Today, 72% of the American public uses some type of social media, and most people interact with at least 1 social media site daily [1]. Social media platforms help people synchronously and asynchronously connect with others. Adolescents and young adults, in particular, use social media to build, maintain, and strengthen their social networks [2-5]. Beyond fortifying social networks, engagement with social media content has been associated with a tendency to engage in social comparisons [6]. Social comparison, the act of comparing oneself with others, stems, in part, from people’s need to evaluate their own opinions and abilities by comparing themselves with other people [7]. Such comparisons can have positive intentions and outcomes, such as motivating self-improvement, enhancing learning, and fostering positive self-views [8].

Notwithstanding, exposure to social media content can increase the risk of poor mental health outcomes [9,10], particularly among those with higher tendencies to engage in social comparisons [11]. Comparisons with others who are perceived to be better off than oneself (upward comparisons) tend to have a more marked negative impact on well-being than comparisons with others who are perceived to be on an equal level (lateral comparisons) or who are perceived to be worse off than oneself (downward comparisons) [12]. Upward social comparisons have consistently been related to more negative self-judgments, lower self-esteem [9], and the presence of disordered eating behaviors [13,14]. The visual nature of many social media platforms creates a rich environment for upward social comparisons, particularly with respect to performance and physical appearance, which can have negative consequences for well-being [12,15,16]. For example, a meta-analysis of 156 studies found that social comparison is positively associated with body dissatisfaction, especially among women and younger people [17]. Furthermore, adolescents and young adults often portray ideal versions of themselves on social media using advanced filters, photo editing, and video editing. They may seek out experiences with specific considerations of how such content will be perceived when posted on social media, rather than how intrinsically motivating it is [18,19]. Young adults viewing this carefully curated content often perceive others on social media as having better lives [20] and thus are prone to the negative effects of these comparisons. Indeed, a systematic review and meta-analysis of 70 published studies showed that social comparison on social media is positively related to higher levels of depression and anxiety [21].

A growing body of work has investigated the impact of interventions designed to reduce social comparisons made during social media use. A subset of these interventions targets a lack of realism in social media content by manipulating participants’ exposure to different content. For instance, a study found that participants who primarily viewed selfies of people without makeup reported lower facial dissatisfaction than those who viewed selfies of people with makeup [22]. Likewise, participants who viewed parodied versions of celebrity images reported lower body dissatisfaction and greater positive mood than those who were exposed to thin idealized images of celebrities [23]. In another intervention, women who saw side-by-side images of idealized versus nonidealized targets reported lower body dissatisfaction than those who viewed the idealized images alone [24].

Although changing the social media content with which people engage can reduce the negative impact of social comparisons, such an approach may not be realistic. Moreover, not all upward social comparison is harmful. Unlike comparisons that foster contrast between oneself and others, comparisons that foster assimilation (ie, the belief that one can obtain the same status as someone else) are characterized by a selective focus on the similarities between oneself and others [25], which can motivate positive feelings about oneself [26].

Consistent with this evidence, other interventions have targeted how participants interact with potentially harmful social media content using, for example, self-compassion and mindfulness-based interventions. Self-compassion refers to kindness toward oneself, acceptance of one’s humanness, and understanding that negative experiences are universal [27]. Self-compassion may help reduce the negative impact of social media by fostering more stable self-worth and less externally contingent self-esteem. People with higher self-compassion tend to feel less inadequate and less judged or evaluated than people with lower reported self-compassion when exposed to the coveted experiences of others [27,28]. Mindfulness-based interventions enhance users’ attention to their present experiences and foster curiosity, rather than judgment, about one’s states. Mindfulness is negatively related to fear of missing out (FoMO), which refers to the apprehension that others may be having more positive experiences than oneself [29,30]. Similar to upward social comparisons that decrease positive affect, FoMO is pervasive on social media and related to more depressive symptoms [29]. Social media users who endorse higher mindfulness also report lower depression than users with lower mindfulness [31], and mindfulness-based interventions have shown promise in reducing body dissatisfaction and negative mood [32,33].

Although promising, other studies have found no evidence in support of these interventions designed to impact how people interact with social media [28,34]. These contradictory findings could stem from methodological differences, including intervention duration or the lack of control over prior states. It is also possible that these strategies are effective only among those with a higher tendency to compare themselves with others, as these people tend to be more negatively impacted by comparisons on social media [10,11,23,24,34].

