Assignment Prompt & Instructions
**files (3)**
– ## Rhetorical-Analysis-Thesis.pdf
– ## Brandeupdate.docx
– ## Study_Finds_Mental_Health_Bene.pdf
**## Rhetorical-Analysis-Thesis.pdf**
Created by the Virginia Wesleyan College Learning Center
Clarke Hall, Room 223
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Rhetorical Analysis Thesis Statements
A strong thesis statement for a rhetorical analysis essay…
Avoids using the first person or phrases like “I believe” or “I think”
Serves as a guide to your essay for your reader
Asserts your conclusion and takes a stand on the author’s rhetorical strategies
States what techniques you will be analyzing, and the impact of these techniques on the
effectiveness of the text.
Examples of strong thesis statements for rhetorical analysis:
Jones effectively convinces his audience that —- through the use of statistics and surveys paired
with emotional stories.
Although Myers includes many convincing logical arguments through the use of historical facts,
her readers may doubt her objectivity because of her sarcastic tone.
Thompson uses personal stories and tells of his extensive research in the area to make his
readers believe in his credibility. These appeals to ethos, combined with his friendly tone,
creates an effective argument for —-.
Roberts employs the rhetorical appeals of pathos and ethos effectively. However, his use of
unsupported logical appeals causes his readers to doubt his claim that —- is supported by
research.
Mitchell’s attempt to convince the audience that —– is unsuccessful because of his insensitive
word choice and angry tone.
Note: The above thesis statements all include the original author’s purpose/thesis. Your thesis does not
have to include this as long as it appears in your introduction.
A strong thesis statement for a rhetorical analysis is NOT…
A simple statement of your topic
A broad statement
A statement of facts or statistics
A summary of the author’s essay you are analyzing
A statement of what you’re going to do in the essay
Examples of weak rhetorical analysis thesis statements:
Abortion is a big issue in the United States.
The author claims abortion is a big issue in the United States.
I’m going to examine how this author uses pathos, ethos, and logos to convince his audience.
The author uses pathos, ethos and logos.
**## Brandeupdate.docx**
Part I
SUBMIT: SUMMARY (with Work Cited page) of "Your Children's Smartphones Aren't Making Them Smarter"
·
**Available** Feb 2 at 6am – Feb 7 at 11:59pm
**AI warning:**
**Please do not use AI to to compose the summary. You should create your own summary of the article and the wording should be yours and yours only. If you take any information word for word from the article, you must place that information in quotation marks. However, in a summary, it is best not to use quoted material, if possible. Use of AI means a failing grade- see course policy. Thank you.**
· Using the plan of the paragraph that you outlined last week, create a draft of a summary paragraph. Edit, proofread, and fine tune the draft and then submit your
**final MLA formatted summary** of "Your Children's Smartphones Aren't Making Them Smarter".
· Your summary should include an MLA style header, heading, and the centered title:
· Summary of "Your Children's Smartphones Aren't Making Them Smarter"
· For the summary submission, use the title that I have provided after the colon (above), and be sure that you center the title.
· Indent the first sentence (tab once)
· Be sure that your topic sentence includes at the very least th
**e author's full name**,
**title of the article**, and the
**main idea.** Use the completed template from last week's assignment for the topic sentence.
· Be sure that you have at least 3-4 major supporting points for the main idea.
· Connect your summary major points with transition words (see document posted or your text for a list)
· You will add a
**Work Cited page in MLA format for this assignment.** You may copy and paste the source information below on your Work Cited page.
Please see the sample MLA formatted essay posted.
"Your Children's Smartphones Aren't Making Them Smarter."
_CNN Wire_, 2 Sept. 2024.
_Gale In Context:_
_College_, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A806893299/CSIC?u=durham_tccl&sid=summon&xid=e814ac0d
**Part 2**
Thesis Statement Submission Assignment
Article Choices for Essay 1
Article Choices
These are the three articles from which you will choose ONE to read and analyze for your first essay.
["Study Finds Mental Health Benefit to One-Week Social Media Break"](https://durhamtech.instructure.com/courses/17136/files/2404365?wrap=1) [Download "Study Finds Mental Health Benefit to One-Week Social Media Break"](https://durhamtech.instructure.com/courses/17136/files/2404365/download?download_frd=1)
["Who Really Benefits from AI?"](https://durhamtech.instructure.com/courses/17136/files/2404368?wrap=1) [Download "Who Really Benefits from AI?"](https://durhamtech.instructure.com/courses/17136/files/2404368/download?download_frd=1)
["Why Aren't We Losing Our Minds Over the Plastic in Our Brains?"Links to an external site.](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-arent-we-losing-our-minds-over-the-plastic-in-our-brains/)
For this assignment, you will want to write up your actual thesis statement for Essay #1. Remember:
1. Your thesis should be one sentence.
2. Your thesis is your claim about the author's use of rhetoric.
3. Your thesis needs to contain an argument.
4. Your thesis is not a statement of summary about the author's main point.
5. Use the PDF attached below for guidance.
**## Study_Finds_Mental_Health_Bene.pdf**
Disclaimer: This is a machine generated PDF of selected content from our products. This functionality is provided solely for your
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AVAILABLE" and are not retained in our systems. CENGAGE LEARNING AND ITS LICENSORS SPECIFICALLY DISCLAIM ANY
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machine generated PDF functionality and any output derived therefrom.
Study Finds Mental Health Benefit to One-Week Social Media
Break.
Author: Ellen Barry
Date: Nov. 24, 2025
From: The New York Times (Digital Edition)
Publisher: The New York Times Company
Document Type: Article
Length: 1,383 words
Content Level: 3
Lexile Measure: 900L
Full Text:
Young adults who engaged in a social media “detox” reported reductions in depression, anxiety and insomnia, though it was unclear
how long the effects would last.
Dialing down the use of social media for a week reduced symptoms of anxiety, depression and insomnia in young adults, according
to a study published on Monday in the journal JAMA Network Open.
Researchers followed 295 volunteers, ages 18 to 24, who opted to take a break from social media. Instructed to stay off social media
as much as possible, the group on average reduced it to a half-hour per day from just under two hours. Before and after, the
participants answered surveys measuring depression, anxiety, insomnia, loneliness and a number of problematic social media
behaviors.
Overall, they reported positive changes: On average, symptoms of anxiety dropped by 16.1 percent; symptoms of depression by 24.8
percent; and symptoms of insomnia by 14.5 percent. The improvement was most pronounced in subjects with more severe
depression. At the same time, there was no change in reported loneliness — perhaps, the authors wrote, because the platforms play
a constructive social role.
Dr. John Torous, an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and a co-author of the study, said reducing social
media “certainly would not be your first-line or your only form of care,” but the study showed it could be useful as an adjunct
treatment.
“If you’re struggling with a mental health condition, and you have treatment already,” he said, “it’s likely worth experimenting to see
whether reducing social media helps you feel better.”
Dr. Torous urged caution in interpreting the results as treatment advice. The subjects had volunteered for the detox, and they had
minimal mental health symptoms to begin with, so the magnitude of the improvement was not drastic. Also, there was, he said,
“tremendous heterogeneity in the differences in how people responded,” and not everyone benefited.
“The averages are encouraging,” he said, “but they definitely don’t tell the full story, the variance was just so tremendous.”
Dr. Torous, who heads a digital mental health clinic at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, said he became curious
about the effects of reduced social media use because many of his college-aged patients reported benefiting from social media
breaks.
When he sought out research literature on the subject, he found that it was “confusing” and “mixed.” His team decided to begin a
study using “digital phenotyping,” a method that collects real-time information about subjects’ behavior from their devices.
He said young people eagerly came forward to volunteer for the study, which paid $150. “People are naturally interested, which I
think is a good sign,” he said. Participants were asked to stop using Facebook and X, which they mostly did successfully, he said,
and also Instagram, TikTok and Snapchat, which proved more difficult.
The mental health benefit seemed to come from avoiding problematic social media behaviors, like addictive use and negative social
comparison, rather than a change in overall screen time, the authors said. Indeed, the participants, on average, spent slightly more
time on their phones during the detox week.
[https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2025.45245?guestAccessKey=1b34668e-afe8-4888-aa3d-dd05b3b83eff&utm_source=for_the_media&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=ftm_links&utm_content=tfl&utm_term=112425](https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2025.45245?guestAccessKey=1b34668e-afe8-4888-aa3d-dd05b3b83eff&utm_source=for_the_media&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=ftm_links&utm_content=tfl&utm_term=112425)
The findings land in the midst of an intense academic debate over whether excessive screen time causes mental health problems.
One group of psychologists, including the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, have identified the smartphone as the cause of
deteriorating mental health among young people, and many communities have already taken steps to limit social media use or screen
time, especially during school hours.
At the same time, many specialists have urged caution about concluding that screen time is a central factor in declining mental
health, saying that studies have yielded mixed results and that what seems to matter is what young people do online, not how much
time they spend there.
Several psychologists said the new study was of limited value because its design allowed for bias.
It was not a randomized controlled trial, in which subjects were assigned to a treatment group (one that reduced social media use)
and a control group (one that continued their usual social media habits). Instead, the participants opted to take a break from social
media — and may have anticipated improvement.
“The subjects would have known how they were expected to behave, and likely simply changed their responses accordingly,” said
Christopher Ferguson, a professor of psychology at Stetson University, who was not involved in the study. Without comparison to a
control group, he added, “these numbers are literally meaningless.”
In a period of “technology moral panic,” he said, studies that find an effect receive far more attention than those that do not,
something that he said could “distort public perceptions.”
Candice L. Odgers, a professor of psychological science in informatics at the University of California, who was not involved in the
study, said it was hardly surprising that “if we constantly tell people social media is bad for them and that taking a break is good, and
then ask them to take a break and report how they feel after, this is what we see.”
