ArticlePsychology of popular media2025
Social Media Reduction or Abstinence Interventions Are Providing Mental Health Benefits-Reanalysis of a Published Meta-Analysis.
Article in Psychology of popular media, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
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Who cites it
4 citing papers in PubMed.
- Causal effects of social media use on self-esteem, mindfulness, sleep and emotional well-being: a social media restriction study.Frontiers in public health · 2025Trial
- Social Media Use Soon After Waking and Depression Among U.S. Adults.Journal of prevention (2022) · 2026Article
- Effects of Reducing Social Media Use in Women With Depressive Symptoms.Journal of cognitive psychotherapy · 2026Article
- Small effects, big questions: the unfinished business of social media restriction science.SSM. Mental health · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
Abstract
A recent meta-analysis published in this journal included 27 studies that experimentally manipulated social media use and investigated their impact on mental health outcomes (Ferguson, 2024). The author concluded that social media effects were not statistically different from zero. However, this meta-analysis did not investigate potential moderating effects of length of social media reduction or abstinence interventions. We conducted a reanalysis to investigate the impact of social media reduction/abstinence intervention length on mental health outcomes. We used the information available on the Open Science Framework platform related to the original meta-analysis and excluded seven studies because they were not reduction/abstinence interventions. We categorized studies into those with intervention lengths of <1 versus 1 week or longer and also tested for curvilinear relationships between intervention length (weeks and days as continuous variables) and outcomes by including quadratic terms. Stratified analyses indicated that interventions of <1 week resulted in significantly worse mental health outcomes (
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.