Social media use (SMU) refers to the time spent engaging with social networking platforms.
Fear of Missing Out (FoMO) is the apprehension that others are having rewarding experiences that one is missing out on, often leading to increased SMU.
Excessive SMU has been associated with detrimental effects on mental health, such as increased symptoms of depression and anxiety.
This may be due to factors like negative social comparisons, exposure to harmful content, and the displacement of healthier activities like sleep and in-person interactions.
Emotionally distressed youth may be particularly vulnerable to these negative effects.
Davis, C. G., & Goldfield, G. S. (2024). Limiting social media use decreases depression, anxiety, and fear of missing out in youth with emotional distress: A randomized controlled trial. Psychology of Popular Media. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1037/ppm0000536
Key Points
- Limiting social media use (SMU) to 1 hour per day for 3 weeks in youth with emotional distress led to significant reductions in symptoms of depression, anxiety, and fear of missing out (FoMO) compared to a control group.
- Reducing SMU also led to an increase in sleep duration of about 30 minutes per night in the intervention group, while sleep declined by 15 minutes per night in the control group.
- The beneficial effects of reducing SMU on mental health outcomes were not moderated by gender.
- Reducing SMU may be a feasible, low-cost intervention for improving mental health in emotionally distressed youth who are heavy social media users.
Rationale
Previous research has found correlations between heavy SMU and poorer mental health in youth, with distressed youth potentially being more vulnerable to the negative effects (Keles et al., 2020; Twenge & Campbell, 2019).
Experimental studies on the effects of reducing SMU have had mixed results (Agadullina et al., 2020; Hunt et al., 2018; Tromholt, 2016).
This study aimed to test if reducing SMU to 1 hr/day for 3 weeks would improve depression, anxiety, FoMO, and sleep in emotionally distressed youth.
Method
Design
Parallel-group randomized controlled trial, the gold standard for assessing intervention efficacy.
Procedure
1-week baseline period followed by 3-week intervention. Intervention group limited SMU to 1 hr/day, control group used social media as usual. Pre and post measures taken.
Sample
220 university students aged 17-25 (168 women, 50 men, 2 “other”) with emotional distress and heavy SMU (>2 hrs/day).
Measures
SMU objectively tracked via smartphone. Validated self-report scales used: CES-D (depression), GAD-7 (anxiety), FoMO, and self-reported sleep duration.
Analysis
2×2 mixed ANOVAs tested intervention effects on each outcome. Gender examined as a moderator.
Results
The study’s hypotheses were supported by the results.
Compared to the control group, the intervention group showed significantly greater reductions in symptoms of depression, anxiety, and FoMO, as well as a significant increase in sleep duration.
These findings demonstrate the beneficial effects of reducing SMU on mental health and sleep outcomes in emotionally distressed youth.
Importantly, the effects were not moderated by gender, suggesting that both men and women benefited equally from the intervention.
Insight
This study provides strong evidence for a causal link between SMU and mental health, using a well-controlled experimental design.
By randomly assigning participants to either reduce their SMU or continue as usual, the researchers were able to isolate the effects of SMU on depression, anxiety, FoMO, and sleep.
The findings suggest that the benefits of reducing SMU may come from decreased exposure to negative social comparisons and the displacement of healthy offline activities, such as sleep.
These results highlight the potential of reducing SMU as a low-cost, accessible intervention for improving mental health in emotionally distressed youth, a population that may be particularly vulnerable to the negative effects of excessive SMU.
Future research should aim to replicate these findings with longer intervention periods and explore the specific mechanisms underlying the benefits of SMU reduction.
Strengths
This study had several methodological strengths, including:
- Randomized controlled design allowed for strong causal inferences about the effects of the intervention
- Objective measurement of SMU using smartphone tracking data provided a reliable and accurate assessment of actual use
- Good compliance with the intervention, with the intervention group reducing their SMU by approximately 50% on average
- Use of well-validated measures of mental health outcomes increases confidence in the findings
Limitations
This study also had some limitations, including:
- Short 3-week intervention period, unclear whether benefits would be maintained over a longer period
- Sample limited to university students interested in changing SMU, may limit generalizability to other populations
- Intervention group still averaged 78 minutes of SMU per day, which may be higher than ideal for maximizing mental health benefits
Implications
The results of this study have important implications for the treatment of anxiety and depression in youth.
They suggest that reducing SMU could be an effective component of interventions for these common mental health problems.
Encouraging youth to track their SMU and set goals for reducing it may help heavy users to regulate their use and improve their well-being.
The findings also highlight the need for further research to test the effectiveness of SMU reduction interventions in clinical samples and to explore the optimal level of SMU for mental health.
Overall, this study provides promising evidence for a simple, low-cost intervention that could have significant public health benefits for emotionally distressed youth.
References
Primary reference
Davis, C. G., & Goldfield, G. S. (2024). Limiting social media use decreases depression, anxiety, and fear of missing out in youth with emotional distress: A randomized controlled trial. Psychology of Popular Media. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1037/ppm0000536
Other references
Agadullina, E. R., Lovakov, A., & Kiselnikova, N. V. (2020). Does quitting social networks change feelings of loneliness among freshmen? An experimental study. Journal of Applied Research in Higher Education, 13(1), 149–163. https://doi.org/10.1108/JARHE-11-2019-0283
Hunt, M. G., Marx, R., Lipson, C., & Young, J. (2018). No more FOMO: Limiting social media decreases loneliness and depression. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 37(10), 751–768. https://doi.org/10.1521/jscp.2018.37.10.751
Keles, B., McCrae, N., & Grealish, A. (2020). A systematic review: The influence of social media on depression, anxiety and psychological distress in adolescents. International Journal of Adolescence and Youth, 25(1), 79–93. https://doi.org/10.1080/02673843.2019.1590851
Tromholt, M. (2016). The Facebook experiment: Quitting Facebook leads to higher levels of well-being. Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking, 19(11), 661–666. https://doi.org/10.1089/cyber.2016.0259
Twenge, J. M., & Campbell, W. K. (2019). Media use is linked to lower psychological well-being: Evidence from three datasets. The Psychiatric Quarterly, 90(2), 311–331. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11126-019-09630-7
Keep Learning
Here are some potential discussion questions for a college class on this paper:
- What are some healthy alternative activities that youth could engage in to replace time spent on social media?
- How might social media platforms be designed differently to mitigate potential negative impacts on mental health?
- Are there certain types of SMU content or usage patterns that are more detrimental to wellbeing? How could this be studied?
- What barriers might prevent distressed youth from successfully reducing their SMU? How could these be addressed?
