Assessing the effects of acute reductions in mobile device social media use on anxiety and sleep

Research has consistently suggested social media exerts negative effects on sleep and anxiety. Researchers have however, relied heavily on self-report measures of social media use and correlational designs. The present study employed an experimental manipulation to examine the effects of an acute reduction of social media use over a one-week period to assess the potential causal role of social media use in anxiety and sleep quality.

Baseline social media use across one week was captured via smartphones, in addition to questionnaire measures of anxiety and sleep quality in a group of 93 unselected participants (female = 48, male = 43, did not specify = 2). Participants were then randomly assigned to suspend social media use for one week, whilst the other half used social media as normal. At the end of this week participants returned for a second data collection session where the same measures were re-administered.

No evidence of a causal effect of social media use on anxiety or sleep quality was observed.

While capturing objective mobile social media data, future research could also benefit from incorporating usage data from computers and other devices.

The discussion considers the possibility that the findings may represent the genuine absence of such a relationship versus the failure to detect an extant relationship and the importance of including objective measures of social media use.