Does a Social Media Detox Make You Happier? What 20 Trials Found

Every few months a new study says that quitting social media makes people happier, and another finds that it makes no difference. In 2025, researchers in Malaysia and China pooled every randomized trial they could find to get a clearer answer.

What the researchers did

The meta-analysis, by Yuyang Liu, Emma Mirza Wati Mohamad, Arina Anis Azlan and Yunpeng Tan, was published in Behavioral Sciences in 2025. In June 2024 the team searched six research databases and Google Scholar, along with unpublished theses and conference abstracts, for randomized trials in which people voluntarily stopped or limited their social media use and were compared with a control group.

From 2,319 search results, 20 trials made the cut. Together they included 10,106 people with an average age of about 29, and the trials ranged from 38 to 888 participants. Twelve of the 20 studied college students. The breaks came in three kinds:

• Full abstinence: no social media for the length of the trial.
• Limited use: the apps stay, but with a cap on time.
• Therapy-based: a break built into a broader psychological program.

The researchers sorted the outcomes into positive signs of well-being, such as life satisfaction, self-esteem and social support, and negative ones, such as depression, anxiety and loneliness, to see whether a break adds good feelings, removes bad ones, or both.

What they found

A small benefit, on both sides. Across the 20 trials, a social media detox improved well-being by a standardized effect of 0.23, about a quarter of a standard deviation, which researchers count as small. Positive feelings rose and negative ones fell by about the same amount.

The trials disagreed with one another. The results varied far more from trial to trial than chance would explain, so the average hides a wide range: some breaks helped a lot, and some not at all.

Culture explained part of it. The effect was largest in the single study from Italy, which the authors coded as a mixed culture, and smallest in individualistic countries such as the US, the UK and Germany.

The kind of break didn't matter much. Quitting completely, cutting back and therapy-based programs weren't significantly different from one another. Neither the participants' age nor the share of women in a trial changed the results.

Longer breaks eased bad feelings more. The length of the break didn't change the overall effect or the effect on positive feelings, but longer breaks went with bigger drops in negative ones such as depression, anxiety and loneliness.

No sign of publication bias. The authors' tests found no hint that small studies with disappointing results had gone unpublished.

What the study can't tell you

Most of the trials studied young people and college students, so the results may not hold for older adults. Participants knew whether they were on a break, most outcomes were self-reported, and the trials were short, so the pooled numbers can't say how long the benefits last. Much of the disagreement between trials remains unexplained, and the study included only research published in English.

An average also can't predict how you will respond. A small mean effect is consistent with some people feeling much better after a break and others feeling no different, or a little worse.

What it means for your phone

Expect a modest lift, not a new life. The best evidence so far says a break from social media helps a little on average, in both directions: a bit more of the good, a bit less of the bad.

Pick the break you'll actually finish. Quitting outright wasn't clearly better than cutting back, so a daily cap you keep may do as much as a dramatic week off. And if low mood is what you hope to shift, give it time: longer breaks eased negative feelings more.

Unrotten makes the cutting-back version easier to keep: choose the apps that eat your time and give them a daily limit with the Less scrolling goal, which locks them with Apple's Screen Time shield once the time is used up. For a plan, read our guide to the social media detox.