[ health front ]
NEWS THAT’S GOOD FOR YOU
a social-media breather may boost mental health A weeklong break from Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, Twitter, and the like freed up nine hours of time for participants in a recent British study. It also reduced their symptoms of anxiety and depression and improved their sense of wellbeing, the researchers found. The study group included 154 people ages 18 to 72 who used social media daily. The researchers took baseline scores for the participants’ anxiety, depression, and well-being. They put half into a control group that did not change their scrolling habits and half into an intervention group that agreed to stop using all social media for one week. At the end of the break, people in the control group reported using social media for an average of seven hours, while those in the intervention group reported an average of 21 minutes over the course of the study. The intervention group also had significant improvements in well-being, anxiety, and depression as compared to the control group. “Many of our participants reported positive effects from being off social media with improved mood and less anxiety overall,” lead researcher Jeff Lambert, PhD, said in a press release from the University of Bath. “This suggests that even just a small break can have an impact.” SOURCE “Social media break improves mental health, study suggests,” University of Bath, 5/6/22
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5/31/22 1:52 PM
