{"title":"The effect of self-monitoring limited social media use on psychological well-being.","authors":"M. Faulhaber, J. Lee, D. Gentile","doi":"10.1037/tmb0000111","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"An experimental study was conducted to investigate the effect of self-monitoring limited social media usage on psychological wellbeing. After completing pretest measures, 230 undergraduate students from a large Midwestern university were randomly assigned to one of two experimental conditions: either limit their social media usage to 30 min a day or to use social media as usual. After 2 weeks of limiting, the self-monitored group showed significant improvements in their psychological well-being. Anxiety, depression, loneliness, fear of missing out, and negative affect decreased while positive affect increased. These results suggest that limiting social media usage may improve psychological well-being on multiple dimensions. This study is one of the first to experimentally investigate feasible alternatives to social media use abstinence or experimenter-managed limitation. Future studies could investigate motivations and mechanisms of social media use through qualitative explorations.","PeriodicalId":74913,"journal":{"name":"Technology, mind, and behavior","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"2023-05-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Technology, mind, and behavior","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1037/tmb0000111","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"","JCRName":"","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
An experimental study was conducted to investigate the effect of self-monitoring limited social media usage on psychological wellbeing. After completing pretest measures, 230 undergraduate students from a large Midwestern university were randomly assigned to one of two experimental conditions: either limit their social media usage to 30 min a day or to use social media as usual. After 2 weeks of limiting, the self-monitored group showed significant improvements in their psychological well-being. Anxiety, depression, loneliness, fear of missing out, and negative affect decreased while positive affect increased. These results suggest that limiting social media usage may improve psychological well-being on multiple dimensions. This study is one of the first to experimentally investigate feasible alternatives to social media use abstinence or experimenter-managed limitation. Future studies could investigate motivations and mechanisms of social media use through qualitative explorations.