But others were cautiously optimistic about the results. Mitch Prinstein, chief science officer at the American Psychological
Association, who was not involved in the study, said the findings added to existing evidence that, on average, “depression, anxiety,
loneliness often go down” for those who go off social media for a while.
Social media breaks are “a simple and free solution that seems to lead to quick improvement,” unlike psychotherapy, which can take
weeks to have an effect, Dr. Prinstein said. “This is a solution that will empower most parents and young people themselves,” he said.
“Use far less social media, and there is a reasonable chance that young people will start to feel a lot better.”
Still, prior studies seeking to quantify the effects of “digital detoxes” have yielded mixed results. Dr. Ferguson last year published a
meta-analysis of 27 experiments linking social media breaks to mental health, concluding that the average effect was “statistically no
different than zero.” A review of 10 studies published in March in Scientific Reports also found no effects.
Another meta-analysis examining 32 such experiments, published this year in the journal SSM-Mental Health, found that social media
restriction “yields significant but small positive effects on subjective well-being.”
Dr. Torous attributed the variation to the low quality of the existing research studies. He said he hoped further research would allow
clinicians to tailor social media breaks to individuals who will benefit from them. He was not enthusiastic about banning social media
use altogether, saying that it “could cause unintended consequences.”
“It’s certainly possible to ban it, but that’s a very blunt, crude approach, at least for mental health,” he said.
Academics who have called for strict limits on social media use greeted the new study as evidence that swift action is necessary.
Jean Twenge, a professor of psychology at San Diego State University, who was not involved in the new study, described it as “the
latest to show that cutting back on social media use can have mental health benefits.”
Because improvements were most notable in people who were already depressed, she said, the finding “suggests that cutting back
on social media for a week or two may be an effective treatment for people struggling with depression.”
Dr. Twenge, the author of “10 Rules for Raising Kids in a High-Tech World,” said the study helped discount the longstanding
argument that people experiencing mental health struggles simply use social media more.
She noted, however, that more research was necessary to shed light on whether the effects were long-lasting. “The key would be to
see how long people can keep up light use of social media,” she said. “If they slide back into old habits, the detox won’t have long-
lasting effects. “
PHOTO: On average, symptoms of anxiety dropped by 16.1 percent; symptoms of depression by 24.8 percent; and symptoms of
insomnia by 14.5 percent. (PHOTOGRAPH BY Bee Trofort for The New York Times FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES)On average,
symptoms of anxiety dropped by 16.1 percent; symptoms of depression by 24.8 percent; and symptoms of insomnia by 14.5
percent.Bee Trofort for The New York Times
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2025 The New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/
Source Citation (MLA 9th Edition)
[https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/01/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-jonathan-haidt.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/01/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-jonathan-haidt.html)
[https://ballotpedia.org/State_policies_on_cellphone_use_in_K-12_public_schools](https://ballotpedia.org/State_policies_on_cellphone_use_in_K-12_public_schools)
[https://ballotpedia.org/State_policies_on_cellphone_use_in_K-12_public_schools](https://ballotpedia.org/State_policies_on_cellphone_use_in_K-12_public_schools)
[https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/19/health/social-media-kids-mental-health.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/19/health/social-media-kids-mental-health.html)
[https://www.christopherjferguson.com/Social%20Media%20Experiments%20Meta.pdf](https://www.christopherjferguson.com/Social%20Media%20Experiments%20Meta.pdf)
[https://pdf.sciencedirectassets.com/777253/1-s2.0-S2666560324X00031/1-s2.0-S2666560325000714/main.pdf?X-Amz-Security-Token=IQoJb3JpZ2luX2VjEGMaCXVzLWVhc3QtMSJHMEUCIF0v81iqVacaksH6M%2FTQsNhuUp3CB2OiC1b5gB2XZGPgAiEAra5yYXrl9Rn5bjeY8ISgBHLPIMncPKx%2Bho%2B9oCZNe%2B4qswUILBAFGgwwNTkwMDM1NDY4NjUiDJXkoo%2FCIMtghnmGASqQBcePih9so8lsgpyTn6IixH4fKFdtcrPeJqNfgovNDy%2B81H%2BARVJtyYTr4v%2FJFTGsugb%2FuNPHNalu%2BCyDJYjFDyNkm1ZZjb1zB1RpS%2FcM1GZrnBYt5%2F2XnsuH8hk14CmkRhxf0moCtLUTi8txSTia%2FD8XSGsvkDUCAaMCqmiZ4log8PJm6CJnFzqWn15kc3lbHX6DoE8WPXtAVsxHtD0LjJYaSMKqEf8YYZ%2BvQHRQo3aDhxo5NfErpumDlQobmIcA1%2F9Tnc6hT6uxapfhx7wXDHQFM9ZFXGRaUAT7Hyl83LgRypQoXUEB22H2D%2BGhaM78VjwpCER6ngTLU7k5syVFsbwGVl4HDWnLJ8CWQxwSdINBa20F97Nw9NTObBjYObc292pEqVjPseEfXkvWH6jMiesNajsxkVvp4VzVTReOqVbOIYdr1EQi%2FH%2FDJM5VVTAC4HpAsHcQ22gYX5CbNLNxbv%2FAUMqI52OjF%2FQ3N1%2B2dJpT3%2F0cEvqNV95ambnzRQ%2BkPE7SY7L5ppXIMC%2FjxTlZqzPr5gDKg%2FSIQUcKbRtybOpliel1v5TJcEo1Qnel2d10QvJkVIkfTDke5KEvz8i6Rz%2BVgK72DPj6m%2FYg0kgm7lSfGMS9n4ZpQQpRkCwL9NMomQ6FcUljsc5iGz4viIutsqJ4xPNf8rqYvv01U5Q7q7kBtceyypPSOVKLSjGGXFKL65Vv1KAU%2FE%2Fh%2Fg81dpiU7YnhLcl2gpGZja3Yr1lz48GQghj28FBSwinGTaI9BIuPjjaSgBl9BxGLxVGNsr%2F54S%2B%2FUA60TAnyVzp6eHTuU%2FERWcAHXD6legbt35l12xK6R%2BHGCPjuuXUmfRqe4ZMD9EbkUsmvx%2Biw%2B5MSLpCGKJ8nMLCDiMkGOrEBRlugUaytcH3oi9FUeq5U7iWiiKt479qrm5zCXJQokT6XgHz2mUwOKejEMYHzCAU3KxOYpP8AljUbnEMeOUDIVWgxRqismjHafEn64KRCe%2BDbsDb7hTVF8LYWOo%2FFcBfZ4R4VsZdRcXoZkcVPMb9JpVP33epA9gUpAxXlUdO8YQ2oontdKx94xEjfDbuDVam8MvT2sF87LWgkeaXAN%2FSe257WuR5S3%2B32xBCXS14pNmd%2F&X-Amz-Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-SHA256&X-Amz-Date=20251122T190035Z&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host&X-Amz-Expires=300&X-Amz-Credential=ASIAQ3PHCVTY46JSLDRN%2F20251122%2Fus-east-1%2Fs3%2Faws4_request&X-Amz-Signature=58bd1c870db4f3f937242a461186f6541315e6b24ceec6beef37b108be8a7f3d&hash=9c60e4f6c07eff3e53e58265e9e266df36824712654acb6bc18d1459bc639803&host=68042c943591013ac2b2430a89b270f6af2c76d8dfd086a07176afe7c76c2c61&pii=S2666560325000714&tid=spdf-bc8b714c-f75b-4f31-932e-78c80035a77e&sid=f4ef5a065a89334e221911b9097f96b2f343gxrqa&type=client&tsoh=d3d3LnNjaWVuY2VkaXJlY3QuY29t&rh=d3d3LnNjaWVuY2VkaXJlY3QuY29t&ua=1315560254010402050e&rr=9a2aabaa3bfc303a&cc=us](https://pdf.sciencedirectassets.com/777253/1-s2.0-S2666560324X00031/1-s2.0-S2666560325000714/main.pdf?X-Amz-Security-Token=IQoJb3JpZ2luX2VjEGMaCXVzLWVhc3QtMSJHMEUCIF0v81iqVacaksH6M%2FTQsNhuUp3CB2OiC1b5gB2XZGPgAiEAra5yYXrl9Rn5bjeY8ISgBHLPIMncPKx%2Bho%2B9oCZNe%2B4qswUILBAFGgwwNTkwMDM1NDY4NjUiDJXkoo%2FCIMtghnmGASqQBcePih9so8lsgpyTn6IixH4fKFdtcrPeJqNfgovNDy%2B81H%2BARVJtyYTr4v%2FJFTGsugb%2FuNPHNalu%2BCyDJYjFDyNkm1ZZjb1zB1RpS%2FcM1GZrnBYt5%2F2XnsuH8hk14CmkRhxf0moCtLUTi8txSTia%2FD8XSGsvkDUCAaMCqmiZ4log8PJm6CJnFzqWn15kc3lbHX6DoE8WPXtAVsxHtD0LjJYaSMKqEf8YYZ%2BvQHRQo3aDhxo5NfErpumDlQobmIcA1%2F9Tnc6hT6uxapfhx7wXDHQFM9ZFXGRaUAT7Hyl83LgRypQoXUEB22H2D%2BGhaM78VjwpCER6ngTLU7k5syVFsbwGVl4HDWnLJ8CWQxwSdINBa20F97Nw9NTObBjYObc292pEqVjPseEfXkvWH6jMiesNajsxkVvp4VzVTReOqVbOIYdr1EQi%2FH%2FDJM5VVTAC4HpAsHcQ22gYX5CbNLNxbv%2FAUMqI52OjF%2FQ3N1%2B2dJpT3%2F0cEvqNV95ambnzRQ%2BkPE7SY7L5ppXIMC%2FjxTlZqzPr5gDKg%2FSIQUcKbRtybOpliel1v5TJcEo1Qnel2d10QvJkVIkfTDke5KEvz8i6Rz%2BVgK72DPj6m%2FYg0kgm7lSfGMS9n4ZpQQpRkCwL9NMomQ6FcUljsc5iGz4viIutsqJ4xPNf8rqYvv01U5Q7q7kBtceyypPSOVKLSjGGXFKL65Vv1KAU%2FE%2Fh%2Fg81dpiU7YnhLcl2gpGZja3Yr1lz48GQghj28FBSwinGTaI9BIuPjjaSgBl9BxGLxVGNsr%2F54S%2B%2FUA60TAnyVzp6eHTuU%2FERWcAHXD6legbt35l12xK6R%2BHGCPjuuXUmfRqe4ZMD9EbkUsmvx%2Biw%2B5MSLpCGKJ8nMLCDiMkGOrEBRlugUaytcH3oi9FUeq5U7iWiiKt479qrm5zCXJQokT6XgHz2mUwOKejEMYHzCAU3KxOYpP8AljUbnEMeOUDIVWgxRqismjHafEn64KRCe%2BDbsDb7hTVF8LYWOo%2FFcBfZ4R4VsZdRcXoZkcVPMb9JpVP33epA9gUpAxXlUdO8YQ2oontdKx94xEjfDbuDVam8MvT2sF87LWgkeaXAN%2FSe257WuR5S3%2B32xBCXS14pNmd%2F&X-Amz-Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-SHA256&X-Amz-Date=20251122T190035Z&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host&X-Amz-Expires=300&X-Amz-Credential=ASIAQ3PHCVTY46JSLDRN%2F20251122%2Fus-east-1%2Fs3%2Faws4_request&X-Amz-Signature=58bd1c870db4f3f937242a461186f6541315e6b24ceec6beef37b108be8a7f3d&hash=9c60e4f6c07eff3e53e58265e9e266df36824712654acb6bc18d1459bc639803&host=68042c943591013ac2b2430a89b270f6af2c76d8dfd086a07176afe7c76c2c61&pii=S2666560325000714&tid=spdf-bc8b714c-f75b-4f31-932e-78c80035a77e&sid=f4ef5a065a89334e221911b9097f96b2f343gxrqa&type=client&tsoh=d3d3LnNjaWVuY2VkaXJlY3QuY29t&rh=d3d3LnNjaWVuY2VkaXJlY3QuY29t&ua=1315560254010402050e&rr=9a2aabaa3bfc303a&cc=us)
[https://www-sciencedirect-com.proxy055.nclive.org/science/article/pii/S2666560325000714](https://www-sciencedirect-com.proxy055.nclive.org/science/article/pii/S2666560325000714)
