Bradford will be the site of the world’s first major trial of social media reductions among healthy adolescents
Social media apps like TikTok and Snapchat are now a big part of the lives of teenagers. Our Age of Wonder study (AGE OF WONDER – Born in Bradford) shows that teenagers – even 13-year olds – use social media apps for three hours every day, on average.
The government, families, and young people urgently want to understand the impact of social media, and how negative impacts can be reduced.
We are going to run a large high-quality scientific trial that tests if reductions in social media reduce levels of anxiety, and affect other outcomes such as sleep, bullying, and time spent with friends and family.
The trial will include 4,000 young people from Bradford, aged 12-15. We will work with secondary schools to recruit participants, who will be randomised to either use a smartphone app that caps daily usage of social media apps; or be in a control group that has no limitations.
In spring and summer 2026 we will develop and test the research methods, and we will launch the full trial in secondary schools in autumn 2026. The intervention will last for six weeks. We will measure how social media reductions affect important outcomes including anxiety, sleep, and bullying.
This is the first trial of social media limitations among healthy teenagers in the world.
We are calling this research “The IRL Trial”. In our discussions with teenagers about this research, many felt that social media distracts them from “Real Life” relationships and hobbies. We hope the trial will help teenagers focus more on their “In Real Life” activities.
The trial is funded by The Wellcome Trust, with elements of the research supported by the National Institute for Health Research and our “AIM Bradford” research programme (AIM BRADFORD – Born in Bradford). It will be delivered by a partnership of Bradford Institute for Health Research, the University of Cambridge, and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
More details:
- The research team will work with secondary schools in Bradford to recruit students in academic years 8, 9 and 10.
- The study will be a parallel-arm cluster randomised trial in which school year groups are randomised to either an intervention or a treatment-as-usual control condition.
- The intervention will entail a smartphone app that limits use of social media apps, using a co-produced combination of a daily ‘budget’ (for example 1 hr per day) and a night-time ‘curfew’ (for example between 9pm-7am).
- The intervention will run for 6 weeks, with questionnaires administered before and after.
- Outcome measures will include self-reported anxiety (primary), self-reported sleep quality, time spent with friends and family, wellbeing, body image, social comparison, school absences and bullying. With participant consent, the study will also collect objective app-log data on social media and browser use from participants’ primary devices to complement self-reported measures
- The trial will also explore the specific effects of the intervention within participants with pre-existing symptoms of anxiety at baseline.
- The trial will also include in-depth interviews with a subset of participants to understand their experiences of the intervention.
Contact us for more information:
Project lead for Bradford Institute for Health Research: Dan Lewer – Dan.Lewer@bthft.nhs.uk
