Young Adults Are Wanting to Leave Social Media

Here's how to use values and language to get off social media

Posted January 24, 2025 | Reviewed by Davia Sills

Young adults are showing up in therapists’ offices and acknowledging the ills of social media . Like most folks entering a new year, they are resolving to do better, and a desire to either reduce or quit social media is thus seen.

For a therapist, this is a breath of fresh air—the kids are alright. Social media has been linked to the rise in depression and anxiety in young adults for several reasons.

First, humans learn by observation, association, and comparison. Our language (both verbally and nonverbally) makes use of this by describing, evaluating, and reinforcing. When engaged in social media, we are naturally making observations and comparisons. And when people post on social media, they are naturally presenting the best version of themselves. Thus, if someone is feeling depressed or anxious, they are making skewed assumptions about reality, which reinforce maladapted core beliefs.

Social media feeds are also designed to increase dopamine . By scrolling up, we are conditioned like BF Skinner ’s pigeons to get random novelty rewards. This reward system is akin to slot machines, the only difference being that Las Vegas is regulated by the Gaming Commission; social media companies are largely unregulated. In fact, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s recent post about easing fact-checkers is part of the incident that sparked folks’ behavioral shift.

The other is the rise of teachers and journalists like Jonathan Haidt, Kara Swisher, and Scott Galloway. These folks have been opining about the impacts of social media on young folks’ well-being for a few years now. They point out that the rise of technology and its ability to better enable helicopter parenting have rendered kids lacking in self-efficacy and confidence . No wonder they’re depressed.

Social media has become a replacement for the real thing we all crave: connection to people, novelty, and wonder. Thus, people need more experiences outside, socializing in person, and making mistakes, which is also how people learn and grow.

So, how do we undo this social media addiction?

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy is very helpful as it addresses the behavioral components of wanting to give up a habit rooted in experiential avoidance. It’s natural to want to avoid unpleasantness. It’s also natural to want to experience pleasantness. Thus, social media use in service of anxiety and depression is natural, but it’s a reward system that pushes us away from a meaningful, healthy life.

Here’s how to make a reward system away from social media.

Identify the unpleasant thought or sensation. Name it.
Identify its context. Where are you experiencing it? Are you tired, hungry, angry, or lonely ? Notice that it is an experience; it’s not your content.
Use mindfulness to ground yourself. Become aware, without judgment, of your breath. Allow yourself to take in the senses around you. You are sensing light, sound, temperature, etc. You are also sensing thoughts, emotions, and physical sensations.
After you ground yourself, accept that you’re in a moment and everything is arising naturally. Unpleasantness is part of the experience of life, and that’s OK; you can grow beyond it.
Defuse from it. Cognitive fusion is the experience of feeling fused to a thought. By defusing, we widen our perspective by noticing that thoughts are sensations and that we are not our thoughts; we think them.
Consider the language used to help defuse the situation. Deconstructing the sentence structure and identifying its associative properties can help reorient our relationship to the experience.
Identify your goals and the things you can do that are in service of them. Perhaps there’s a hobby you enjoy, or you can participate in a community project.
Identify your values. You will use your values to validate the actions you take in service of your goals.

Values are your compass for living a meaningful life. A meaningful life is complete, with pain and joy. Living through experiences provides meaning because it’s difficult.

An avoidance tactic like social media soothes unpleasant sensations, but they are reinforced because to feel the pleasantness of social media, we have to revert back to the unpleasantness of anxiety and depression. Anxiety and depression are negatively rewarded. However, acting in service of your goals while validating your values reinforces new growth. It’s good news to hear that people are aware that social media lacks values.

Swisher, K.; Galloway, S. (2025). Meta Ends Fact Checking, Meta Ends Fact Checking, Trump Tries to Redraw the Map, and the Los Angeles Fires, https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/meta-ends-fact-checking-trump-tri…

Haidt, J. (2024). The Anxious Generation, Penguin Press

Hayes, S.C.; Smith, S. (2005) Get Out of Your Mind and Into Your Life, New Harbinger Publications, Inc.

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Reuben Brody, LCSW, is a licensed clinical social worker associate. He works at Brody Wellbeing, PLLC.

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This article is part of the Bringwise Psychology Journal — daily insights on human behavior, mental health, and personal growth.