Editor’s Note: Dr. Earl Chism (he/him/his) is a resident physician in pediatrics at the University of California, San Francisco. He is a member of the Pediatric Leaders Advancing Health Equity (PLUS) Program, and his interests include medical education and improving health outcomes by increasing representation in health care.
-Rachel Y. Moon, MD, Associate Editor, Digital Media, Pediatrics
As someone who has grown up during the age of smartphones and social media, I know firsthand some of the effects they can have on a person. On one hand, it’s so easy to want to watch just one more video or read just one more post. At the same time, it takes seconds to reach out to friends across the world or check in on your high school teammate.
We’re living in an evolving age, an age in which it has been difficult to define a universal experience of social media and thus, nearly impossible to write definitive policy.
In their State-of-the-Art review article “Digital Detox and Well-Being” being early released in Pediatrics this week, Laura Marciano, PhD, Sanmit Jindal, MBBS, and Kasisomayajula Viswanatha, PhD, from Harvard University and the University of New Haven summarize 2 review articles and 6 additional articles, all published in 2013-2023, related to social media use to examine its effects on well-being (10.1542/peds.2024-066142).
The 2 review articles, which looked at 133 studies in total, summarized the effects of disconnecting from social media. One reviewed the impact of varying durations of “digital detox” (ranging from 24 hours to 4 weeks) on well-being, defined by outcomes such as life satisfaction, mood, social connectedness, cognitive performance, and self-regulation. The second reviewed interventions that used digital and non-digital tools to help participants “digitally disconnect,” defined as a “deliberate form of non-use of devices, platforms, features, interactions, and/or messages” to reduce perceived overuse and improve well-being.
In both reviews, the authors found that reducing social media use had both positive and negative effects or, in some cases, no effect at all on well-being.
In the 6 other articles:
- Reducing daily smartphone use in combination with an increase in physical activity—or, simply the reduction in daily smartphone use alone—had a stronger impact on well-being than increasing physical activity alone.
- A 10% reduction in social media use for 7 days had the same effect on attentional performance as a 50% reduction for 7 days.
- One hour of daily reduction in use for one week had more stable effects on subjective well-being at 4 months post-intervention than complete abstinence for the same timeframe.
- A media education module about smartphone use did not result in significant improvements in overall well-being.
- Morning meditation sessions for a group of adolescents reduced perceived smartphone addiction, reduced stress, and had higher rates of satisfaction.
- “Disconnection” has a different meaning for adolescents in rural areas, as disconnection due to factors such as limited Internet access had a stronger negative effect on self-esteem than heavy social media use alone.
This review makes several key points about social media use:
- We need standardized terms when we talk about digital detox and well-being.
- In some instances, perhaps reducing digital use is better for well-being than complete abstinence.
- We do not yet know how to optimize use of social media to maximize long-term wellbeing.
- Social media has different effects within different contexts.
I eagerly await the resulting policy based on this continued research and, of course, all the subsequent memes.
