Study: The less social media - the better well-being
Published 120 p.m





Several studies of the impact of social media on especially young people have all shown that they are linked to a worse mental well-being, and now comes yet another study that confirms this.

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The study included roughly 170 people aged 18-29 for three weeks who had previously used social media for approximately two hours per day. The participants were divided into three groups. In the first, they were only allowed to spend 30 minutes a day on social media, in group two, they were only allowed to use the media passively and only look at other people's posts, while the last group did as usual.

- Here we wanted to investigate whether passive use has positive effects because it leads to a reduced emotional and social investment in what happens on social media, for example through how others react - or do not react - to the content you publish, says Martin Wolgast, docent in psychology at Lund University, to forskning.se .

More focus and self-esteem
According to Wolgast, the differences between the control group and those who changed their social media behavior were surprisingly large.

The group with limited time on social media, but even those who passively used them, experienced that they became more focused and concentrated on other things in everyday life.

The restricted group also reported reduced levels of depression and stress, and also had better self-esteem.