Summary: Yes, a short social media detox can improve mental health in young adults. New research shows reducing social media time for at least one week can lead to improvements in scores on standard mental health metrics.
Key Points:
- The simultaneous increase in social media use and mental health problems among young adults is an important phenomenon to explore and understand.
- We know that some types of social media use for some demographic groups is associated with negative mental health outcomes.
- The correlation between social media use time and mental health is not completely understood, with both positive and negative outcomes associated with various use patterns.
- A new study uses objective social media use metrics to explore whether a short social media detox can improve mental health in young adults
Social Media Use, Mental Health, and Young Adults: Still More Questions Than Answers
In 2025, news about the impact of social media use is commonplace. Thanks to the extensive coverage and reporting, we know that by 2021 – the first iPhone appeared in 2007 – close to 90 percent of people over age 13 in the U.S. own a smartphone.
That data comes from a poll conducted by the Pew Research Center.
We also know that people began using Facebook regularly around 2008 or 2009, shortly followed by Instagram and Twitter (now X), more recently followed by Snapchat and TikTok. The same poll from pew Research shows that by 2021, 97 percent of adolescents 13-17 reported being online every day, and 46 percent of adolescents reported being online all the time.
However, the association between screen time and mental health is complex. For heavy social media users who regularly engage in negative comparison on Instagram, negative outcomes such as decreased self-esteem and increased depression and anxiety are common. These outcomes are most pronounced in female pre-teens and teens who engage in negative social comparison online, regardless of their total time spent online or on social media.
In addition, the type of social media use has an impact on mental health outcomes. People with social phobia or people who are shy may seek and find healthy connections online and/or through social media. Members of the LGBQIA+ community, particularly those without adequate family support and understanding, can find support, community, and helpful facts and resources online and/or through social media. People who play games online – the D&D community, the Minecraft community, and others – also find positive and enriching social connections online and/or through social media that they don’t find as easily in person, a.k.a. irl.
As we mention, the situation is complex.
Heavy Use May Cause Problems, But Can Taking a Break Resolve Them?
With all that information readily available to anyone interested in the topic, one thing we don’t know much about is what happens with mental health when a young person takes a break from social media – i.e. a social media detox – for as little as one week. That’s why a new study called “Social Media Detox and Youth Mental Health” attracted our attention.
A group of researchers from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, MA and the University of Bath in the United Kingdom (UK) designed a unique experiment to answer the following question:
“Is reducing social media use associated with behavior and mental health outcomes among young adults?”
To conduct the study, the researchers recruited 373 young adults, aged 18-24, to participate in a three-week study on the impact of a short social media detox on mental health. During the experiment, researchers collected data on participant use of the following social media platforms over a 2-week period:
- Snapchat
- TikTok
- X (Twitter)
After establishing baseline social media use patterns and baseline values for depression, anxiety, insomnia, and loneliness, participants opted in or out of a 1-week social media detox protocol. After the detox, participants completed the same battery of tests, which the research team then analyzed to explore their primary research question: Can a short social media detox improve mental health in young adults?
The specific outcomes the researchers focused on were changes in scores on the following standardized, evidence-based metrics.
- Depression: Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9)
- Anxiety: Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7 (GAD-7)
- Insomnia: Insomnia Severity Index (ISI)
Here’s how the experimental process played out:
First Visit (Day 1):
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- Participants completed baseline demographic questionnaires, as well clinical mental health assessments, social media use assessments, and installed/configured an app to track social media use patterns over the following two weeks.
Second Visit (Day 2):
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- Two weeks after Day 1, participants returned to repeat the same battery of clinical and social media use assessments as Day 1 and shared their social media use metrics for the previous 2 weeks, as tracked by the installed app. At this point, 295 participants chose to participate in the 1-week digital detox, while 122 opted out.
Third Visit (Day 3):
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- After participating in the detox or not, participants returned and repeated the same battery of clinical and social media use assessments as Day 2 and shared their social media use metrics for the detox week.
Let’s take a look at what they found.
Social Media Use Among Young Adults: Patterns of Use
First, we’ll share the patterns of social media use they identified among the group of 373 young adults. These are the average daily values for each platform, collected over two unrestricted weeks of social media use among study participants.
Baseline Characteristics of Social Media Use Among Young Adults 18-24
Total average social media time: 1.9 hours
Facebook:
- Time: 4 minutes
- Pickups just for FB: 1.2
- Notifications: 0.4
- Days opened: 4
Instagram:
- Time: 42 minutes
- Pickups just for Insta: 13.4
- Notifications: 5.5
- Days opened: 11
Snapchat:
- Time: 11 minutes
- Pickups just for SC: 9.6
- Notifications: 8.5
- Days opened: 9
TikTok:
- Time: 48 minutes
- Pickups just for TikTok: 4.8
- Notifications: 1.1
- Days opened: 7.4
X (Twitter):
- Time: 7 minutes
- Pickups just for X (Twitter): 1.8
- Notifications: 0.6
- Days opened: 2.7
Next, let’s look at the percentage of the 295 participants who opted in on the detox who adhered to the detox parameters, by platform:
- Facebook: Yes: 73% / No: 27%
- Instagram: Yes: 32% / No: 68%
- Snapchat; Yes: 51% / No: 49%
- TikTok: Yes: 64% / No: 36%
- X (Twitter): Yes: 82% / No: 18%
That information is helpful and informative, but it’s not what we’re really after: we’re looking for the impact on mental health.
