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New Study Reveals Teens Benefit From Cutting Down On Social Media Usage
As we know teens seek out social media for various reasons. The Pew Research Center published a study to reveal teens turn to social media for creativity, connectivity and drama. Of course we cannot exclude other groups of users from this cohort who join these platforms feel pressured to join because everybody else uses them.
In a recent study by the American Psychological Association (APA), when teens reduced their social media usage by half it improved their attitude about their body image.
“Adolescence and young adulthood, spanning from ages 17 to 25 years, are critical stages of life during which numerous psychological, physical, neurobiological, behavioral, and social changes take place (Paus et al., 2008; Wood et al., 2018). These changes occur in concert with exposure to numerous sociocultural factors (e.g., appearance comparisons, teasing, social exclusion) that commonly perpetuate body dissatisfaction, a consistent predictor of eating disorders and other mental illnesses (Prnjak et al., 2021; Tremblay & Limbos, 2009),” according to the study.