A week-long social media “detox” is actually good for health, study says

Before and after, participants completed questionnaires measuring depression, anxiety, insomnia, loneliness, and a range of problematic behaviors related to social media. Overall, they reported positive changes: on average, anxiety symptoms decreased by 16.1%; Depressive symptoms 24.8%; And insomnia symptoms: 14.5%. The improvement was more pronounced in people with major depression. At the same time, there was no change in reported loneliness — perhaps, the authors write, because the platforms play a constructive social role.

Limiting social media use “certainly won’t be your first or only treatment,” but the study showed it can be useful as an adjunct treatment, said John Toros, an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and co-author of the study. “If you have a mental health condition and are already receiving treatment, it might be worth trying this to see if cutting back on social media helps you feel better,” he said.

Toros cautioned to be careful when interpreting the results as treatment advice. The people had volunteered for detox and had minimal mental health symptoms initially, so the magnitude of improvement was not drastic. What’s more, he said, “there was huge variation in differences in how people responded,” and not everyone benefited.

“The averages are encouraging, but they certainly don’t tell the full story, and the variation has been enormous,” he said.

Toros, who runs a digital mental health clinic at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, said he became curious about the effects of decreased social media use because many of his patients at his university reported that they benefited from social media breaks. When he looked into the research literature on the topic, he found it to be “confusing” and “mixed.”

His team decided to start a study using “digital phenotyping,” a method that collects real-time information about people’s behavior from their devices. He said young people eagerly applied to volunteer in the study, for which they paid $150.

“People are naturally interested, which I think is a good sign,” he said.

Participants were asked to stop using Facebook and X, which they did successfully, as well as Instagram, TikTok and Snapchat, which proved more difficult, he said.

The mental health benefits appear to come from avoiding problematic social media behaviors, such as addictive use and negative social comparison, rather than from changing total screen time, the researchers said.

In fact, participants, on average, spent slightly more time on their phones during the detox week.

These findings come amid intense academic debate about whether excessive screen use causes mental health problems. A group of psychologists, including social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, has identified the smartphone as a cause of poor mental health among young people, and many communities have already taken steps to limit social media use or screen time, especially during school hours.

At the same time, many experts have urged caution about concluding that screen time is a major factor in poor mental health, saying studies have produced mixed results and that what seems to matter is what young people do online, not how much time they spend there.

Several psychologists said the new study is of limited value because its design allows for bias. It was not a randomized controlled trial, with people divided into a treatment group (a group that reduced their social media use) and a control group (a group that continued their usual social media habits). Instead, participants chose to take a break from social media, perhaps anticipating an improvement.

“Participants knew how they were expected to behave, and they may have simply changed their responses accordingly,” said Christopher Ferguson, a psychology professor at Stetson University who was not involved in the study.

He added that without comparing them to a control group, “these numbers are literally meaningless.”

He said that in a period of “technological moral panic,” studies that find an effect receive much more attention than those that do not, something he said can “distort public perceptions.”

Candice Odgers, a professor of psychological computer science at the University of California, California, who was not involved in the study, said it was hard to be surprised that “if we constantly tell people that social media is bad for them and that taking a break is good, and then ask them to take a break and report how they feel afterward, that this is what we see.”

But others expressed cautious optimism about the results. Mitch Prinstein, chief scientific officer at the American Psychological Association, who was not involved in the study, said the findings add to existing evidence that, on average, “depression, anxiety, and loneliness are often reduced” for those who stop using social media for a period of time.

Prinstein said social media breaks are “a simple, free solution that seems to lead to rapid improvement,” unlike psychotherapy, which can take weeks to take effect.

“This is the solution that will empower the majority of parents and young people,” he said. “Use social media much less, and there is a reasonable chance that young people will feel much better.”

However, previous studies that have sought to measure the effects of a “digital detox” have yielded mixed results. Last year, Ferguson published a meta-analysis of 27 experiments linking social media breaks to mental health, concluding that the average effect was “not statistically different from zero.”

A review of 10 studies published in March in the journal Scientific Reports also found no effects. Another meta-analysis examining 32 trials, published this year in the journal SSM-Mental Health, found that restricting social media “produces significant but small positive effects on subjective well-being.”

Toros attributed this difference to the low quality of current research studies. He said he hopes additional research will allow doctors to tailor social media breaks to individuals who would benefit from them.

He was not enthusiastic about banning the use of social media, saying it “may cause unintended consequences.”

He added: “It is certainly possible to ban it, but this is a very straightforward approach, at least for mental health.”

Academics who have called for strict restrictions on social media use have hailed the new study as evidence that quick action is needed. Jean Twenge, a psychology professor at San Diego State University who was not involved in the new study, called the study “the latest to show that limiting social media use can have mental health benefits.”

Because the improvement was more noticeable in people who were already depressed, she said the results “suggest that reducing social media use for a week or two may be an effective treatment for people with depression.”

Twenge, author of 10 Rules for Raising Kids in a High-Tech World, said the study helped dismiss the long-standing argument that people with mental health problems simply use more social media.

However, she noted that more research is needed to clarify whether the effects are permanent.