Trying to cut down on the time you’re wasting scrolling through social media can be a real struggle.

We’re all very aware of the negative impacts of spending too long looking at highlight reels from other people’s picture-perfect lives, but that doesn’t make it any easier to quit the habit - in part thanks to the way that social media platforms are designed to hijack the body’s dopamine reward system, giving us a rush with every new notification.

But according to a new study published in the Journal Of Technology In Behavioural Science, even making a small effort to reduce the time you spend on social platforms could have a positive impact on our wellbeing.

Researchers at Swansea University found that cutting back social media usage by just 15 minutes a day was beneficial for study participants’ social lives and vitality.

As part of their study, they recruited 50 undergraduates from six universities across the UK, all aged between 18 and 30, who used a social networking site like Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook or Twitter on their phone. 

The participants completed questionnaires about “their health, immune function, loneliness, sleep, anxiety and depression”, the study’s authors said, then were randomly allocated to one of three groups.

Students in the first group would carry on using their smartphones as normal, while those in the second would reduce their usage by 15 minutes each day. The third and final group cut down their social media time by a quarter of an hour too and used this time to do another activity (such as reading or exercising).

Three months later, the participants filled in the same surveys again. The researchers found that there was a “significant improvement” in the second group in relation to all the wellbeing measures mentioned above, compared to the other two groups.

“The current results demonstrated that over a three-month period… a group reducing social media by 15 minutes a day reported less social media dependence and improved general health and immune functioning, as well as reduced feelings of loneliness and depression,” authors Phil Reed, Tegan Fowkes and Mariam Khela wrote.

However, the group that swapped scrolling for leisure activities didn’t see a similar benefit; instead, if anything, it “increased [their] usage of social media”. 

“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 wellbeing,” said Reed, a psychology professor at Swansea.

“It remains to be established whether the relationship between social media use and health factors is a direct one or whether changes in wellbeing variables, such as depression, or other factors, such as an increase in physical activity, mediate it,” he added. “That the group asked to reduce their usage and do something different did not show these benefits suggests that campaigns to make people healthier could avoid telling people how to use their time.”

“They can resent it. Instead, give them the facts, and let them deal with how they make the reduction, rather than telling them to do something more useful.”

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