A related strategy, yet less explored with reference to social media, is savoring. Savoring is an emotion regulation approach by which people focus their awareness on pleasant experiences and appreciate the pleasure of past, present, and future experiences [35,36]. At a trait level, savoring appears to moderate the relationship between positive or negative personal experiences and various outcomes, including happiness [37], life satisfaction [38], and depression [39,40]. At a state level, savoring can bolster and maintain levels of reward sensitivity [41] and improve people’s capacity to recognize and enjoy positive experiences even in the face of negative events [39].

Savoring is a promising target for psychological interventions [42]. A 6-week intervention that involved weekly sessions where savoring skills were taught reduced negative affect and increased positive affect in a sample of people newly diagnosed with HIV [43]. Similarly, a 2-week intervention showed that participants who engaged in and logged daily savoring practices reported lower levels of depressive symptoms and negative affect than those who did not receive the intervention [44]. Another study used social media platforms as a means to practice savoring by asking participants to describe and post about joyous activities performed during the week on social media platforms [45]. This intervention helped decrease depressive symptoms and negative mood compared with inactive controls.

Although a growing body of literature suggests that savoring can increase positive affect and reduce negative affect and depression, this skill has received little attention as a means to manage the negative impact of social comparisons on social media. In this project, we built on the concept of savoring and adapted it to be an interpersonal, empathic process we term “social savoring”: a focus on feeling happy or joyous for the positive experiences of another person. Social savoring attempts to enhance one’s positive feelings in response to others’ positive experiences, amplify attention to these positive feelings toward others [37], and thereby increase a sense of connection with others [35]. In essence, people focus on how good it feels to experience happiness and gratitude for another person when that person experiences a joyous moment. Empathy has been shown to be a powerful tool for enhancing the feelings of social connectedness and self-esteem [46]. When empathy is integrated with strategies that foster savoring, the resulting combination may prove to be a useful alternative to social comparisons.

The purpose of this pilot study was to test the effectiveness and acceptance of a brief computer-delivered social savoring intervention to improve the quality of young adults’ interactions with social media, ultimately increasing social connectedness and self-esteem and reducing depressive symptoms, loneliness, and contingent self-worth. The present intervention introduced social savoring as a task in which participants were asked to observe (on social media) a joyous moment experienced by someone else, reflect on what it would feel like for that person to have that experience, and then allow themselves to feel joy for that other person. To better understand how the intervention impacted participants’ typical experiences with social media, we assessed their social media interactions for 7 days before receiving the intervention and 6 days after receiving the intervention.

We hypothesized that, relative to baseline, participants in the intervention group would report fewer depressive symptoms, lower loneliness, less contingent self-worth, reduced social comparison orientation, less FoMO, greater social connectedness, and higher self-esteem at posttest. At the daily level, we also expected that, on days after the intervention, participants in the intervention group would report decreased loneliness and social comparison and increased social connectedness, state self-esteem, and positive affect in response to social comparison compared with control participants.

All procedures and materials were approved by the Duke University Campus Institutional Review Board (protocol 2021-0066) and are available on the web [48].

This study followed an intensive longitudinal design to enhance statistical power and deepen our understanding of participants’ typical interactions with social media. After providing consent to participate, participants completed the baseline survey (day 1) and were randomly assigned to a waitlist control or intervention condition. On the following day, all participants completed the first of 13 surveys (for days 2 to 14) delivered daily by text and email. After completing the seventh daily survey (day 8), participants who received the social media use intervention (26/55, 47%) viewed the intervention video and were instructed to practice the intervention skills daily (for approximately 5 minutes) and continue completing the daily surveys (days 9 to 14). Participants in the waitlist control condition (29/55, 53%) did not receive any new material but continued completing daily surveys through day 14. On the last day of the study (day 15), participants completed the posttest survey, which included items for assessing their experience with the intervention in addition to the same items as those in the baseline survey (day 1).

This pilot study examined how social comparisons manifest on social media and whether social savoring can be a tool for helping buffer the negative impact of social comparisons. We performed multilevel analyses to examine whether the type of content participants daily engaged with was associated with the daily reports of social comparison and comparison affect. We used multilevel analyses to also examine whether the daily reports of social savoring were associated with the daily reports of social comparison, affect experienced from social comparison, loneliness, and state self-esteem.

