Taking A Break From Social Media Reduces Anxiety And Depression
A large-scale study conducted in the United States before the 2020 presidential election found that temporarily stopping the use of Facebook and Instagram led to a limited but notable improvement in users’ emotional state. In the study published by the U.S.-based research organization NBER (National Bureau of Economic Research), two large experiments were carried out with Facebook and Instagram users. The researchers found that users who deactivated Facebook for six weeks reported a remarkable improvement in an emotional state index that included indicators such as happiness, anxiety, and depression.
The study included more than 19,000 daily active users in the Facebook experiment and more than 15,000 in the Instagram experiment. Participants were randomly divided into two groups: one group deactivated their accounts for six weeks, while those in the control group took a break for only one week. The findings suggested that the effect of Facebook was stronger among people over the age of 35, while the effect of Instagram appeared to be stronger among women under the age of 25. The researchers also noted that the time freed up by reducing social media use was largely redirected to other phone applications, meaning that the improvement could not be explained simply by “spending less time on screens.”