Voluntary Social Media Disengagement and Student Well-Being: A Mixed-Methods Study Among Youth in Tamil Nadu, India
Abstract
The omnipresence of social media in the lives of young people is raising concern among communication researchers, educators, and mental health practitioners. Though researchers are keen to explore usage patterns and impact of social media on the lives of young people, very little of this is Indian. There is very little region-specific evidence on the impact of social media use or the effects of social media detoxification which happens when young users voluntarily step away from these platforms. This study conducted in a Southern state in India explores the behavioural and psychological correlates of voluntary social media disengagement among college students. Conducted in Tamil Nadu, the study uses a sequential mixed-methods design. A preliminary survey of 1,062 undergraduate students (aged 17–25) assessed social media addiction and engagement using the Bergen Social Media Addiction Scale (SMAS) and the Social Media Engagement Scale (SMES). Students who scored at or above a clinical threshold (n ≈ 200) were invited to undertake a voluntary 14-day social media disengagement challenge; 31 enrolled, and 7 completed the full protocol, contributing daily diaries, mobile-usage screenshots, and post-challenge in-depth interviews. Quantitative analysis revealed a significant, moderate positive correlation between addiction and engagement scores (r = .350, p < .001), no significant gender or age differences in addiction levels, and significant associations between addiction status and both willingness to disengage and field of study. Thematic analysis of the disengagement narratives showed a marked, if non-linear, reduction in screen time, improvements in sleep, mood, and academic focus, and partially sustained behaviour change at one-month follow-up. The findings suggest that structured voluntary disengagement is a feasible and psychologically beneficial short-term intervention for reducing problematic social media use among Indian youth, while also highlighting the difficulty of sustaining change without external support. Implications for digital-wellness programming in higher education are discussed.