Want to cut down on social media? The golden number could be 30 minutes

We all know that social media affects our mental health and wellbeing and that cutting it out entirely will make us feel better about ourselves.

Yet for many people completely deleting social accounts isn’t really possible. You may use them for work purposes or to keep in touch with friends and family who live across the globe for instance.

What you can do, however, is start to cut back and according to a study conducted by the University of Pennsylvania, the golden number for social media usage could be a maximum of 30 minutes a day.

The study, led by psychologist Melissa G.Hunt and published in the December edition of the Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, aimed to establish how the platforms Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat led to decreased well-being.

The experiment saw 143 undergraduate students, aged 18-22, at Penn assigned to one of two groups: a control group where social media usage wasn’t limited, and one where the group was only allowed to visit the platforms for a maximum of 10 minutes per day for each platform.

For three weeks, the participants had to share their iPhone battery screenshots to give the researchers weekly tallies for each individual. Then Hunt looked at different outcome measures caused by using the platforms, including fear of missing out (FOMO), anxiety, depression and loneliness.

Using the results, Hunt found that participants who limited their social media use in this way felt better than those who were in the control group.

"Here's the bottom line," Hunt told ScienceDaily. “Using less social media than you normally would leads to significant decreases in both depression and loneliness. These effects are particularly pronounced for folks who were more depressed when they came into the study."

Obviously, there were limitations in the study. There is no concrete evidence to suggest that these limits would work for people outside of this age group and only three out of several platforms were included in the study. However, it points to a wider trend that we should be limiting the amount of time we’re spending on social media.

The tech giants, in particular, have been promoting this idea of digital wellbeing. Apple has a new Screen Time feature on iOS 12, which tells you how long you’ve been on your phone that day, as well as individual usage of specific apps. Using this data, you can block particular apps after you’ve used them for a certain time period, such as 30 minutes, or block them after a set time such as 8pm.

Google has a similar feature named Digital Wellbeing on its new Google Pixel 3 devices, whilst Facebook has rolled out similar features, including on Instagram too.

I’ve been actively using the Apple Screen Time feature since September and it’s been eye-opening to understand how much I am looking at my phone. I feel bad when I receive the weekly update on a Sunday that tells me my usage has gone up as I’m trying to actively keep it below two hours a day.

This isn’t because I feel like my phone is judging me, but because it makes me disappointed for all the time I’ve lost looking at Instagram when I could be doing something more productive.

Since switching to the Google Pixel 3 XL last week, I have now set a lock time on Instagram so I am only using it for 30 minutes a day maximum. On Friday and Saturday, I easily kept my usage within the target, yet managed to hit it at around 8:30pm last night.

You can override the lock if you really want to keep scrolling but having this warning helps you to reconsider what you’re doing, even if it means you’re still using your phone to message a friend and seeing how they are instead of passively liking their Saturday night selfie.

App limits aren’t even just necessary for Instagram. It could be that you compulsively check emails before you go to sleep, which in its own way can cause excessive stress and anxiety about work. If you’re one of those people, then maybe blocking your inbox after you leave work is right for you.

There’s also a lot to be said for turning notifications off from apps as this helps to not distract you from what you’re currently doing to check them. I’m a big fan of Google’s ‘Flip to Ssh’ feature which stops notifications when your phone is face down so as not to distract you.

Hunt was realistic that people shouldn’t cut social media out entirely, due to the fact it is so prevalent across society. Yet, as the platforms have more of a hold on our lives, it’s important that we understand how to use them in a way that doesn’t negatively affect us.

“In general, I would say, put down your phone and be with the people in your life,” she added.