The data: Spending significantly less time with social media can reduce Gen Z’s symptoms of anxiety, depression, and insomnia, according to a study recently published in JAMA Open Network.
Researchers tracked the social media use of about 300 US participants ages 18 to 24 for two weeks, followed by a week-long social media detox intervention in which folks decreased their time with social media from about 2 hours per day to 30 minutes. Social media use was measured on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, and X.
Digging into the data: One week off social media reduced symptoms of anxiety by 16.1%, depression by 24.8%, and insomnia by 14.5%. There was no meaningful change in loneliness, however.
Researchers attributed the reduction in mental health symptoms during the detox period to fewer opportunities for “problematic engagement,” such as negative social comparison and addictive use, rather than less overall screen time. In fact, even though participants sharply cut their social media use for a week, their overall phone time actually increased.
Why it matters: US consumers ages 18 to 24 (the same age range in the study) spend the most daily time among all social media users on TikTok (58 minutes), Instagram (45 minutes), and Snapchat (25 minutes), per our forecasts.