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:

https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulation/meta-buried-causal-evidence-social-media-harm-us-court-filings-allege-2025-11-23/

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?

    • Xella@lemmy.world
      8·
      19 hours ago

      I believe being on Lemmy causes unhappiness as well. We need to stop using all forms of social media. Today is my birthday and as a birthday present to myself I’m uninstalling all social media on my phone by midnight. I’m just getting my last few fixes in before I do it 😹

      • kinship@lemmy.sdf.org
        1·
        9 hours ago

        I don’t think the problem is social media but the curation of them. It is very rare to see something that shocks me on a bad way through my feed. Just like in our lives we need to build around us, the problem is that most social media won’t let us. Taking charge in life is very hard, capitalism profits a lot on convenience. Sometimes the means of change is taken from us, especially on the digital world (this is where the problem lies).

    • Clay_pidgin@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      4·
      20 hours ago

      That’s me, too.

      I use Facebook twice a year and I don’t have accounts anywhere else but Lemmy. I don’t think I use this as Social Media in the usual sense. I’m not following individual people because I don’t care who y’all are. Only your content. I’m not posting stuff about myself because I’m boring as heck.