Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Screens and attention
More hours on social media goes with more anxiety and low mood. That is a reason to aim at fewer hours, a conversation you can actually have, rather than at none, which usually ends the conversation.
Pick a number genuinely below the current one and low enough to notice, then look at what has changed in a fortnight. Sleep and mood are the things to watch, and they tend to move sooner than people expect. If nothing shifts, you have learned something worth knowing, and you have not spent two weeks failing at abstinence.
Qur’an and Sunnah
Neither wasteful nor niggardly when they spend, but keep to a just balance (Quran 25:67). The target named is moderation rather than abstinence, which is usually the more honest ask.
وَٱلَّذِينَ إِذَآ أَنفَقُواْ لَمۡ يُسۡرِفُواْ وَلَمۡ يَقۡتُرُواْ وَكَانَ بَيۡنَ ذَٰلِكَ قَوَامࣰ ا
They are those who are neither wasteful nor niggardly when they spend, but keep to a just balance
Qur’an 25:67read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
A review of findings from a study of more than 11,000 young people reports that screen and social media time has risen among 9 to 15 year olds, especially since the pandemic, with both cross-sectional and longitudinal associations to mental and physical health. Associations of that kind cannot tell you that cutting your own hours will lift your mood. They are a fair reason to try a lower number and watch what happens for yourself.
Nagata JM, Lee CM, Hur JO, Baker FC. (2025). What we know about screen time and social media in early adolescence: a review of findings from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study.. Current opinion in pediatrics doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
A reduction someone will actually agree to is worth more than a ban they will quietly break.
This one is still a draft. It is waiting on a scholar and a clinician to read it before it is published.
Near this one
When a death is filmed and passed around, some of the people who watch it are not all right afterwards, and a few are put in real danger by it. Ask what has been going round.
Spend long enough in comment sections and cruelty starts to look like the normal way people speak. It is not. You are reading a very odd sample.
Screens are easy to start and have no natural end. So the part worth planning is not the getting on, it is the getting off.