[https://static01.nyt.com/images/2025/11/24/multimedia/24hs-social-detox-cbkm/24hs-social-detox-cbkm-articleLarge.jpg](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2025/11/24/multimedia/24hs-social-detox-cbkm/24hs-social-detox-cbkm-articleLarge.jpg)
[https://static01.nyt.com/images/2025/11/24/multimedia/24hs-social-detox-cbkm/24hs-social-detox-cbkm-articleLarge.jpg](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2025/11/24/multimedia/24hs-social-detox-cbkm/24hs-social-detox-cbkm-articleLarge.jpg)
[https://www.nytimes.com/](https://www.nytimes.com/)
Barry, Ellen. "Study Finds Mental Health Benefit to One-Week Social Media Break." New York Times [Digital Edition], 24 Nov. 2025.
Gale In Context: U.S. History, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A865160795/UHIC?u=durham_tccl&sid=summon&xid=3545f00b.
Accessed 20 Jan. 2026.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A865160795
**## Study_Finds_Mental_Health_Bene.pdf**
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machine generated PDF functionality and any output derived therefrom.
Study Finds Mental Health Benefit to One-Week Social Media
Break.
Author: Ellen Barry
Date: Nov. 24, 2025
From: The New York Times (Digital Edition)
Publisher: The New York Times Company
Document Type: Article
Length: 1,383 words
Content Level: 3
Lexile Measure: 900L
Full Text:
Young adults who engaged in a social media “detox” reported reductions in depression, anxiety and insomnia, though it was unclear
how long the effects would last.
Dialing down the use of social media for a week reduced symptoms of anxiety, depression and insomnia in young adults, according
to a study published on Monday in the journal JAMA Network Open.
Researchers followed 295 volunteers, ages 18 to 24, who opted to take a break from social media. Instructed to stay off social media
as much as possible, the group on average reduced it to a half-hour per day from just under two hours. Before and after, the
participants answered surveys measuring depression, anxiety, insomnia, loneliness and a number of problematic social media
behaviors.
Overall, they reported positive changes: On average, symptoms of anxiety dropped by 16.1 percent; symptoms of depression by 24.8
percent; and symptoms of insomnia by 14.5 percent. The improvement was most pronounced in subjects with more severe
depression. At the same time, there was no change in reported loneliness — perhaps, the authors wrote, because the platforms play
a constructive social role.
Dr. John Torous, an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and a co-author of the study, said reducing social
media “certainly would not be your first-line or your only form of care,” but the study showed it could be useful as an adjunct
treatment.
“If you’re struggling with a mental health condition, and you have treatment already,” he said, “it’s likely worth experimenting to see
whether reducing social media helps you feel better.”
Dr. Torous urged caution in interpreting the results as treatment advice. The subjects had volunteered for the detox, and they had
minimal mental health symptoms to begin with, so the magnitude of the improvement was not drastic. Also, there was, he said,
“tremendous heterogeneity in the differences in how people responded,” and not everyone benefited.
“The averages are encouraging,” he said, “but they definitely don’t tell the full story, the variance was just so tremendous.”
Dr. Torous, who heads a digital mental health clinic at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, said he became curious
about the effects of reduced social media use because many of his college-aged patients reported benefiting from social media
breaks.
When he sought out research literature on the subject, he found that it was “confusing” and “mixed.” His team decided to begin a
study using “digital phenotyping,” a method that collects real-time information about subjects’ behavior from their devices.
He said young people eagerly came forward to volunteer for the study, which paid $150. “People are naturally interested, which I
think is a good sign,” he said. Participants were asked to stop using Facebook and X, which they mostly did successfully, he said,
and also Instagram, TikTok and Snapchat, which proved more difficult.
The mental health benefit seemed to come from avoiding problematic social media behaviors, like addictive use and negative social
comparison, rather than a change in overall screen time, the authors said. Indeed, the participants, on average, spent slightly more
time on their phones during the detox week.
[https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2025.45245?guestAccessKey=1b34668e-afe8-4888-aa3d-dd05b3b83eff&utm_source=for_the_media&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=ftm_links&utm_content=tfl&utm_term=112425](https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2025.45245?guestAccessKey=1b34668e-afe8-4888-aa3d-dd05b3b83eff&utm_source=for_the_media&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=ftm_links&utm_content=tfl&utm_term=112425)
The findings land in the midst of an intense academic debate over whether excessive screen time causes mental health problems.
One group of psychologists, including the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, have identified the smartphone as the cause of
deteriorating mental health among young people, and many communities have already taken steps to limit social media use or screen
time, especially during school hours.
At the same time, many specialists have urged caution about concluding that screen time is a central factor in declining mental
health, saying that studies have yielded mixed results and that what seems to matter is what young people do online, not how much
time they spend there.
Several psychologists said the new study was of limited value because its design allowed for bias.
It was not a randomized controlled trial, in which subjects were assigned to a treatment group (one that reduced social media use)
and a control group (one that continued their usual social media habits). Instead, the participants opted to take a break from social
media — and may have anticipated improvement.
“The subjects would have known how they were expected to behave, and likely simply changed their responses accordingly,” said
Christopher Ferguson, a professor of psychology at Stetson University, who was not involved in the study. Without comparison to a
control group, he added, “these numbers are literally meaningless.”
In a period of “technology moral panic,” he said, studies that find an effect receive far more attention than those that do not,
something that he said could “distort public perceptions.”
Candice L. Odgers, a professor of psychological science in informatics at the University of California, who was not involved in the
study, said it was hardly surprising that “if we constantly tell people social media is bad for them and that taking a break is good, and
then ask them to take a break and report how they feel after, this is what we see.”
But others were cautiously optimistic about the results. Mitch Prinstein, chief science officer at the American Psychological
Association, who was not involved in the study, said the findings added to existing evidence that, on average, “depression, anxiety,
loneliness often go down” for those who go off social media for a while.
Social media breaks are “a simple and free solution that seems to lead to quick improvement,” unlike psychotherapy, which can take
weeks to have an effect, Dr. Prinstein said. “This is a solution that will empower most parents and young people themselves,” he said.
“Use far less social media, and there is a reasonable chance that young people will start to feel a lot better.”
Still, prior studies seeking to quantify the effects of “digital detoxes” have yielded mixed results. Dr. Ferguson last year published a
meta-analysis of 27 experiments linking social media breaks to mental health, concluding that the average effect was “statistically no
different than zero.” A review of 10 studies published in March in Scientific Reports also found no effects.
Another meta-analysis examining 32 such experiments, published this year in the journal SSM-Mental Health, found that social media
restriction “yields significant but small positive effects on subjective well-being.”
Dr. Torous attributed the variation to the low quality of the existing research studies. He said he hoped further research would allow
clinicians to tailor social media breaks to individuals who will benefit from them. He was not enthusiastic about banning social media
use altogether, saying that it “could cause unintended consequences.”
“It’s certainly possible to ban it, but that’s a very blunt, crude approach, at least for mental health,” he said.
Academics who have called for strict limits on social media use greeted the new study as evidence that swift action is necessary.
Jean Twenge, a professor of psychology at San Diego State University, who was not involved in the new study, described it as “the
latest to show that cutting back on social media use can have mental health benefits.”
