PsyPost: Limiting social media to one hour a day reduces loneliness in distressed individuals. “A recent study published in the Journal of Affective Disorders suggests that limiting social media use to one hour per day can reduce feelings of loneliness among young adults experiencing symptoms of depression and anxiety.”

Axios: Super scrollers sour on democracy: poll. “Heavy social media users are less likely to think democracy is the best form of government and more likely to stray from democratic norms, according to a newly released study from the Charles F. Kettering Foundation and Gallup.”

Engadget: Snapchat users sent ‘nearly’ 2 trillion snaps in 2025. “In 2025, Snapchat users created close to 2 trillion snaps, the company said in an update. That works out to about 5.5 billion distinct snaps per day and about 63,000 each second, according to the company. When you consider that Snapchat has about 474 million daily users, that averages to more than 11 snaps per user each day.”

BBC: People spending even more time online now than during the pandemic. “UK adults spent over half an hour longer online every day in 2025 than they did during the pandemic, according to an annual survey of internet habits by the regulator Ofcom. The Online Nation report found on average, people in the UK spent four hours and 30 minutes online every day in 2025 – 31 minutes longer than in […]

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/12/11/bbc-people-spending-even-more-time-online-now-than-during-the-pandemic/

PsyPost: Higher social media engagement linked to reduced performance on cognitive assessments. “A new analysis of data from a long-term national health study suggests that early adolescents who increase their social media usage over time may score lower on certain tests of brain function. The research indicates that even moderate engagement with these platforms is linked to slight declines in […]

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/12/03/psypost-higher-social-media-engagement-linked-to-reduced-performance-on-cognitive-assessments/

Pew (PEW PEW PEW PEW PEW!): Americans’ Social Media Use 2025. “YouTube and Facebook remain the most widely used online platforms. The vast majority of U.S. adults (84%) say they ever use YouTube. Most Americans (71%) also report using Facebook. These findings are according to a Pew Research Center survey of 5,022 U.S. adults conducted Feb. 5-June 18, 2025.”

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/11/21/pew-americans-social-media-use-2025/

PsyPost: Problematic social media use linked to loneliness and death anxiety. “A study of adult social media users in Italy suggested that loneliness and death anxiety might mediate the relationship between attachment anxiety and problematic social media use. The paper was published in Death Studies.”

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/11/03/psypost-problematic-social-media-use-linked-to-loneliness-and-death-anxiety/

CITP Blog: Our class spent 10-days self-experimenting with social media use: here’s what we found . “All 45 students in our class designed and conducted a ten-day intervention aimed at changing their social media habits and pre-registered a hypothesis for how the intervention would impact their behavior and mood. Here, we summarize what students tried and what they learned.”

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/10/12/our-class-spent-10-days-self-experimenting-with-social-media-use-heres-what-we-found-citp-blog/

Anderegg: Why is the Online Safety Act causing Bluesky user growth?. “Over the past few days, Bluesky has had accelerated user growth. This happened at the same time as the UK’s Online Safety Act came into effect. I don’t know exactly why this is the case, but I have some ideas.”

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/08/05/anderegg-why-is-the-online-safety-act-causing-bluesky-user-growth/