Researchers studied what happens when you quit social media - The emotional results are surprising
Do you feel that social media is getting you down? Then you should try doing what many others have done, switching it off. Science has proven its benefits.
We’ve heard the stories that social media platforms are driving angry, divisive and polarizing content in order to get more clicks. Then came the tsunami of AI slop, flooding peoples content feeds.
It’s created a situation such that where once people picked up their smartphone to take a break from the real world are now setting them down to have a break from social media in order to spend time in the real world. Some are even going as far as deleting the social media apps on their phones to improve their lives and mental health, a trend that has been growing.
Social media detox “is very effective”
The improvements in wellbeing that people say they feel after disconnecting from social media are not subjective. Studies by researchers have now provided objective proof that a social media detox can be highly beneficial for people.
In a study published at the end of last year in JAMA Network Open, a group researchers observed 373 young adults between 18 and 24 over three weeks. The first two weeks were used to get a baseline of their mental health while using social media normally by answering standardized mental health surveys.
The third week 80% of them voluntarily participated in a social media detox and then asked to answer the questionnaires again, the results were astounding. “A 1-week social media detox intervention significantly reduced symptoms of anxiety by 16.1%, depression by 24.8%, and insomnia by 14.5%,” the researchers reported in their findings.
“So, it’s very effective,” Dr. Elombe Calvert, a co-author of the study, told NPR. Psychologist and chief of strategy and integration at the American Psychological Association Mitch Prinstein said, “It usually takes eight to 12 weeks of intensive psychotherapy to see those kinds of reductions in mental health symptoms. So if you can get those with just one week of change in behavior, wow!”
And that study wasn’t a one-off. Another group of researchers paid nearly 36,000 Facebook and Instagram users to deactivate their account for up to six weeks prior to the 2020 U.S. presidential election. They randomly assigned 27% of participants to be part of the treatment group and suspend using their account for a full six weeks prior to the election while the rest only stopped during the first of those weeks.
The Facebook users reported a 0.06 improvement in happiness, anxiety, and depression, relative to control users, while the Instagram detox group experienced a 0.041 improvement.
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