Social Media Detox and Mental Health: Can it Help?
Here are the results we want to see: the impact of a short social media detox on mental health, and whether a short social media detox can improve mental health in young adults.
Complete Detox Group: Mental Health Outcomes
Total Average Changes in Mental Health Scores:
- Depression (PHQ-9): 2.05 point reduction
- Decrease from baseline: 24.8%
- Statistically significant change
- Anxiety (GAD-7): 1.89 point reduction
- Decrease from baseline: 16.1%
- Statistically significant change
- Insomnia (ISI): 1.97 point reduction
- Decrease from baseline: 14.5%
- Statistically significant change
- Loneliness (UCA-LS): 0.40 point reduction
- No statistically significant change
Those changes are small, they are real, and they are significant – but they’re not necessarily directly connected to overall screen time or to total social media time. In fact, across the cohort, total screen time increased, as did the number of screen unlocks, pickups, and incoming texts.
To explore this finding, researchers analyzed the data by severity of depression, to learn whether existing or pre-existing emotional states impacted the change in scores on mental health metrics after the digital detox.
Here’s that data.
Total Average Changes in Mental Health Scores, By Severity of Depression
Mild Depression:
- Depression (PHQ-9): 2.36 point reduction, significant
- Anxiety (GAD-7): 2.57 point reduction, significant
- Insomnia (ISI): 2.10 point reduction, significant
- Loneliness (UCA-LS): 0.61 point reduction, not significant
Moderate Depression:
- Depression (PHQ-9): 4.42 point reduction, significant
- Anxiety (GAD-7): 3.46 point reduction, significant
- Insomnia (ISI): 3.88 point reduction, significant
- Loneliness (UCA-LS): 1.17 point reduction, not significant
Moderately Severe Depression:
- Depression (PHQ-9): 7.98 point reduction, significant
- Anxiety (GAD-7): 5.62 point reduction, significant
- Insomnia (ISI): 5.79 point reduction, not significant
- Loneliness (UCA-LS): 0.35 point reduction, not significant
Severe Depression:
- Depression (PHQ-9): 12.5 point reduction, not significant
- Anxiety (GAD-7): 7.12 point reduction, not significant
- Insomnia (ISI): 7.75 point reduction, not significant
- Loneliness (UCA-LS): 0.59 point reduction, not significant
As we can see, the changes – all improvements – varied by severity of mental health diagnosis, rather than by total screen time. The improvements for all mental health metrics followed a distinct pattern: increasing reductions in symptoms up to the level of moderately severe depression, at which point improvements persisted, but did not achieve clinical statistical significance.
We’ll elaborate on this further, below.
Social Media Use and Young Adults: What Really Matters?
When the research team compared baseline social media use patterns with baseline mental health patterns, they found no direct association. And when they analyzed social media use time with mental health reductions during the digital detox, they found that the time spent online or social media has less of an impact on the observed reduction than the severity of depression among the detox group.
In other words, the more severe the symptoms, the greater the reduction associated with a social media detox – up to a point. Young adults with severe depression experienced reduction during the detox, but not to the degree experienced by young adults with moderate or moderately severe depression. Here’s one of the top-line takeaways from the study:
Young adults with moderately severe depression benefitted the most from the social media detox.
This finding aligns, theoretically speaking, with these three observations we’ve made after reviewing dozens of studies and publishing several articles on this topic:
- It’s not the use itself that causes problems, but the manner of use that can cause problems.
- Social media use – even what many people would define as a high level of use – does not alone predict or cause mental health problems.
- In some cases, social media use can be protective and help young adults find the community and connection they need to improve mental health.
The finding in this study allows us another observation, related to the “it’s not the use, it’s how it’s used” perspective that fits most of the reliable experimental data.
What Matters Is What’s Going on With the Person, Not the Fact They’re on a Social Media Platform
Here’s our new observation:
It’s not necessarily that you use social media, how often you check social media, or how long you stay on social media, but rather the nature of your overall use and the overall nature of your thoughts and feelings while you use social media that impact whether social media has a positive or negative effect on mental health among young adults.
It’s obvious that how we feel when we do something has bearing on how what we do affects our mental health. What this observation highlights is the fact that people with initial mental health problems and initial problem usage styes are more at risk of experiencing the negative impact of social media on mental health than people without initial mental health problems and without a default problematic usage style.
Insight from the study authors reiterates this observation:
“The 1-week social media detox intervention led to significant reductions in symptoms of depression, anxiety, and insomnia. These findings suggest that the impact of social media on the mental health of young adults may depend less on the quantity of use and more on the emotional and psychological state in which use occurs.”
With regards to whether young adults should consider taking a short social media detox to improve mental health, we think it’s a great idea. For people who rely on social media for social connection, we suggest finding safe and secure ways to interact with your chosen support community during a social media detox. We think you can stay connected to your people without the intermediate, mediating platforms – and learning to do that may be an important step on a variety of social, psychological, and emotional levels.
