Abstaining From Social Media Doesn ’t Improve Well-Being, Experimental Study Finds

By Matthew Warren From digital detoxes to the recent Silicon Valley fad of “dopamine fasting”, it seems more fashionable than ever to attempt to abstain from consuming digital media. Underlying all of these trends is the assumption that using digital devices — and being on social media in particular — is somehow unhealthy, and that if we abstain, we might become happier, more fulfilled people. But is there any truth to this belief? When it comes to social media, at least, a new paper in Media Psychology suggests not.  In one of the few experimental studies in the field, researchers have found that quitting social media for up to four weeks does nothing to improve our well-being or quality of life. Many past psychological studies into social media have relied on correlational data, looking at how individual differences in social media use (or “screen time” more generally) relate to well-being. That makes sense: it’s far easier to look at existing patterns of use than to conduct a controlled experiment, particularly in a world where we are all using digital media every day. But it also makes it hard to separate out cause-and-effect — even if social media use is associated with poorer well-being, how can we be sure that already unhappy people are not simply using social media more often, for instance? So in their new study, Jeffrey Hall and colleagues at the University of Kansas decided to add to the fairly sparse experimental literature by looking at what hap...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: Emotion Facebook Twitter Source Type: blogs