Social media use exploded with COVID-19’s lockdowns and contact restrictions. Millions turned to Facebook, TikTok, Twitter, and other platforms to escape feelings of isolation, anxiety, and hopelessness. However, excessive screen time has led to addictive behaviors, stronger emotional attachment to social media, and deeper mental anguish for many people. Researchers at the Ruhr University in Bochum, Germany investigated the effects of reducing social media use (SMU) and increasing physical activity, or both, on emotional well-being and tobacco consumption. Julia Brailosvskaia, Ph.D., an assistant professor at the university’s Mental Health Research and Treatment Center, led the two-week experiment. He and her team observed that the interventions they suggested may have helped enhance participants’ satisfaction with life. At a 6-month follow-up, the subjects continued to report spending less time on social media, maintaining physical activity, feeling happier, and smoking fewer cigarettes. The study’s authors noted that mental health “consists of two interrelated but separate dimensions: positive and negative.” With this paradigm, they hypothesized that the positive dimension of their intervention would “increase life satisfaction and subjective happiness.” The negative dimension would decrease “depression symptoms and addictive tendencies of SMU.” Medical News Today discussed this study with Dr. Sheldon Zablow, an author and nutritional psychiatrist. He was not involved in the research. When asked about the effects of social media on mental health, Dr asserted MNT also spoke with Dr. David A. Merrill, adult and geriatric psychiatrist and director of the Pacific Neuroscience Institute’s Pacific Brain Health Center at Providence Saint John’s Health Center in Santa Monica, CA, regarding the present study. He was not involved in the research. Dr. Merrill argued that the term social media is a “misnomer that’s almost like a bait and switch,” designed “to increase user engagement.” Too much social media use, he said, “could end up exacerbating” mental issues for people with behavioral health conditions or addictive vulnerabilities. “There’s the brain reward system that you get from clicking or scrolling or maintaining the use of the social media,” Dr. Merrill said. “I think [that the authors are] demonstrating causally that you both need to have a conscious awareness of the need to limit the self-soothing aspect of social media use, and you also need to have alternatives, so you need to have some other way to bring joy into your life, and especially during the pandemic.” As a psychiatrist, Dr. Zablow emphasized that “the essential part of any treatment program recommended is exercise. Psychotherapy and, when indicated, medication, will not work well if a person does not exercise.” Dr. Zablow added that exercise increases the production of neurotransmitters, the brain’s “natural antidepressants and antianxiety molecules.” He and her colleagues reasoned that a “conscious and controlled reduction of time spent on SMU as well as an increase of time spent on physical activity could causally reduce negative mental health consequences of the COVID-19 situation.” They also believed that combining both interventions might amplify this effect. The professor mentioned that the methods can easily fit into everyday life with little cost, effort, or risk of violating COVID-19 protocols. Further, the scientists expected their experiment to reduce stress caused by COVID-19 and diminish smoking behavior. The researchers recruited 642 healthy adult social media users and placed them in 4 experimental groups. The social media (SM) group had 162 individuals, the physical activity (PA) group of 161, a combination group of 159, and a control group of 160. Over 2 weeks, the SM subjects reduced their daily SMU time by 30 minutes and the PA group increased their daily physical activity by 30 minutes. The combination group applied both interventions, while the control did not change their behaviors.
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