Recent studies have revealed that asking young people to reduce their social media use to 30 minutes a day does not necessarily lead to an improvement in their mental health.
She noted that most participants were unable to adhere to the time limit, while those who succeeded in reducing their usage did not show a significant improvement compared to those who continued to use these platforms as usual.
These findings, contained in a study soon to be published in the Journal of Clinical Psychology, raise an important question about the feasibility of setting a general time limit for social media use as a means of improving mental health, especially given the difficulty young people face in adhering to such limits in their daily lives.
The study's lead researcher, Andrea Howard, a developmental psychologist at Carleton University, said that asking young people who lack a strong incentive to change their habits to reduce their use of social media does not necessarily mean they will be able to do so, nor does it guarantee that their mental health will improve over time.
The study attempts to re-examine the findings of a prominent 2018 study conducted on students at the University of Pennsylvania. Researchers at that time divided participants into a group that continued using social media normally and another group that was asked to limit their use of Facebook, Snapchat, and Instagram to 10 minutes per day on each platform.
The older study showed a decrease in loneliness and depressive symptoms among participants who began the study with high levels of depression, but it found no clear differences in most other indicators of mental health.
Howard and her colleagues wanted to know if these results would be repeated years later, at a time when social media has become an essential part of young people's daily lives.
The first three studies included 644 iPhone users under the age of 30, both students and non-students. Participants provided data on their device usage time, along with weekly assessments of depression, anxiety, loneliness, life satisfaction, and other psychological indicators.
The participants were divided into two groups. The first continued to use social media as usual, while the second was asked to reduce its use for three weeks, in most cases to 30 minutes a day.
The researchers didn't just focus on timing; they also tested other methods to mitigate the potential impact of social media, including asking participants to interact online only with people they know in real life and limiting their use of apps they felt significantly affected their mental health. They also investigated whether the outcomes differed between those who used anonymous online identities and those who used their real identities.
But none of these methods led to a tangible improvement in mental health compared to the group that continued to use social media normally.
Adherence to the time limit was the biggest hurdle researchers faced. Participants spent an average of about three hours a day on social media at the start of the study. Of the 346 participants in the reduction groups who provided subsequent data, only 10% managed to reduce their usage to less than 30 minutes a day within one week of the study, while less than 5% managed to maintain this limit for at least two weeks.
In a fourth study involving 229 participants, researchers attempted to increase the effectiveness of the intervention. Instead of 30 minutes, they limited usage to one hour per day, while sending daily reminders to the participants.
This resulted in a relative decrease in social media use, but not enough to make a significant difference compared to the control group. More than half of the participants failed to adhere to the one-hour limit on any of the 21 study days, and only two managed to do so throughout the entire intervention period.
This time too, no differences appeared between the two groups in any of the mental health indicators measured by the researchers.
However, the results don't mean that reducing social media use wouldn't be beneficial for anyone. The small number of participants who adhered to the time limits makes it difficult to determine whether significantly and consistently reducing usage would lead to different outcomes.
The study also included only iPhone users, and the majority of participants were white women, which may limit the ability to generalize the results to all young people.
Howard argues that the difficulty of adhering to time limits is itself significant. Social media is no longer used for a single purpose; it has become a tool for entertainment, self-expression, following news, and connecting with friends.
For this reason, there may not be a one-size-fits-all approach. Someone who is distressed by their social media experiences or genuinely wants to change their habits may benefit more from a personalized plan, gradually reducing their usage, or receiving ongoing support.
On the other hand, Howard believes that those who wish to reduce the time they spend on their phone can try it as part of self-improvement and time management, even if there is no guarantee that it alone will lead to improved mental health.
As for parents, these results do not mean that setting limits on device use is not helpful, especially since the study focused on young people and did not include younger children or teenagers.
However, the researcher advises parents to consider the problem they are trying to solve rather than focusing solely on the number of minutes their children spend in front of screens. A young person suffering from depression or anxiety, or experiencing cyberbullying and harassment, may need broader support than simply reducing phone use.
Howard concluded that simply asking children to put their phones down is not enough, stressing that changing device usage habits requires continuous support and guidance to help young people find a way to use technology in a way that suits their needs and daily lives.