Because improvements were most notable in people who were already depressed, she said, the finding “suggests that cutting back
on social media for a week or two may be an effective treatment for people struggling with depression.”
Dr. Twenge, the author of “10 Rules for Raising Kids in a High-Tech World,” said the study helped discount the longstanding
argument that people experiencing mental health struggles simply use social media more.
She noted, however, that more research was necessary to shed light on whether the effects were long-lasting. “The key would be to
see how long people can keep up light use of social media,” she said. “If they slide back into old habits, the detox won’t have long-
lasting effects. “
PHOTO: On average, symptoms of anxiety dropped by 16.1 percent; symptoms of depression by 24.8 percent; and symptoms of
insomnia by 14.5 percent. (PHOTOGRAPH BY Bee Trofort for The New York Times FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES)On average,
symptoms of anxiety dropped by 16.1 percent; symptoms of depression by 24.8 percent; and symptoms of insomnia by 14.5
percent.Bee Trofort for The New York Times
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2025 The New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/
Source Citation (MLA 9th Edition)
[https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/01/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-jonathan-haidt.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/01/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-jonathan-haidt.html)
[https://ballotpedia.org/State_policies_on_cellphone_use_in_K-12_public_schools](https://ballotpedia.org/State_policies_on_cellphone_use_in_K-12_public_schools)
[https://ballotpedia.org/State_policies_on_cellphone_use_in_K-12_public_schools](https://ballotpedia.org/State_policies_on_cellphone_use_in_K-12_public_schools)
[https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/19/health/social-media-kids-mental-health.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/19/health/social-media-kids-mental-health.html)
[https://www.christopherjferguson.com/Social%20Media%20Experiments%20Meta.pdf](https://www.christopherjferguson.com/Social%20Media%20Experiments%20Meta.pdf)
[https://pdf.sciencedirectassets.com/777253/1-s2.0-S2666560324X00031/1-s2.0-S2666560325000714/main.pdf?X-Amz-Security-Token=IQoJb3JpZ2luX2VjEGMaCXVzLWVhc3QtMSJHMEUCIF0v81iqVacaksH6M%2FTQsNhuUp3CB2OiC1b5gB2XZGPgAiEAra5yYXrl9Rn5bjeY8ISgBHLPIMncPKx%2Bho%2B9oCZNe%2B4qswUILBAFGgwwNTkwMDM1NDY4NjUiDJXkoo%2FCIMtghnmGASqQBcePih9so8lsgpyTn6IixH4fKFdtcrPeJqNfgovNDy%2B81H%2BARVJtyYTr4v%2FJFTGsugb%2FuNPHNalu%2BCyDJYjFDyNkm1ZZjb1zB1RpS%2FcM1GZrnBYt5%2F2XnsuH8hk14CmkRhxf0moCtLUTi8txSTia%2FD8XSGsvkDUCAaMCqmiZ4log8PJm6CJnFzqWn15kc3lbHX6DoE8WPXtAVsxHtD0LjJYaSMKqEf8YYZ%2BvQHRQo3aDhxo5NfErpumDlQobmIcA1%2F9Tnc6hT6uxapfhx7wXDHQFM9ZFXGRaUAT7Hyl83LgRypQoXUEB22H2D%2BGhaM78VjwpCER6ngTLU7k5syVFsbwGVl4HDWnLJ8CWQxwSdINBa20F97Nw9NTObBjYObc292pEqVjPseEfXkvWH6jMiesNajsxkVvp4VzVTReOqVbOIYdr1EQi%2FH%2FDJM5VVTAC4HpAsHcQ22gYX5CbNLNxbv%2FAUMqI52OjF%2FQ3N1%2B2dJpT3%2F0cEvqNV95ambnzRQ%2BkPE7SY7L5ppXIMC%2FjxTlZqzPr5gDKg%2FSIQUcKbRtybOpliel1v5TJcEo1Qnel2d10QvJkVIkfTDke5KEvz8i6Rz%2BVgK72DPj6m%2FYg0kgm7lSfGMS9n4ZpQQpRkCwL9NMomQ6FcUljsc5iGz4viIutsqJ4xPNf8rqYvv01U5Q7q7kBtceyypPSOVKLSjGGXFKL65Vv1KAU%2FE%2Fh%2Fg81dpiU7YnhLcl2gpGZja3Yr1lz48GQghj28FBSwinGTaI9BIuPjjaSgBl9BxGLxVGNsr%2F54S%2B%2FUA60TAnyVzp6eHTuU%2FERWcAHXD6legbt35l12xK6R%2BHGCPjuuXUmfRqe4ZMD9EbkUsmvx%2Biw%2B5MSLpCGKJ8nMLCDiMkGOrEBRlugUaytcH3oi9FUeq5U7iWiiKt479qrm5zCXJQokT6XgHz2mUwOKejEMYHzCAU3KxOYpP8AljUbnEMeOUDIVWgxRqismjHafEn64KRCe%2BDbsDb7hTVF8LYWOo%2FFcBfZ4R4VsZdRcXoZkcVPMb9JpVP33epA9gUpAxXlUdO8YQ2oontdKx94xEjfDbuDVam8MvT2sF87LWgkeaXAN%2FSe257WuR5S3%2B32xBCXS14pNmd%2F&X-Amz-Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-SHA256&X-Amz-Date=20251122T190035Z&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host&X-Amz-Expires=300&X-Amz-Credential=ASIAQ3PHCVTY46JSLDRN%2F20251122%2Fus-east-1%2Fs3%2Faws4_request&X-Amz-Signature=58bd1c870db4f3f937242a461186f6541315e6b24ceec6beef37b108be8a7f3d&hash=9c60e4f6c07eff3e53e58265e9e266df36824712654acb6bc18d1459bc639803&host=68042c943591013ac2b2430a89b270f6af2c76d8dfd086a07176afe7c76c2c61&pii=S2666560325000714&tid=spdf-bc8b714c-f75b-4f31-932e-78c80035a77e&sid=f4ef5a065a89334e221911b9097f96b2f343gxrqa&type=client&tsoh=d3d3LnNjaWVuY2VkaXJlY3QuY29t&rh=d3d3LnNjaWVuY2VkaXJlY3QuY29t&ua=1315560254010402050e&rr=9a2aabaa3bfc303a&cc=us](https://pdf.sciencedirectassets.com/777253/1-s2.0-S2666560324X00031/1-s2.0-S2666560325000714/main.pdf?X-Amz-Security-Token=IQoJb3JpZ2luX2VjEGMaCXVzLWVhc3QtMSJHMEUCIF0v81iqVacaksH6M%2FTQsNhuUp3CB2OiC1b5gB2XZGPgAiEAra5yYXrl9Rn5bjeY8ISgBHLPIMncPKx%2Bho%2B9oCZNe%2B4qswUILBAFGgwwNTkwMDM1NDY4NjUiDJXkoo%2FCIMtghnmGASqQBcePih9so8lsgpyTn6IixH4fKFdtcrPeJqNfgovNDy%2B81H%2BARVJtyYTr4v%2FJFTGsugb%2FuNPHNalu%2BCyDJYjFDyNkm1ZZjb1zB1RpS%2FcM1GZrnBYt5%2F2XnsuH8hk14CmkRhxf0moCtLUTi8txSTia%2FD8XSGsvkDUCAaMCqmiZ4log8PJm6CJnFzqWn15kc3lbHX6DoE8WPXtAVsxHtD0LjJYaSMKqEf8YYZ%2BvQHRQo3aDhxo5NfErpumDlQobmIcA1%2F9Tnc6hT6uxapfhx7wXDHQFM9ZFXGRaUAT7Hyl83LgRypQoXUEB22H2D%2BGhaM78VjwpCER6ngTLU7k5syVFsbwGVl4HDWnLJ8CWQxwSdINBa20F97Nw9NTObBjYObc292pEqVjPseEfXkvWH6jMiesNajsxkVvp4VzVTReOqVbOIYdr1EQi%2FH%2FDJM5VVTAC4HpAsHcQ22gYX5CbNLNxbv%2FAUMqI52OjF%2FQ3N1%2B2dJpT3%2F0cEvqNV95ambnzRQ%2BkPE7SY7L5ppXIMC%2FjxTlZqzPr5gDKg%2FSIQUcKbRtybOpliel1v5TJcEo1Qnel2d10QvJkVIkfTDke5KEvz8i6Rz%2BVgK72DPj6m%2FYg0kgm7lSfGMS9n4ZpQQpRkCwL9NMomQ6FcUljsc5iGz4viIutsqJ4xPNf8rqYvv01U5Q7q7kBtceyypPSOVKLSjGGXFKL65Vv1KAU%2FE%2Fh%2Fg81dpiU7YnhLcl2gpGZja3Yr1lz48GQghj28FBSwinGTaI9BIuPjjaSgBl9BxGLxVGNsr%2F54S%2B%2FUA60TAnyVzp6eHTuU%2FERWcAHXD6legbt35l12xK6R%2BHGCPjuuXUmfRqe4ZMD9EbkUsmvx%2Biw%2B5MSLpCGKJ8nMLCDiMkGOrEBRlugUaytcH3oi9FUeq5U7iWiiKt479qrm5zCXJQokT6XgHz2mUwOKejEMYHzCAU3KxOYpP8AljUbnEMeOUDIVWgxRqismjHafEn64KRCe%2BDbsDb7hTVF8LYWOo%2FFcBfZ4R4VsZdRcXoZkcVPMb9JpVP33epA9gUpAxXlUdO8YQ2oontdKx94xEjfDbuDVam8MvT2sF87LWgkeaXAN%2FSe257WuR5S3%2B32xBCXS14pNmd%2F&X-Amz-Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-SHA256&X-Amz-Date=20251122T190035Z&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host&X-Amz-Expires=300&X-Amz-Credential=ASIAQ3PHCVTY46JSLDRN%2F20251122%2Fus-east-1%2Fs3%2Faws4_request&X-Amz-Signature=58bd1c870db4f3f937242a461186f6541315e6b24ceec6beef37b108be8a7f3d&hash=9c60e4f6c07eff3e53e58265e9e266df36824712654acb6bc18d1459bc639803&host=68042c943591013ac2b2430a89b270f6af2c76d8dfd086a07176afe7c76c2c61&pii=S2666560325000714&tid=spdf-bc8b714c-f75b-4f31-932e-78c80035a77e&sid=f4ef5a065a89334e221911b9097f96b2f343gxrqa&type=client&tsoh=d3d3LnNjaWVuY2VkaXJlY3QuY29t&rh=d3d3LnNjaWVuY2VkaXJlY3QuY29t&ua=1315560254010402050e&rr=9a2aabaa3bfc303a&cc=us)
[https://www-sciencedirect-com.proxy055.nclive.org/science/article/pii/S2666560325000714](https://www-sciencedirect-com.proxy055.nclive.org/science/article/pii/S2666560325000714)
[https://static01.nyt.com/images/2025/11/24/multimedia/24hs-social-detox-cbkm/24hs-social-detox-cbkm-articleLarge.jpg](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2025/11/24/multimedia/24hs-social-detox-cbkm/24hs-social-detox-cbkm-articleLarge.jpg)
[https://static01.nyt.com/images/2025/11/24/multimedia/24hs-social-detox-cbkm/24hs-social-detox-cbkm-articleLarge.jpg](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2025/11/24/multimedia/24hs-social-detox-cbkm/24hs-social-detox-cbkm-articleLarge.jpg)
[https://www.nytimes.com/](https://www.nytimes.com/)
Barry, Ellen. "Study Finds Mental Health Benefit to One-Week Social Media Break." New York Times [Digital Edition], 24 Nov. 2025.
