Make your time on social media more positive

Social media made headlines in 2024 when Australia approved a social media ban for under-16s. However, according to a recent paper by Jeffrey Hall, the idea that spending more time on social media is toxic is one of, 'Ten myths about the effect of social media use on wellbeing'. Instead, rigorous research (think longitudinal, huge sample sizes, meta-analysis) suggests that the relationship between time spent on social media and wellbeing is weak, at best.

That seems like good news for my students. I teach a module called Social Connection and Disconnection to final year psychology undergraduates. One lecture is about technology and how it supports and hampers social connection. In a homework assignment before this lecture, I asked my students to tell me how much time they spend on social media, using tools in each app to give them an actual time estimate when possible. They reported spending about 2.5 hours each day on social media, and 59 per cent said they frequently or always spend more time on social media than they should. 

This is not an attempt to shame my students. I spend far less time on social media than they do, but like them, I often find myself watching just one more video of goats jumping around in pajamas, and later wishing I'd spent my time doing something else.

One key, it turns out, is how you spend the time, rather than how much time you spend. One notable early study focused on active versus passive Facebook use, finding that using your time to engage in direct communication is more positive than using your time browsing. Recent research has looked at more nuanced categories of usage. After spending time on image-based (e.g., monitoring likes) or consumption-based (e.g., watching videos) usage, people in one study were in a better mood, but after spending time on belief-based (e.g., sharing opinions) or comparison-based (e.g., body comparison) usage, people were in a worse mood.

The encouraging take-away from this is that the research suggests we can make changes to our usage patterns to make our time on social media more positive. I asked my students to come up with some suggestions of how to do this:

Curate your feed

The quantity and quality of our social relationships matter for our wellbeing, so it seems obvious that having more friends online would be a positive thing. However, when someone is always posting about their new designer clothes, their rock-hard gym body, or their drool-worthy meal, we often find it hard to avoid engaging in social comparison and feeling badly as a result.

Instead, you can unfriend, unfollow, mute or block friends or influencers who make you feel inferior, who annoy you or simply don't add value. On the flip side, you can follow people, pages and channels that add value to your life. My students suggest: positive news, daily affirmations, inspirational messages and dogs. I love the outdoors, so I follow several landscape photographers, who ensure that there is some beauty in my social media feed. 

Train your algorithm

The content of your social media feed depends on who and what you follow, but also what you actively engage with. By clicking on, liking or responding to posts, you're training the algorithm that decides what content to show you.

One student found it effective to go to their Instagram explore page and quickly engage with content of their own choosing, in order "to try and remove more of the bad thirst trap content". In terms of content that you're not interested in, instead of just ignoring it, my students suggested making use of features, such as the ones available when you use Instagram or X on your phone, that allow you to actively indicate that you are not interested.

Take it offline

The idea that social media is the reason that people spend less time together is another one of Jeffrey Hall's ten myths. Nevertheless, my students suggested actively using social media as a springboard to offline activity. One group of students suggested that when you see a post that makes you think of someone, you could use it as an excuse to reach out to them and start a conversation.

Another group suggested that if you see a hobby that you like online, you might want to actually try it out. Social media can complement your adoption of a new hobby, because you can ask the creator questions about it, find other people involved in it, and post about your interest in it to bond with others. The same group made another suggestion that especially resonates with me: Instead of looking at posts of cute animals, why not go out and find real ones? On days when I work at home, I go for a walk in my local green space, and I judge the success of my walk in terms of how many canine friends I have made.

Do an act of kindness

As well as making social media more positive for yourself, you can make it more positive for others by carrying out acts of kindness. You can share a funny cat video with someone who is having a bad week. You can compliment someone. You can send a message to check in or to arrange to meet up.

These acts of kindness could even be directed towards strangers. One student said, "If I see anyone's video on TikTok with low likes, I always like it and compliment them so they feel appreciated and seen even if their video didn't go mega viral". Although talking to a stranger in person can be nerve-wracking, many of my students found that there were fewer barriers to doing so online. One student said it was "easier than talking to a stranger in real life [because] if there was no / a negative response I could easier move on with my life". However, others found it scarier than talking to a stranger in person, because of the permanence of their digital footprint.

Instead of beating yourself up for going down another social media rabbit hole, you might consider my students' suggestions and think about how to use your time on social media more positively. 

Read last year's advice from Dr Sandstrom's students, about what you can do if you feel lonely, and what you can do to help someone else who feels lonely. 

Find out more about Dr Sandstrom's research on talking to strangers in her article in the Psychologist and this podcast interview for the BPS Research Digest.