Taking a Break: Mental Health Benefits from Social Media Use Interventions in Young Adults

Abstract

Despite mental illness in young adults rapidly increasing in prevalence in the last two decades, researchers have not definitely identified a cause to address. There is conflicting evidence as to whether social media and smartphone use is to blame. To solve this debate, some have tested whether taking breaks from social media can help mental health. We improve upon these studies by paying our participants to eliminate sample bias, by testing different, more practical interventions than abstinence, and by testing how long effects last. In our sample of 22 undergraduate college students, for the most part, we did not find that groups assigned to take breaks had greater improvements in mental health or decreased post-intervention social media usage than the control. We attribute this finding to our small sample size. Our improved interventional study needs to be done with a more powerful sample size to truly determine whether breaks from social media can improve mental health in current young adults, a generation suffering greatly from psychological illness.