Gale In Context: U.S. History, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A865160795/UHIC?u=durham_tccl&sid=summon&xid=3545f00b.
Accessed 20 Jan. 2026.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A865160795
**## Rhetorical-Analysis-Thesis.pdf**
Created by the Virginia Wesleyan College Learning Center
Clarke Hall, Room 223
Need help from a tutor? Visit http://vwc.mywconline.com
Rhetorical Analysis Thesis Statements
A strong thesis statement for a rhetorical analysis essay…
Avoids using the first person or phrases like “I believe” or “I think”
Serves as a guide to your essay for your reader
Asserts your conclusion and takes a stand on the author’s rhetorical strategies
States what techniques you will be analyzing, and the impact of these techniques on the
effectiveness of the text.
Examples of strong thesis statements for rhetorical analysis:
Jones effectively convinces his audience that —- through the use of statistics and surveys paired
with emotional stories.
Although Myers includes many convincing logical arguments through the use of historical facts,
her readers may doubt her objectivity because of her sarcastic tone.
Thompson uses personal stories and tells of his extensive research in the area to make his
readers believe in his credibility. These appeals to ethos, combined with his friendly tone,
creates an effective argument for —-.
Roberts employs the rhetorical appeals of pathos and ethos effectively. However, his use of
unsupported logical appeals causes his readers to doubt his claim that —- is supported by
research.
Mitchell’s attempt to convince the audience that —– is unsuccessful because of his insensitive
word choice and angry tone.
Note: The above thesis statements all include the original author’s purpose/thesis. Your thesis does not
have to include this as long as it appears in your introduction.
A strong thesis statement for a rhetorical analysis is NOT…
A simple statement of your topic
A broad statement
A statement of facts or statistics
A summary of the author’s essay you are analyzing
A statement of what you’re going to do in the essay
Examples of weak rhetorical analysis thesis statements:
Abortion is a big issue in the United States.
The author claims abortion is a big issue in the United States.
I’m going to examine how this author uses pathos, ethos, and logos to convince his audience.
The author uses pathos, ethos and logos.
**## Brandeupdate.docx**
Part I
SUBMIT: SUMMARY (with Work Cited page) of "Your Children's Smartphones Aren't Making Them Smarter"
·
**Available** Feb 2 at 6am – Feb 7 at 11:59pm
**AI warning:**
**Please do not use AI to to compose the summary. You should create your own summary of the article and the wording should be yours and yours only. If you take any information word for word from the article, you must place that information in quotation marks. However, in a summary, it is best not to use quoted material, if possible. Use of AI means a failing grade- see course policy. Thank you.**
· Using the plan of the paragraph that you outlined last week, create a draft of a summary paragraph. Edit, proofread, and fine tune the draft and then submit your
**final MLA formatted summary** of "Your Children's Smartphones Aren't Making Them Smarter".
· Your summary should include an MLA style header, heading, and the centered title:
· Summary of "Your Children's Smartphones Aren't Making Them Smarter"
· For the summary submission, use the title that I have provided after the colon (above), and be sure that you center the title.
· Indent the first sentence (tab once)
· Be sure that your topic sentence includes at the very least th
**e author's full name**,
**title of the article**, and the
**main idea.** Use the completed template from last week's assignment for the topic sentence.
· Be sure that you have at least 3-4 major supporting points for the main idea.
· Connect your summary major points with transition words (see document posted or your text for a list)
· You will add a
**Work Cited page in MLA format for this assignment.** You may copy and paste the source information below on your Work Cited page.
Please see the sample MLA formatted essay posted.
"Your Children's Smartphones Aren't Making Them Smarter."
_CNN Wire_, 2 Sept. 2024.
_Gale In Context:_
_College_, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A806893299/CSIC?u=durham_tccl&sid=summon&xid=e814ac0d
**Part 2**
Thesis Statement Submission Assignment
Article Choices for Essay 1
Article Choices
These are the three articles from which you will choose ONE to read and analyze for your first essay.
["Study Finds Mental Health Benefit to One-Week Social Media Break"](https://durhamtech.instructure.com/courses/17136/files/2404365?wrap=1) [Download "Study Finds Mental Health Benefit to One-Week Social Media Break"](https://durhamtech.instructure.com/courses/17136/files/2404365/download?download_frd=1)
["Who Really Benefits from AI?"](https://durhamtech.instructure.com/courses/17136/files/2404368?wrap=1) [Download "Who Really Benefits from AI?"](https://durhamtech.instructure.com/courses/17136/files/2404368/download?download_frd=1)
["Why Aren't We Losing Our Minds Over the Plastic in Our Brains?"Links to an external site.](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-arent-we-losing-our-minds-over-the-plastic-in-our-brains/)
For this assignment, you will want to write up your actual thesis statement for Essay #1. Remember:
1. Your thesis should be one sentence.
2. Your thesis is your claim about the author's use of rhetoric.
3. Your thesis needs to contain an argument.
4. Your thesis is not a statement of summary about the author's main point.
5. Use the PDF attached below for guidance.
**## Study_Finds_Mental_Health_Bene.pdf**
Disclaimer: This is a machine generated PDF of selected content from our products. This functionality is provided solely for your
convenience and is in no way intended to replace original scanned PDF. Neither Cengage Learning nor its licensors make any
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machine generated PDF functionality and any output derived therefrom.
Study Finds Mental Health Benefit to One-Week Social Media
Break.
Author: Ellen Barry
Date: Nov. 24, 2025
From: The New York Times (Digital Edition)
Publisher: The New York Times Company
Document Type: Article
Length: 1,383 words
Content Level: 3
Lexile Measure: 900L
Full Text:
Young adults who engaged in a social media “detox” reported reductions in depression, anxiety and insomnia, though it was unclear
how long the effects would last.
Dialing down the use of social media for a week reduced symptoms of anxiety, depression and insomnia in young adults, according
to a study published on Monday in the journal JAMA Network Open.
Researchers followed 295 volunteers, ages 18 to 24, who opted to take a break from social media. Instructed to stay off social media
as much as possible, the group on average reduced it to a half-hour per day from just under two hours. Before and after, the
participants answered surveys measuring depression, anxiety, insomnia, loneliness and a number of problematic social media
behaviors.
Overall, they reported positive changes: On average, symptoms of anxiety dropped by 16.1 percent; symptoms of depression by 24.8
percent; and symptoms of insomnia by 14.5 percent. The improvement was most pronounced in subjects with more severe
depression. At the same time, there was no change in reported loneliness — perhaps, the authors wrote, because the platforms play
a constructive social role.
Dr. John Torous, an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and a co-author of the study, said reducing social
media “certainly would not be your first-line or your only form of care,” but the study showed it could be useful as an adjunct
treatment.
“If you’re struggling with a mental health condition, and you have treatment already,” he said, “it’s likely worth experimenting to see
whether reducing social media helps you feel better.”
Dr. Torous urged caution in interpreting the results as treatment advice. The subjects had volunteered for the detox, and they had
minimal mental health symptoms to begin with, so the magnitude of the improvement was not drastic. Also, there was, he said,
“tremendous heterogeneity in the differences in how people responded,” and not everyone benefited.
“The averages are encouraging,” he said, “but they definitely don’t tell the full story, the variance was just so tremendous.”
Dr. Torous, who heads a digital mental health clinic at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, said he became curious
about the effects of reduced social media use because many of his college-aged patients reported benefiting from social media
breaks.
When he sought out research literature on the subject, he found that it was “confusing” and “mixed.” His team decided to begin a
study using “digital phenotyping,” a method that collects real-time information about subjects’ behavior from their devices.
He said young people eagerly came forward to volunteer for the study, which paid $150. “People are naturally interested, which I
think is a good sign,” he said. Participants were asked to stop using Facebook and X, which they mostly did successfully, he said,
and also Instagram, TikTok and Snapchat, which proved more difficult.
