Researchers found college students who tried to cut their social media use to 30 minutes per day scored significantly lower for anxiety, depression, loneliness and fear of missing out at the end of the two-week experiment and when compared to the control group.
Late last year I had the opportunity to experience firsthand what this really means. Political unrest in my country uncovered some brutal truths about the world in general and my own country in particular, that lead to literally everything online becoming just depressing. Day after day for months, consuming that amount of negative news had me exhausted by early this year.
I had to cut back on social media by a lot, and get back into some of my older hobbies that had been on a backburner during this time. It took deliberate efforts to cut back the social media because it was just so easy to get sucked right back in. In any case it has been a real learning experience