No More FOMO: Limiting Social Media Decreases Loneliness and Depression
By M. Hunt, R. Marx, Courtney Lipson, Jordyn Young. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 2018
750 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Introduction: Given the breadth of correlational research linking social media use to worse well-being, we undertook an experimental study to investigate the potential causal role that social media plays in this relationship. Method: After a week of baseline monitoring, 143 undergraduates at the University of Pennsylvania were randomly assigned to either limit Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat use to 10 minutes, per platform, per day, or to use social media as usual for three weeks. Results: The limited use group showed significant reductions in loneliness and depression over three weeks compared to the control group. Both groups showed significant decreases in anxiety and fear of missing out over baseline, suggesting a benefit of increased self-monitoring. Discussion: Our findings strongly suggest that limiting social media use to approximately 30 minutes per day may lead to significant improvement in well-being.
Subfields: Applied Psychology, Education, Sociology and Political Science
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/89e81f45afba5f0be1e17bc5fd67d72a8f21f4fc
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Citations in the corpus
- The future of social media in marketing (2019, background): “…use has been shown to be negatively correlated with consumer well-being (Shakya and Christakis 2017) and correlational research has shown that limiting social media use to 10 min can decrease feelings of loneliness and depression due to less FOMO (e.g., Bfear of missing out;^ Hunt et al. 2018).”
- Experimentally manipulating social media abstinence: results of a four-week diary study (2019, methodology): “%) over a week and Hunt et al. (2018) over four weeks (79%).”
- How Adolescents Use Social Media to Cope with Feelings of Loneliness and Anxiety During COVID-19 Lockdown (2020, neutral): “20 In addition, these studies indicate that merely individuals lacking social skills increase their Internet use to cope with loneliness.”
- Fear of missing out (FoMO): A generational phenomenon or an individual difference? (2020, background): “In addition, curtailing social media activity in favor of face-to-face interactions may prove beneficial for individuals who are prone to feelings of loneliness or FoMO (Hunt et al., 2018; Twenge et al., 2019).”