 weeks of intensive psychotherapy to see that kind of reduction in mental health symptoms. So if you can get them in just one week of behavior change, wow.
CHATTERJEE: Prinstein is director of strategy and inclusion at the American Psychological Association and was not involved in the new study. He says what's also striking about the results is that when participants cut back on social media use, their screen time did not decrease.
PRINSTEIN: And they still showed improvement. In my opinion, this is very important in demonstrating that the problem is not just screen time.
CHATTERJEE: In other words, he says, social media is probably the biggest influence on mental health.
Ritu Chatterjee, NPR News.
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