The mental health benefit seemed to come from avoiding problematic social media behaviors, like addictive use and negative social
comparison, rather than a change in overall screen time, the authors said. Indeed, the participants, on average, spent slightly more
time on their phones during the detox week.
[https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2025.45245?guestAccessKey=1b34668e-afe8-4888-aa3d-dd05b3b83eff&utm_source=for_the_media&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=ftm_links&utm_content=tfl&utm_term=112425](https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2025.45245?guestAccessKey=1b34668e-afe8-4888-aa3d-dd05b3b83eff&utm_source=for_the_media&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=ftm_links&utm_content=tfl&utm_term=112425)
The findings land in the midst of an intense academic debate over whether excessive screen time causes mental health problems.
One group of psychologists, including the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, have identified the smartphone as the cause of
deteriorating mental health among young people, and many communities have already taken steps to limit social media use or screen
time, especially during school hours.
At the same time, many specialists have urged caution about concluding that screen time is a central factor in declining mental
health, saying that studies have yielded mixed results and that what seems to matter is what young people do online, not how much
time they spend there.
Several psychologists said the new study was of limited value because its design allowed for bias.
It was not a randomized controlled trial, in which subjects were assigned to a treatment group (one that reduced social media use)
and a control group (one that continued their usual social media habits). Instead, the participants opted to take a break from social
media — and may have anticipated improvement.
“The subjects would have known how they were expected to behave, and likely simply changed their responses accordingly,” said
Christopher Ferguson, a professor of psychology at Stetson University, who was not involved in the study. Without comparison to a
control group, he added, “these numbers are literally meaningless.”
In a period of “technology moral panic,” he said, studies that find an effect receive far more attention than those that do not,
something that he said could “distort public perceptions.”
Candice L. Odgers, a professor of psychological science in informatics at the University of California, who was not involved in the
study, said it was hardly surprising that “if we constantly tell people social media is bad for them and that taking a break is good, and
then ask them to take a break and report how they feel after, this is what we see.”
But others were cautiously optimistic about the results. Mitch Prinstein, chief science officer at the American Psychological
Association, who was not involved in the study, said the findings added to existing evidence that, on average, “depression, anxiety,
loneliness often go down” for those who go off social media for a while.
Social media breaks are “a simple and free solution that seems to lead to quick improvement,” unlike psychotherapy, which can take
weeks to have an effect, Dr. Prinstein said. “This is a solution that will empower most parents and young people themselves,” he said.
“Use far less social media, and there is a reasonable chance that young people will start to feel a lot better.”
Still, prior studies seeking to quantify the effects of “digital detoxes” have yielded mixed results. Dr. Ferguson last year published a
meta-analysis of 27 experiments linking social media breaks to mental health, concluding that the average effect was “statistically no
different than zero.” A review of 10 studies published in March in Scientific Reports also found no effects.
Another meta-analysis examining 32 such experiments, published this year in the journal SSM-Mental Health, found that social media
restriction “yields significant but small positive effects on subjective well-being.”
Dr. Torous attributed the variation to the low quality of the existing research studies. He said he hoped further research would allow
clinicians to tailor social media breaks to individuals who will benefit from them. He was not enthusiastic about banning social media
use altogether, saying that it “could cause unintended consequences.”
“It’s certainly possible to ban it, but that’s a very blunt, crude approach, at least for mental health,” he said.
Academics who have called for strict limits on social media use greeted the new study as evidence that swift action is necessary.
Jean Twenge, a professor of psychology at San Diego State University, who was not involved in the new study, described it as “the
latest to show that cutting back on social media use can have mental health benefits.”
Because improvements were most notable in people who were already depressed, she said, the finding “suggests that cutting back
on social media for a week or two may be an effective treatment for people struggling with depression.”
Dr. Twenge, the author of “10 Rules for Raising Kids in a High-Tech World,” said the study helped discount the longstanding
argument that people experiencing mental health struggles simply use social media more.
She noted, however, that more research was necessary to shed light on whether the effects were long-lasting. “The key would be to
see how long people can keep up light use of social media,” she said. “If they slide back into old habits, the detox won’t have long-
lasting effects. “
PHOTO: On average, symptoms of anxiety dropped by 16.1 percent; symptoms of depression by 24.8 percent; and symptoms of
insomnia by 14.5 percent. (PHOTOGRAPH BY Bee Trofort for The New York Times FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES)On average,
symptoms of anxiety dropped by 16.1 percent; symptoms of depression by 24.8 percent; and symptoms of insomnia by 14.5
percent.Bee Trofort for The New York Times
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2025 The New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/
Source Citation (MLA 9th Edition)
[https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/01/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-jonathan-haidt.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/01/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-jonathan-haidt.html)
[https://ballotpedia.org/State_policies_on_cellphone_use_in_K-12_public_schools](https://ballotpedia.org/State_policies_on_cellphone_use_in_K-12_public_schools)
[https://ballotpedia.org/State_policies_on_cellphone_use_in_K-12_public_schools](https://ballotpedia.org/State_policies_on_cellphone_use_in_K-12_public_schools)
[https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/19/health/social-media-kids-mental-health.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/19/health/social-media-kids-mental-health.html)
[https://www.christopherjferguson.com/Social%20Media%20Experiments%20Meta.pdf](https://www.christopherjferguson.com/Social%20Media%20Experiments%20Meta.pdf)
[https://pdf.sciencedirectassets.com/777253/1-s2.0-S2666560324X00031/1-s2.0-S2666560325000714/main.pdf?X-Amz-Security-Token=IQoJb3JpZ2luX2VjEGMaCXVzLWVhc3QtMSJHMEUCIF0v81iqVacaksH6M%2FTQsNhuUp3CB2OiC1b5gB2XZGPgAiEAra5yYXrl9Rn5bjeY8ISgBHLPIMncPKx%2Bho%2B9oCZNe%2B4qswUILBAFGgwwNTkwMDM1NDY4NjUiDJXkoo%2FCIMtghnmGASqQBcePih9so8lsgpyTn6IixH4fKFdtcrPeJqNfgovNDy%2B81H%2BARVJtyYTr4v%2FJFTGsugb%2FuNPHNalu%2BCyDJYjFDyNkm1ZZjb1zB1RpS%2FcM1GZrnBYt5%2F2XnsuH8hk14CmkRhxf0moCtLUTi8txSTia%2FD8XSGsvkDUCAaMCqmiZ4log8PJm6CJnFzqWn15kc3lbHX6DoE8WPXtAVsxHtD0LjJYaSMKqEf8YYZ%2BvQHRQo3aDhxo5NfErpumDlQobmIcA1%2F9Tnc6hT6uxapfhx7wXDHQFM9ZFXGRaUAT7Hyl83LgRypQoXUEB22H2D%2BGhaM78VjwpCER6ngTLU7k5syVFsbwGVl4HDWnLJ8CWQxwSdINBa20F97Nw9NTObBjYObc292pEqVjPseEfXkvWH6jMiesNajsxkVvp4VzVTReOqVbOIYdr1EQi%2FH%2FDJM5VVTAC4HpAsHcQ22gYX5CbNLNxbv%2FAUMqI52OjF%2FQ3N1%2B2dJpT3%2F0cEvqNV95ambnzRQ%2BkPE7SY7L5ppXIMC%2FjxTlZqzPr5gDKg%2FSIQUcKbRtybOpliel1v5TJcEo1Qnel2d10QvJkVIkfTDke5KEvz8i6Rz%2BVgK72DPj6m%2FYg0kgm7lSfGMS9n4ZpQQpRkCwL9NMomQ6FcUljsc5iGz4viIutsqJ4xPNf8rqYvv01U5Q7q7kBtceyypPSOVKLSjGGXFKL65Vv1KAU%2FE%2Fh%2Fg81dpiU7YnhLcl2gpGZja3Yr1lz48GQghj28FBSwinGTaI9BIuPjjaSgBl9BxGLxVGNsr%2F54S%2B%2FUA60TAnyVzp6eHTuU%2FERWcAHXD6legbt35l12xK6R%2BHGCPjuuXUmfRqe4ZMD9EbkUsmvx%2Biw%2B5MSLpCGKJ8nMLCDiMkGOrEBRlugUaytcH3oi9FUeq5U7iWiiKt479qrm5zCXJQokT6XgHz2mUwOKejEMYHzCAU3KxOYpP8AljUbnEMeOUDIVWgxRqismjHafEn64KRCe%2BDbsDb7hTVF8LYWOo%2FFcBfZ4R4VsZdRcXoZkcVPMb9JpVP33epA9gUpAxXlUdO8YQ2oontdKx94xEjfDbuDVam8MvT2sF87LWgkeaXAN%2FSe257WuR5S3%2B32xBCXS14pNmd%2F&X-Amz-Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-SHA256&X-Amz-Date=20251122T190035Z&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host&X-Amz-Expires=300&X-Amz-Credential=ASIAQ3PHCVTY46JSLDRN%2F20251122%2Fus-east-1%2Fs3%2Faws4_request&X-Amz-Signature=58bd1c870db4f3f937242a461186f6541315e6b24ceec6beef37b108be8a7f3d&hash=9c60e4f6c07eff3e53e58265e9e266df36824712654acb6bc18d1459bc639803&host=68042c943591013ac2b2430a89b270f6af2c76d8dfd086a07176afe7c76c2c61&pii=S2666560325000714&tid=spdf-bc8b714c-f75b-4f31-932e-78c80035a77e&sid=f4ef5a065a89334e221911b9097f96b2f343gxrqa&type=client&tsoh=d3d3LnNjaWVuY2VkaXJlY3QuY29t&rh=d3d3LnNjaWVuY2VkaXJlY3QuY29t&ua=1315560254010402050e&rr=9a2aabaa3bfc303a&cc=us](https://pdf.sciencedirectassets.com/777253/1-s2.0-S2666560324X00031/1-s2.0-S2666560325000714/main.pdf?X-Amz-Security-Token=IQoJb3JpZ2luX2VjEGMaCXVzLWVhc3QtMSJHMEUCIF0v81iqVacaksH6M%2FTQsNhuUp3CB2OiC1b5gB2XZGPgAiEAra5yYXrl9Rn5bjeY8ISgBHLPIMncPKx%2Bho%2B9oCZNe%2B4qswUILBAFGgwwNTkwMDM1NDY4NjUiDJXkoo%2FCIMtghnmGASqQBcePih9so8lsgpyTn6IixH4fKFdtcrPeJqNfgovNDy%2B81H%2BARVJtyYTr4v%2FJFTGsugb%2FuNPHNalu%2BCyDJYjFDyNkm1ZZjb1zB1RpS%2FcM1GZrnBYt5%2F2XnsuH8hk14CmkRhxf0moCtLUTi8txSTia%2FD8XSGsvkDUCAaMCqmiZ4log8PJm6CJnFzqWn15kc3lbHX6DoE8WPXtAVsxHtD0LjJYaSMKqEf8YYZ%2BvQHRQo3aDhxo5NfErpumDlQobmIcA1%2F9Tnc6hT6uxapfhx7wXDHQFM9ZFXGRaUAT7Hyl83LgRypQoXUEB22H2D%2BGhaM78VjwpCER6ngTLU7k5syVFsbwGVl4HDWnLJ8CWQxwSdINBa20F97Nw9NTObBjYObc292pEqVjPseEfXkvWH6jMiesNajsxkVvp4VzVTReOqVbOIYdr1EQi%2FH%2FDJM5VVTAC4HpAsHcQ22gYX5CbNLNxbv%2FAUMqI52OjF%2FQ3N1%2B2dJpT3%2F0cEvqNV95ambnzRQ%2BkPE7SY7L5ppXIMC%2FjxTlZqzPr5gDKg%2FSIQUcKbRtybOpliel1v5TJcEo1Qnel2d10QvJkVIkfTDke5KEvz8i6Rz%2BVgK72DPj6m%2FYg0kgm7lSfGMS9n4ZpQQpRkCwL9NMomQ6FcUljsc5iGz4viIutsqJ4xPNf8rqYvv01U5Q7q7kBtceyypPSOVKLSjGGXFKL65Vv1KAU%2FE%2Fh%2Fg81dpiU7YnhLcl2gpGZja3Yr1lz48GQghj28FBSwinGTaI9BIuPjjaSgBl9BxGLxVGNsr%2F54S%2B%2FUA60TAnyVzp6eHTuU%2FERWcAHXD6legbt35l12xK6R%2BHGCPjuuXUmfRqe4ZMD9EbkUsmvx%2Biw%2B5MSLpCGKJ8nMLCDiMkGOrEBRlugUaytcH3oi9FUeq5U7iWiiKt479qrm5zCXJQokT6XgHz2mUwOKejEMYHzCAU3KxOYpP8AljUbnEMeOUDIVWgxRqismjHafEn64KRCe%2BDbsDb7hTVF8LYWOo%2FFcBfZ4R4VsZdRcXoZkcVPMb9JpVP33epA9gUpAxXlUdO8YQ2oontdKx94xEjfDbuDVam8MvT2sF87LWgkeaXAN%2FSe257WuR5S3%2B32xBCXS14pNmd%2F&X-Amz-Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-SHA256&X-Amz-Date=20251122T190035Z&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host&X-Amz-Expires=300&X-Amz-Credential=ASIAQ3PHCVTY46JSLDRN%2F20251122%2Fus-east-1%2Fs3%2Faws4_request&X-Amz-Signature=58bd1c870db4f3f937242a461186f6541315e6b24ceec6beef37b108be8a7f3d&hash=9c60e4f6c07eff3e53e58265e9e266df36824712654acb6bc18d1459bc639803&host=68042c943591013ac2b2430a89b270f6af2c76d8dfd086a07176afe7c76c2c61&pii=S2666560325000714&tid=spdf-bc8b714c-f75b-4f31-932e-78c80035a77e&sid=f4ef5a065a89334e221911b9097f96b2f343gxrqa&type=client&tsoh=d3d3LnNjaWVuY2VkaXJlY3QuY29t&rh=d3d3LnNjaWVuY2VkaXJlY3QuY29t&ua=1315560254010402050e&rr=9a2aabaa3bfc303a&cc=us)
[https://www-sciencedirect-com.proxy055.nclive.org/science/article/pii/S2666560325000714](https://www-sciencedirect-com.proxy055.nclive.org/science/article/pii/S2666560325000714)
[https://static01.nyt.com/images/2025/11/24/multimedia/24hs-social-detox-cbkm/24hs-social-detox-cbkm-articleLarge.jpg](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2025/11/24/multimedia/24hs-social-detox-cbkm/24hs-social-detox-cbkm-articleLarge.jpg)
[https://static01.nyt.com/images/2025/11/24/multimedia/24hs-social-detox-cbkm/24hs-social-detox-cbkm-articleLarge.jpg](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2025/11/24/multimedia/24hs-social-detox-cbkm/24hs-social-detox-cbkm-articleLarge.jpg)
[https://www.nytimes.com/](https://www.nytimes.com/)
Barry, Ellen. "Study Finds Mental Health Benefit to One-Week Social Media Break." New York Times [Digital Edition], 24 Nov. 2025.
Gale In Context: U.S. History, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A865160795/UHIC?u=durham_tccl&sid=summon&xid=3545f00b.
Accessed 20 Jan. 2026.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A865160795
**## Rhetorical-Analysis-Thesis.pdf**
Created by the Virginia Wesleyan College Learning Center
Clarke Hall, Room 223
Need help from a tutor? Visit http://vwc.mywconline.com
Rhetorical Analysis Thesis Statements
A strong thesis statement for a rhetorical analysis essay…
Avoids using the first person or phrases like “I believe” or “I think”
Serves as a guide to your essay for your reader
Asserts your conclusion and takes a stand on the author’s rhetorical strategies
States what techniques you will be analyzing, and the impact of these techniques on the
effectiveness of the text.
Examples of strong thesis statements for rhetorical analysis:
Jones effectively convinces his audience that —- through the use of statistics and surveys paired
with emotional stories.
Although Myers includes many convincing logical arguments through the use of historical facts,
her readers may doubt her objectivity because of her sarcastic tone.
Thompson uses personal stories and tells of his extensive research in the area to make his
readers believe in his credibility. These appeals to ethos, combined with his friendly tone,
creates an effective argument for —-.
Roberts employs the rhetorical appeals of pathos and ethos effectively. However, his use of
unsupported logical appeals causes his readers to doubt his claim that —- is supported by
research.
Mitchell’s attempt to convince the audience that —– is unsuccessful because of his insensitive
word choice and angry tone.
Note: The above thesis statements all include the original author’s purpose/thesis. Your thesis does not
have to include this as long as it appears in your introduction.
A strong thesis statement for a rhetorical analysis is NOT…
A simple statement of your topic
A broad statement
A statement of facts or statistics
A summary of the author’s essay you are analyzing
A statement of what you’re going to do in the essay
Examples of weak rhetorical analysis thesis statements:
Abortion is a big issue in the United States.
The author claims abortion is a big issue in the United States.
I’m going to examine how this author uses pathos, ethos, and logos to convince his audience.
The author uses pathos, ethos and logos.
**## Brandeupdate.docx**
Part I
SUBMIT: SUMMARY (with Work Cited page) of "Your Children's Smartphones Aren't Making Them Smarter"
·
**Available** Feb 2 at 6am – Feb 7 at 11:59pm
**AI warning:**
**Please do not use AI to to compose the summary. You should create your own summary of the article and the wording should be yours and yours only. If you take any information word for word from the article, you must place that information in quotation marks. However, in a summary, it is best not to use quoted material, if possible. Use of AI means a failing grade- see course policy. Thank you.**
· Using the plan of the paragraph that you outlined last week, create a draft of a summary paragraph. Edit, proofread, and fine tune the draft and then submit your
**final MLA formatted summary** of "Your Children's Smartphones Aren't Making Them Smarter".
· Your summary should include an MLA style header, heading, and the centered title:
· Summary of "Your Children's Smartphones Aren't Making Them Smarter"
· For the summary submission, use the title that I have provided after the colon (above), and be sure that you center the title.
· Indent the first sentence (tab once)
· Be sure that your topic sentence includes at the very least th
**e author's full name**,
**title of the article**, and the
**main idea.** Use the completed template from last week's assignment for the topic sentence.
· Be sure that you have at least 3-4 major supporting points for the main idea.
· Connect your summary major points with transition words (see document posted or your text for a list)
· You will add a
**Work Cited page in MLA format for this assignment.** You may copy and paste the source information below on your Work Cited page.
Please see the sample MLA formatted essay posted.
"Your Children's Smartphones Aren't Making Them Smarter."
_CNN Wire_, 2 Sept. 2024.
_Gale In Context:_
_College_, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A806893299/CSIC?u=durham_tccl&sid=summon&xid=e814ac0d
**Part 2**
Thesis Statement Submission Assignment
Article Choices for Essay 1
Article Choices
These are the three articles from which you will choose ONE to read and analyze for your first essay.
