Feeling depressed or just overall blah? A new study suggests maybe you should just put down your phone.
The study, from Swansea University, found that cutting as little as 15 minutes of time on social media each day can not only improve your general health and immune function, but also relieve symptoms of loneliness and depression as well.
”These data demonstrate that when people reduce their social media use, their lives can improve in many ways – including benefits for their physical health and psychological well-being,” said Professor Phil Reed, who conducted the study.
His team logged the effects on physical and psychological health when 50 study participants changed their social media use in one three ways. They were randomly divided into three groups. The first group was a control; they kept using their phones as usual. The second reduced their social media use by 15 minutes a day, and the third reduced their social media use and substituted another activity.
Every week, they reported the amount of time they spent on social media, and every month they submitted a questionnaire about their health and psychological function. The results were surprising. The first group actually added 10 minutes of social media time. The second group cut out 40 minutes. The third group added 25 minutes of social media time each day.
Compared to the first and third groups, the second group showed “a significant improvement…in general health, immune function, loneliness, and depression.”
Professor Reed hypothesizes that the third group’s poor results show that when people are told how to use their time, they resent it. “Instead,” he says, “give them the facts and let them deal with the reduction.”
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