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- Title
Taking a One-Week Break from Social Media Improves Well-Being, Depression, and Anxiety: A Randomized Controlled Trial.
- Authors
Lambert, Jeffrey; Barnstable, George; Minter, Eleanor; Cooper, Jemima; McEwan, Desmond
- Abstract
The present study aimed to understand the effects of a 1-week break from social media (SM) (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok) on well-being, depression, and anxiety compared with using SM as usual. We also aimed to understand whether time spent on different SM platforms mediates the relationship between SM cessation and well-being, depression, and anxiety. We randomly allocated 154 participants (mean age of 29.6 years) to either stop using SM (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok) for 1 week or continue to use SM as usual. At a 1-week follow-up, significant between-group differences in well-being (mean difference [MD] 4.9, 95% confidence interval [CI] 3.0–6.8), depression (MD −2.2, 95% CI −3.3 to −1.1), and anxiety (MD −1.7, 95% CI −2.8 to −0.6) in favor of the intervention group were observed, after controlling for baseline scores, age, and gender. The intervention effect on well-being was partially mediated by a reduction in total weekly self-reported minutes on SM. The intervention effect on depression and anxiety was partially mediated by a reduction in total weekly self-reported minutes on Twitter and TikTok, and TikTok alone, respectively. The present study shows that asking people to stop using SM for 1 week leads to significant improvements in well-being, depression, and anxiety. Future research should extend this to clinical populations and examine effects over the longer term.
- Subjects
WELL-being; CONFIDENCE intervals; SOCIAL media; MENTAL health; RANDOMIZED controlled trials; MENTAL depression; QUESTIONNAIRES; DESCRIPTIVE statistics; FACTOR analysis; ANXIETY; STATISTICAL sampling; DATA analysis software; HOLIDAYS
- Publication
CyberPsychology, Behavior & Social Networking, 2022, Vol 25, Issue 5, p287
- ISSN
2152-2715
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1089/cyber.2021.0324