Thousands of British Teens Will Test Life Without Social Media

Thousands of teenagers in one English city are about to find out what life feels like with social media on a leash. In the world's first large trial of its kind, school pupils aged twelve to fifteen will have their social media use capped at about two hours a day, with a curfew that switches the apps off at night — while their classmates carry on scrolling as normal.

The experiment is called the IRL Trial, and it will run for six weeks across around a dozen secondary schools in Bradford. A bespoke app installed on the teenagers' own phones enforces the limits for the restricted group, while the remaining year groups act as a control, with their normal usage quietly tracked for comparison, as reported by The Times. In total, roughly four thousand pupils are taking part.

What makes this study different is its design. Most of what we know about phones and teen wellbeing comes from observational research, which can show a link but cannot prove cause and effect. The IRL Trial is a randomised controlled trial — the gold standard of scientific evidence — and the first of its scale to test social media restrictions among healthy teenagers, according to the University of Cambridge, which is co-leading the work with the Bradford Institute for Health Research.

What the researchers will measure

Over the six weeks, the team will track a wide sweep of outcomes through questionnaires, interviews and anonymised app data: anxiety, sleep quality, time spent with friends and family, general wellbeing, body image, social comparison, school absences and bullying. Scientists will also watch closely how limiting social media affects teenagers who already live with heightened anxiety.

The restricted apps read like a teenager's home screen: TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, Reddit, Threads, X, Kick and Twitch. Messaging apps such as WhatsApp are deliberately excluded, after teenagers consulted during the design said those were essential for family life. Notably, the young people involved did not want a total ban — only sensible limits. The restrictions can even be overridden at the press of a button, with participants earning points for sticking to the rules rather than being punished for slipping.

Trial manager Dr John Pickavance told The Times the team wants to know whether better sleep leads to more exercise — or simply gets replaced. The open question, in his words, is whether teenagers will “just replace it with other forms of screen time” such as television or video games. The two-year programme is funded by the Wellcome Trust, and the full results are expected around the middle of twenty twenty-seven.

Bans are coming — but the evidence isn't

The trial lands as governments around the world move to restrict social media for young people. Australia became the first country to ban social media for under-sixteens in December, Spain followed with its own under-sixteen ban in February, and France's National Assembly has backed a ban for under-fifteens. The UK government is preparing its own under-sixteen ban for next spring. Politicians are moving fast; the science is only now catching up.

That gap is exactly what the researchers want to close. Cambridge psychologist Prof Amy Orben, the trial's co-lead, said no high-quality study had ever substantially cut social media use among healthy under-eighteens and systematically examined what happened next, according to the university. She added that the trial “focuses not on bans, but on time limits and curfews” — a deliberate contrast with Australia's approach, whose evidence she is also helping to evaluate as a member of the advisory group to Australia's eSafety Commissioner.

Not every teenager is sold on the premise. Lois Oredein, twelve, told The Times that “it's better to socialise online sometimes because it can be awkward in real life,” while her classmate Hannah Osin-Ntimoah argued that “it's not because of social media that young people are depressed.” Their scepticism is the counterpoint the trial is designed to test: do limits genuinely help, or do the harms lie elsewhere?

Why the answer matters for your feed

The numbers behind the trial are stark. Research from the Born in Bradford team suggests teenagers as young as thirteen spend around three hours a day on social media apps, while earlier Cambridge work found adolescents with a mental health condition spend about fifty minutes extra online on a typical day. But correlation is not causation: heavy users may scroll more because they are struggling, not struggle because they scroll. Randomising the restriction is the only way to find out which way the arrow points.

The findings could reshape policy well beyond Yorkshire. If curfews and caps measurably improve sleep and anxiety, schools and governments will have hard evidence for the kinds of limits already appearing in court orders — like the default two-hour daily cap and overnight lockout Meta agreed to for teen accounts in its multistate teen safety settlement. If the trial finds nothing, the rush to restrict will have to reckon with that too.

Either way, this is the evidence everyone has been arguing without. Thousands of British teenagers are spending six weeks living the answer — and by next summer, the rest of us will finally get to read it. For more on the science of rest, mood and wellbeing, explore our mind-body coverage.