Would it surprise you to learn that taking time off social media, even for just a week, results in "significant improvements in well-being, depression and anxiety?" [via]
We randomly allocated 154 participants (mean age of 29.6 years) to either stop using SM (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok) for 1 week or continue to use SM as usual. At a 1-week follow-up, significant between-group differences in well-being (mean difference [MD] 4.9, 95% confidence interval [CI] 3.0–6.8), depression (MD −2.2, 95% CI −3.3 to −1.1), and anxiety (MD −1.7, 95% CI −2.8 to −0.6) in favor of the intervention group were observed, after controlling for baseline scores, age, and gender.
Another way of looking at it, though, is that social media helps people become vulnerable to political and commercial messaging by stoking their anxiety, misery and anger with a content feed measurably correlated to those outcomes. Two sides to every story!
