Bradford trial to test if cutting social media time helps teen mental health

Thousands of secondary school pupils in Bradford are to take part in a study that will test whether limiting teenagers' social media use improves their mental health.

The IRL (In Real Life) trial will follow around 4,000 pupils in years 8, 9 and 10 at 30 secondary schools in the city, all of them aged between 12 and 15. Each participant will be given a daily budget of time on certain apps and will be barred from social media between 21:00 and 07:00. The children's experiences will then be compared with those of youngsters who continue to use social media as normal.

The announcement came on the same day the government said it would consult on a possible social media ban for under-16s in the UK. The researchers said the study's findings, due to be reported in the summer, would be independent of that consultation.

How the trial works

Participants will download a research app on their main device and complete an initial questionnaire covering mental health, sleep and friendships. In each school, whole year groups will be randomly assigned to one of two conditions: either the app simply records their social media use, or it restricts access to TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, X, LinkedIn, Reddit, YouTube and Snapchat to one hour a day, on top of the overnight curfew.

Messaging apps such as WhatsApp will not be limited, because the researchers say they matter for family communication. All pupils in a year group will receive the same conditions.

Professor Amy Orben, who leads a team at the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit at the University of Cambridge and co-leads the study, said taking social media away from one teenager could have a very different effect from taking it away from a whole friendship group for a period.

After six weeks the pupils will fill in a second questionnaire. A pilot period begins in April, with the main study starting in October and first results expected in summer 2027.

What the researchers will measure

Levels of anxiety are the trial's key outcome, according to Dr Dan Lewer, who leads the Bradford Centre for Health Data Science and co-leads the study. Depression, sleep patterns, experiences of bullying, time spent with friends and family, which apps are used and when, and how pupils compare themselves to others will also be examined.

Dr Lewer said the team speaks often with teenagers, who are themselves aware of the possible harms. They raise sleep, late-night scrolling, the crowding out of real-life relationships and online bullying, he said. Feedback from young people showed they did not want the study to test a total ban.

Data already gathered through the Born In Bradford study suggests 12 to 15-year-olds in the city average around three hours of screen time a day, Dr Lewer said.

Orben said there is a range of evidence that social media harms individual children and adolescents, including severe harms, and that some aspects, such as extreme or illegal content, abuse and bullying, harm most children. What is less well understood, she said, is whether time spent on social media affects the wider population of young people. To her team's knowledge, no large-scale experimental study of reducing or removing social media time in healthy under-18s has been run anywhere in the world, making this a first.

Orben added that the trial was funded before the consultation announcement and that the evidence will be relevant to other countries making decisions, not only the UK. The researchers acknowledge limits to the design, including that pupils may use devices belonging to other people or may decline to take part.

The wider debate

The study arrives as members of the House of Lords prepare to vote on an amendment to the children's wellbeing and schools bill, brought by Lord Nash, which would introduce an outright ban on children using social media. It has the backing of some Labour peers, and if it passes in the Lords it would be debated in the Commons, where 61 Labour MPs have written to the prime minister urging a ban.

Liz Kendall, the technology secretary, told MPs on Tuesday the consultation would take only a few months and the government would have a firm position by the summer. Lord Nash said he would press ahead regardless, saying the time for delay was over and that without raising the age limit to 16 the country risked what he called a societal catastrophe.

Elsewhere, Australia became in December the first country to ban under-16s from social media, and pressure has grown on other governments to follow.

Background: the trial sits within a wider international debate about harm to children from social media. The European Commission issued preliminary findings in July 2026 that TikTok accounts for under-18s do not meet Digital Services Act safety standards, and TikTok, Snapchat and YouTube have faced social media court cases in the US over alleged teen social media addiction, including settled school-district claims. This article's focus, the IRL trial, is a research study, not litigation.

Anyone affected by the issues in this article can contact Samaritans free on 116 123 or at samaritans.org.