["Study Finds Mental Health Benefit to One-Week Social Media Break"](https://durhamtech.instructure.com/courses/17136/files/2404365?wrap=1) [Download "Study Finds Mental Health Benefit to One-Week Social Media Break"](https://durhamtech.instructure.com/courses/17136/files/2404365/download?download_frd=1)
["Who Really Benefits from AI?"](https://durhamtech.instructure.com/courses/17136/files/2404368?wrap=1) [Download "Who Really Benefits from AI?"](https://durhamtech.instructure.com/courses/17136/files/2404368/download?download_frd=1)
["Why Aren't We Losing Our Minds Over the Plastic in Our Brains?"Links to an external site.](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-arent-we-losing-our-minds-over-the-plastic-in-our-brains/)
For this assignment, you will want to write up your actual thesis statement for Essay #1. Remember:
1. Your thesis should be one sentence.
2. Your thesis is your claim about the author's use of rhetoric.
3. Your thesis needs to contain an argument.
4. Your thesis is not a statement of summary about the author's main point.
5. Use the PDF attached below for guidance.
**## Study_Finds_Mental_Health_Bene.pdf**
Disclaimer: This is a machine generated PDF of selected content from our products. This functionality is provided solely for your
convenience and is in no way intended to replace original scanned PDF. Neither Cengage Learning nor its licensors make any
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machine generated PDF functionality and any output derived therefrom.
Study Finds Mental Health Benefit to One-Week Social Media
Break.
Author: Ellen Barry
Date: Nov. 24, 2025
From: The New York Times (Digital Edition)
Publisher: The New York Times Company
Document Type: Article
Length: 1,383 words
Content Level: 3
Lexile Measure: 900L
Full Text:
Young adults who engaged in a social media “detox” reported reductions in depression, anxiety and insomnia, though it was unclear
how long the effects would last.
Dialing down the use of social media for a week reduced symptoms of anxiety, depression and insomnia in young adults, according
to a study published on Monday in the journal JAMA Network Open.
Researchers followed 295 volunteers, ages 18 to 24, who opted to take a break from social media. Instructed to stay off social media
as much as possible, the group on average reduced it to a half-hour per day from just under two hours. Before and after, the
participants answered surveys measuring depression, anxiety, insomnia, loneliness and a number of problematic social media
behaviors.
Overall, they reported positive changes: On average, symptoms of anxiety dropped by 16.1 percent; symptoms of depression by 24.8
percent; and symptoms of insomnia by 14.5 percent. The improvement was most pronounced in subjects with more severe
depression. At the same time, there was no change in reported loneliness — perhaps, the authors wrote, because the platforms play
a constructive social role.
Dr. John Torous, an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and a co-author of the study, said reducing social
media “certainly would not be your first-line or your only form of care,” but the study showed it could be useful as an adjunct
treatment.
“If you’re struggling with a mental health condition, and you have treatment already,” he said, “it’s likely worth experimenting to see
whether reducing social media helps you feel better.”
Dr. Torous urged caution in interpreting the results as treatment advice. The subjects had volunteered for the detox, and they had
minimal mental health symptoms to begin with, so the magnitude of the improvement was not drastic. Also, there was, he said,
“tremendous heterogeneity in the differences in how people responded,” and not everyone benefited.
“The averages are encouraging,” he said, “but they definitely don’t tell the full story, the variance was just so tremendous.”
Dr. Torous, who heads a digital mental health clinic at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, said he became curious
about the effects of reduced social media use because many of his college-aged patients reported benefiting from social media
breaks.
When he sought out research literature on the subject, he found that it was “confusing” and “mixed.” His team decided to begin a
study using “digital phenotyping,” a method that collects real-time information about subjects’ behavior from their devices.
He said young people eagerly came forward to volunteer for the study, which paid $150. “People are naturally interested, which I
think is a good sign,” he said. Participants were asked to stop using Facebook and X, which they mostly did successfully, he said,
and also Instagram, TikTok and Snapchat, which proved more difficult.
The mental health benefit seemed to come from avoiding problematic social media behaviors, like addictive use and negative social
comparison, rather than a change in overall screen time, the authors said. Indeed, the participants, on average, spent slightly more
time on their phones during the detox week.
[https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2025.45245?guestAccessKey=1b34668e-afe8-4888-aa3d-dd05b3b83eff&utm_source=for_the_media&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=ftm_links&utm_content=tfl&utm_term=112425](https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2025.45245?guestAccessKey=1b34668e-afe8-4888-aa3d-dd05b3b83eff&utm_source=for_the_media&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=ftm_links&utm_content=tfl&utm_term=112425)
The findings land in the midst of an intense academic debate over whether excessive screen time causes mental health problems.
One group of psychologists, including the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, have identified the smartphone as the cause of
deteriorating mental health among young people, and many communities have already taken steps to limit social media use or screen
time, especially during school hours.
At the same time, many specialists have urged caution about concluding that screen time is a central factor in declining mental
health, saying that studies have yielded mixed results and that what seems to matter is what young people do online, not how much
time they spend there.
Several psychologists said the new study was of limited value because its design allowed for bias.
It was not a randomized controlled trial, in which subjects were assigned to a treatment group (one that reduced social media use)
and a control group (one that continued their usual social media habits). Instead, the participants opted to take a break from social
media — and may have anticipated improvement.
“The subjects would have known how they were expected to behave, and likely simply changed their responses accordingly,” said
Christopher Ferguson, a professor of psychology at Stetson University, who was not involved in the study. Without comparison to a
control group, he added, “these numbers are literally meaningless.”
In a period of “technology moral panic,” he said, studies that find an effect receive far more attention than those that do not,
something that he said could “distort public perceptions.”
Candice L. Odgers, a professor of psychological science in informatics at the University of California, who was not involved in the
study, said it was hardly surprising that “if we constantly tell people social media is bad for them and that taking a break is good, and
then ask them to take a break and report how they feel after, this is what we see.”
But others were cautiously optimistic about the results. Mitch Prinstein, chief science officer at the American Psychological
Association, who was not involved in the study, said the findings added to existing evidence that, on average, “depression, anxiety,
loneliness often go down” for those who go off social media for a while.
Social media breaks are “a simple and free solution that seems to lead to quick improvement,” unlike psychotherapy, which can take
weeks to have an effect, Dr. Prinstein said. “This is a solution that will empower most parents and young people themselves,” he said.
“Use far less social media, and there is a reasonable chance that young people will start to feel a lot better.”
Still, prior studies seeking to quantify the effects of “digital detoxes” have yielded mixed results. Dr. Ferguson last year published a
meta-analysis of 27 experiments linking social media breaks to mental health, concluding that the average effect was “statistically no
different than zero.” A review of 10 studies published in March in Scientific Reports also found no effects.
Another meta-analysis examining 32 such experiments, published this year in the journal SSM-Mental Health, found that social media
restriction “yields significant but small positive effects on subjective well-being.”
Dr. Torous attributed the variation to the low quality of the existing research studies. He said he hoped further research would allow
clinicians to tailor social media breaks to individuals who will benefit from them. He was not enthusiastic about banning social media
use altogether, saying that it “could cause unintended consequences.”
“It’s certainly possible to ban it, but that’s a very blunt, crude approach, at least for mental health,” he said.
Academics who have called for strict limits on social media use greeted the new study as evidence that swift action is necessary.
Jean Twenge, a professor of psychology at San Diego State University, who was not involved in the new study, described it as “the
latest to show that cutting back on social media use can have mental health benefits.”
Because improvements were most notable in people who were already depressed, she said, the finding “suggests that cutting back
on social media for a week or two may be an effective treatment for people struggling with depression.”
Dr. Twenge, the author of “10 Rules for Raising Kids in a High-Tech World,” said the study helped discount the longstanding
argument that people experiencing mental health struggles simply use social media more.
She noted, however, that more research was necessary to shed light on whether the effects were long-lasting. “The key would be to
see how long people can keep up light use of social media,” she said. “If they slide back into old habits, the detox won’t have long-
lasting effects. “
PHOTO: On average, symptoms of anxiety dropped by 16.1 percent; symptoms of depression by 24.8 percent; and symptoms of
insomnia by 14.5 percent. (PHOTOGRAPH BY Bee Trofort for The New York Times FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES)On average,
symptoms of anxiety dropped by 16.1 percent; symptoms of depression by 24.8 percent; and symptoms of insomnia by 14.5
percent.Bee Trofort for The New York Times
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2025 The New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/
Source Citation (MLA 9th Edition)
[https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/01/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-jonathan-haidt.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/01/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-jonathan-haidt.html)
[https://ballotpedia.org/State_policies_on_cellphone_use_in_K-12_public_schools](https://ballotpedia.org/State_policies_on_cellphone_use_in_K-12_public_schools)
[https://ballotpedia.org/State_policies_on_cellphone_use_in_K-12_public_schools](https://ballotpedia.org/State_policies_on_cellphone_use_in_K-12_public_schools)
[https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/19/health/social-media-kids-mental-health.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/19/health/social-media-kids-mental-health.html)
[https://www.christopherjferguson.com/Social%20Media%20Experiments%20Meta.pdf](https://www.christopherjferguson.com/Social%20Media%20Experiments%20Meta.pdf)
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[https://www-sciencedirect-com.proxy055.nclive.org/science/article/pii/S2666560325000714](https://www-sciencedirect-com.proxy055.nclive.org/science/article/pii/S2666560325000714)
[https://static01.nyt.com/images/2025/11/24/multimedia/24hs-social-detox-cbkm/24hs-social-detox-cbkm-articleLarge.jpg](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2025/11/24/multimedia/24hs-social-detox-cbkm/24hs-social-detox-cbkm-articleLarge.jpg)
[https://static01.nyt.com/images/2025/11/24/multimedia/24hs-social-detox-cbkm/24hs-social-detox-cbkm-articleLarge.jpg](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2025/11/24/multimedia/24hs-social-detox-cbkm/24hs-social-detox-cbkm-articleLarge.jpg)
[https://www.nytimes.com/](https://www.nytimes.com/)
Barry, Ellen. "Study Finds Mental Health Benefit to One-Week Social Media Break." New York Times [Digital Edition], 24 Nov. 2025.
Gale In Context: U.S. History, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A865160795/UHIC?u=durham_tccl&sid=summon&xid=3545f00b.
Accessed 20 Jan. 2026.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A865160795