Washington: A study found that teenagers who cut their social media use in half improved their body image within a month.
Young people around the world spend many hours in front of screens on a daily basis. Most of this time is spent on applications like Instagram, TikTok and Snapchat.
Now, researchers have found in a study that reducing the amount of time spent on social media can improve perceptions of one’s weight and appearance.
A team of researchers from the Eastern Ontario Research Institute in Ontario, Canada, conducted a study on 220 young people who spent at least two hours a day on the phone. The participants were between the ages of 17 and 25 and had depression. Or had symptoms of anxiety.
Participants in the study were asked to describe their appearance and weight and then completed a similar questionnaire at the end of the study.
In the first week of the study, participants were asked to use social media as usual.
The researchers then asked half of the participants to reduce their social media use by 60 minutes, after which these individuals reduced their social media use by nearly 50 percent (an average of 78 minutes per day) over the next three weeks. The control group, which was told to use social media regularly, spent an average of more than three hours per day.
A study published in the journal Psychology of Popular Media found that people who reduced their time on social media had significant improvements in their perceptions of their appearance and weight. In contrast, there was no significant difference in the views of the youth of the control group.