New research from Swansea University shows that reducing social media use by 15 minutes a day can significantly improve general health and immune function, and reduce levels of loneliness and depression. The study, published in the Journal of Technology in Behavior Science, showed that the group asked to reduce their social media use had an average of 15 per cent improvement in immune function, including fewer colds, flu, warts, and verrucae, a 50 per cent improvement in sleep quality, and 30 per cent fewer depressive symptoms. These improvements were significantly greater than those experienced by the other two groups, neither of which showed any changes in those measures.
Over three months, the team examined the effects on physical health and psychological functioning of getting people to reduce their social media usage by 15 minutes a day. The outcomes were compared to groups that were not asked to reduce their usage or were explicitly asked to do something other than social media during those 15 minutes.
Those instructed to reduce their usage ended up doing so by about 40 minutes a day, rather than the 15 minutes requested, whereas there was a daily 10-minute increase for the group asked not to do anything. Strikingly, the group specifically asked to do something other than social media increased their usage by around 25 minutes a day. While previous studies have noted a correlation between reduced social media usage and improvements in psychological well-being, this new report shows an experimentally-controlled relationship, which suggests a causal relationship between social media reduction and improved physical health.