Reducing Social Media Usage to Half Hour Decreases Mental Health Symptoms in Young Adults

The overuse of social media has been the cause of a significant amount of mental turmoil for young adults. In spite of the fact that this is the case, the algorithms governing these social media platforms can make it harder for them to cut down on their usage than might have been the case otherwise. It is often assumed that even moderate amounts of social media usage will cause a lot of harm, but a new study suggested this is not true.

With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that the University of Iowa recently looked into the effects of limiting social media usage to just 30 minutes a day. The participants in this study were college going adults, and it turns out that this led to them experiencing less anxiety and depression.

Social media can be useful because of the fact that this is the sort of thing that could potentially end up helping you connect with the world around you. However, it has to be used in sufficiently low time periods, otherwise the risk of negative mental health impacts will increase considerably.

Participants who did not use social media for much longer than thirty minutes a day found that they slept better as well with all things having been considered and taken into account. This just goes to show that decreasing social media usage can provide improvements across the board, and it will be interesting to see if further research ends up confirming this.

Another thing that was highlighted in this study is that young adults need to willingly choose to limit their social media usage. If they are forced to do so, the perceived limitations placed upon their freedoms would prove to negate any and all progress that might have been made. Teens and young adults must choose to do this on their own, and they must be encouraged to keep at it since it can take a long time to break the social media addiction once and for all and there is a high chance of failure.

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by Zia Muhammad via Digital Information World