A Week Off Social Media for Young Adults: What a 2025 Study Found

What happens to your mood when you put social media down for a week? A team at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston followed 373 young adults through their phones for three weeks to find out, and published the results in JAMA Network Open in November 2025. The week off was optional, and most people took it.

What the researchers did

The study, by Calvert and colleagues, recruited 18 to 24 year olds across the US through ResearchMatch, a national volunteer registry, between March 2024 and March 2025. Of 417 who enrolled, 373 completed the baseline. Most were women (74%), most were undergraduates (77%), and nine in ten used an iPhone. They were paid up to $150, depending on how many surveys they completed.

For the first two weeks, nothing changed but the watching. A research app on each phone passively recorded things like time at home, steps and screen use, and asked short daily questions about mood and anxiety. Participants also read their own app usage for five platforms (Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok and X) from their phone's settings, so the study had logged hours rather than guesses. Standard questionnaires measured depression, anxiety, insomnia and loneliness, and three scales measured problematic use, addictive use and negative comparison with others on social media.

Then everyone chose whether to take a one-week break from all five platforms. 295 people (79%) opted in and 78 didn't. The two groups didn't differ in age, symptoms, screen time or problematic use at the start.

What they found

Logged hours barely tracked how people felt. At baseline, participants spent an average of 1.9 hours a day on the five platforms. Once age, gender and other factors were accounted for, their logged screen time, pickups and notifications were not significantly linked with depression, anxiety, insomnia or loneliness, apart from a few tiny associations in the other direction. Problematic use did: its correlation with depression symptoms was 0.48, and negative comparison with others went with more anxiety, loneliness and insomnia.

The break cut use sharply, though not to zero. During the week off, daily use of the five platforms fell to half an hour, and 90% of participants reduced it. Instagram was the hardest to give up: 68% kept using it. Snapchat followed, at 49%. X and Facebook were the easiest to drop.

Symptoms fell. After the week, depression symptoms were 24.8% lower, anxiety 16.1% lower and insomnia 14.5% lower: small to medium effects by the usual yardstick. Loneliness didn't change significantly. The people who started with more depressive symptoms improved the most; those with no depression at the start still saw smaller drops in anxiety and insomnia.

Behavior shifted only a little. People spent about 43 more minutes a day at home during the break, and their total screen time on the phone rose slightly rather than falling. Both changes were small next to the large swings from one day to the next.

What the study can't tell you

There was no randomized control group. People chose whether to take the break, so motivation, expectations or simply being watched may explain part of the improvement, and the authors say the change can't be definitively credited to the break itself.

There was no follow-up either, so the study can't say whether the gains lasted once people logged back in. Participants were paid and may have guessed what the researchers expected. And the sample, mostly female college students with iPhones, recruited from the public rather than from a clinic, limits how far the results reach.

What it means for your phone

• Watch how you use it, not just how long. In this study, compulsive use and comparing yourself with others mattered far more than logged hours. Our guide to social media and mental health covers the wider research.
• A week is enough to learn something. Even a voluntary break, imperfectly kept, was followed by fewer symptoms. Our guide to a social media detox shows how to plan one.
• Lock the app you can't put down. Instagram was the app most people kept opening during their week off, which suggests a break needs more than good intentions.

Unrotten is built for that: choose the apps you want to use less, then keep them locked during the hours you set with Time away from apps, or give them a daily limit with Less scrolling.