A trial that will put a daily limit on the social media use of thousands of Bradford teenagers is set to begin this year. It will be the largest study yet to investigate whether use of these online platforms affects adolescent mental health.
The team will recruit from ten Bradford secondary schools, and involve around 4,000 students across the academic years 8, 9 and 10, covering ages 12-15.
A bespoke app loaded onto the teenagers’ smartphones will cap each participant’s total social media use per day, and block all social media use at nighttime.
The research will be implemented on all social media apps commonly used by this age group, from TikTok to Snapchat and Instagram, but not messaging apps such as WhatsApp.*
Current plans are to limit participants to one hour of social media a day, and block it completely between 9pm and 7am, although this is subject to change.
Half the school year groups will be randomly allocated this daily social media restriction and nighttime curfew, and the results will be compared to the remaining year groups in the trial who have no limits on social media use.
I wonder how they’re handling recruiting/incentivizing participants. Seems like it would be hard to get 4000 15 year olds from the same school system to consent to phone restrictions.
Anyone who agrees to participate in the study probably already wants to be restricted, as they may feel social media negatively affects them, and want more help restricting it than their willpower alone. Then they will probably feel positive about the outcome.
Forcibly restricting unwilling kids will produce different outcomes that this study doesn’t seem to investigate (it would be unethical to force participation on kids who don’t want to participate in a study).
They will then try to generalise the positive outcome onto all kids, even though they didn’t study the unwilling ones.
They need to study the effects of different content delivery algorithims not just a blanket ‘social media’ IMO.
I’m a bit skeptical too without seeing the study design since it seems like a big ask for the 12-15 group they’re targeting. I think I bought my first phone around 14 or 15 because my parents definitely weren’t about to pay for one. I don’t think I would have volunteered to add parental controls even for a reasonable sum.
I wonder how they’re handling recruiting/incentivizing participants. Seems like it would be hard to get 4000 15 year olds from the same school system to consent to phone restrictions.
Anyone who agrees to participate in the study probably already wants to be restricted, as they may feel social media negatively affects them, and want more help restricting it than their willpower alone. Then they will probably feel positive about the outcome.
Forcibly restricting unwilling kids will produce different outcomes that this study doesn’t seem to investigate (it would be unethical to force participation on kids who don’t want to participate in a study).
They will then try to generalise the positive outcome onto all kids, even though they didn’t study the unwilling ones.
They need to study the effects of different content delivery algorithims not just a blanket ‘social media’ IMO.
I’m a bit skeptical too without seeing the study design since it seems like a big ask for the 12-15 group they’re targeting. I think I bought my first phone around 14 or 15 because my parents definitely weren’t about to pay for one. I don’t think I would have volunteered to add parental controls even for a reasonable sum.