Participants were measurably happier and less anxious.
But disappointingly, not by a huge margin:
Perhaps this is due to the fact a significant number of users switched to less harmful online platforms and didn’t stop using their phones.
Or perhaps there is actually something more sinister. My real concern with this study is the involvement of Meta.
We actually have evidence that Meta halted internal research about social media:
Would you study tobacco and have tobacco companies involved?
Would you study obesity and have Coca-Cola involved?
I don’t want to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but could Meta actually bully/bribe Stanford in order to change the figures?
I’m just on FB for the Messenger, maximized to ignore the rest, since they make it all but impossible to use their network with third parties. Hmmm, sounds like Reddit now that I think about it, but FB did that move first. The hardest part of changing social media or any communications is getting the ones you want to stay connected with to use better alternatives. Again with the Reddit comparison, but look at how many stick with that still rather than branching out to a new thing like Lemmy. Or encrypted email.
But I agree with the title suggestion, any immersion of a single thing is damaging, and social media is by its nature and design addictive. If you can’t control your intake, you should avoid what you can altogether.