Change in Social Media Use and Well-being Among College Students Receiving a Two-week Exercise or Mindfulness Intervention (SMUS)

Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

Status: Enrolling

Conditions: Wellbeing; Social Media Addiction; Anxiety; Depression Disorder

Treatments: Behavioral: Exercise; Behavioral: Mindfulness; Behavioral: Social Media Reduction

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT07097545

IRB00025926-RCT2

Details and patient eligibility

About

The investigators will be randomizing 300 college student participants with high levels of social media use into either a 1) control condition (no intervention), a 2) mindfulness meditation cognitive intervention, or 3) a social media reduction + exercise replacement intervention. Participants complete intervention activities daily for two weeks. The investigators will collect self-report and behavioral measures of social media use and related psychological constructs at three time points: baseline, immediately after the intervention period, and one-week after the intervention period (three weeks from baseline).

Full description

The objective of this study is to test two cognitive and behavioral interventions designed to reduce social media use and improve psychological constructs related to social media use in a sample of university students. The cognitive intervention is a mindfulness meditation exercise taken from the Calm app focused around gratitude and stress management. Each meditation takes approximately 15 minutes to complete and is to be done daily for two week. The second behavioral intervention is asking participants to reduce social media use for 30 minutes daily for two weeks and replacing that time with physical exercise of the participants' choosing.

Aim 1: Compare psychological constructs related to mental health (well-being, stress, depression, anxiety, loneliness, social comparisons, etc.) before and after conducting two social media use interventions over two weeks, compared to a control condition (no intervention).

Aim 2: Compare self-reported and behavioral (smartphone screenshots of social media use screentime) measures of social media use before and after two social media use interventions over two weeks, compared to a control condition (no intervention).

Aim 3: Examine mental health and social media use one week after the intervention period is complete (3-week follow up) or testing whether the interventions have effects beyond the intervention period.

Enrollment: 300 estimated patients

Sex: All

Ages: 18+ years old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• The participant is 18 or older.

• The participant must be a Johns Hopkins University student.

• Owning an iPhone or Android smartphone, with frequent use of social media use daily (>

  1 hour)

• Enabling and sharing screenshots of the participant's smartphone use metrics, including number of last-week pickups, notifications received, and average screen time.

• Providing consent to participate.

• Only exercising 1 hour or less daily, on average.

Exclusion criteria

• younger than 18
• Not a Johns Hopkins University Student
• Doesn't own a smart phone
• Uses smartphone less than 1 hour daily
• Exercises more than 1 hour daily

Trial design

Primary purpose: Treatment

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

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300 participants in 3 patient groups

Control

No Intervention group

Description:

Participants will not receive an intervention. Participants will receive instructions to use social media use as usual.

Mindfulness

Experimental group

Description:

Approximately 15 minute mindfulness style meditations will be completed daily for two weeks through the Calm platform. Participants can listen to the exercise on the web-enabled version of Calm, or through the smartphone app. The first course is entitled "7 Days of Gratitude" and centers around noticing and appreciating things in daily life, the second course is entitled "7 Days of managing stress" that focuses on building awareness and coping with that specific area of mental stress, such as de-escalating stress, mind-body connection, strong emotions, negative self-talk, and how events are interpreted.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Mindfulness

Social Media Reduction + Exercise

Experimental group

Description:

Participants will reduce social media use by at least 30 minutes daily for two weeks. Simultaneously, participants will exercise at least 30 minutes daily. Participants are given examples of common exercises (walking, yoga, strength training, etc.), but are allowed to choose any type, although dissuaded from activities with high potential for injury.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Social Media Reduction

Behavioral: Exercise