To investigate participants’ acceptance of the intervention, we descriptively examined their responses to the multiple-choice and open-ended follow-up items, which were completed by participants in the intervention condition. To test the effectiveness of the brief computer-delivered social savoring intervention, we performed a 2-way repeated-measures ANOVA and paired-samples 2-tailed t tests to test for between-condition differences from baseline to posttest in depressive symptoms, loneliness, appearance- and approval from others–contingent self-worth, social connectedness, appearance, social and performance self-esteem, social comparison orientation, and FoMO. At the daily level, we used the same analytical approach to test the effect of the intervention on participants’ average daily levels of loneliness, social comparison, state self-esteem, and social comparison.

As shown in Table 1, participants assigned to the control condition did not differ from those assigned to the intervention condition in any of the baseline measures.

The participants completed 685 daily surveys. Participants reported interacting the most with memes and comedy content in 56.5% (387/685) of all daily surveys, political and societal issues in 23.9% (164/685) of all daily surveys, fitness and sports content in 23.5% (161/685) of all daily surveys, beauty-related content in 21.8% (149/685) of all daily surveys, food and cooking content in 19.9% (136/685) of all daily surveys, dieting and eating content in 14.3% (98/685) of all daily surveys; and vacation (68/685, 9.9%), art (47/685, 6.9%), and nature and animals (46/685, 6.7%) content in less than 10% of all daily surveys. Of the 55 participants who completed at least 1 daily survey, 53 (96%) reported engaging in social comparison on social media at least once during the daily survey period. Comparisons were reported in 63.6% (436/685) of observations. When a comparison was reported, participants most commonly reported feeling “about the same” after the comparison (245/436, 56.2% observations), followed by feeling “much worse” or “worse” (173/436, 39.7% observations). Participants reported feeling “better” or “much better” in only 4.1% (18/436) of the comparisons.

Multilevel analyses tested how the type of content was associated with the daily reports of comparison and comparison-related affect, regardless of condition (Table 2). To enhance the interpretability of the comparison direction variable, and because of our specific interest in comparisons that worsen affect, we dichotomized the outcome as 1=comparisons that worsened affect and 0=comparisons that did not alter or improved affect. The analyses were limited to the types of content that were reported in at least 10% of the observations. On days in which participants reported engagement with each fitness content, diet content, and beauty content, they reported greater comparisons and greater odds of engaging in comparisons that worsened affect relative to comparisons that did not alter or improved affect (within-person associations; beauty: odds ratio [OR] 1.86, 95% CI 1.02-3.37; fitness: OR 1.92, 95% CI 1.06-3.50; diet: OR 3.69, 95% CI 1.60-8.49). Participants who engaged with more political content or more meme content than their peers were less likely to report engaging in comparisons that worsened affect relative to comparisons that did not alter or improved affect (between-person associations). No other within- or between-person associations between the type of content engaged with and social comparisons were statistically significant.

Of those who completed the intervention and posttest survey (25/55, 45%), all but 4% (1/25) of participants answered at least 75% of the items about the intervention. In response to the multiple-choice items, most participants indicated that they were likely to practice social savoring in the future (18/25, 72%), that they would recommend the skill to others (maybe/yes: 23/25, 92%), and that they preferred our animated video over a live-action skit (22/25, 88%).

In response to the open-ended items, most participants reported that social savoring was a new skill to them (21/25, 84%) and that they agreed with the message of the video (24/25, 96%). Most participants (22/25, 88%) responded positively to the open-ended item that asked for thoughts on the video, including that they liked the intervention video (eg, “I liked the cartoon”), found the video helpful to convey information (eg, “It nicely summarized the concept in an entertaining way”), and found the video easy to understand (eg, “The cartoon was easy to understand”). A total of 4% (1/25) of participants reported that they thought that the cartoon was “a little cheese-y but got the point across,” and another 4% (1/25) indicated that they “thought it was weird that they weren’t all people and were like monster people.” When asked about the duration of the intervention, only 4% (1/23) of participants who responded to this open-ended question reported that it took longer than they would have liked, whereas the remaining participants (22/23, 96%) had generally positive reactions to the intervention duration, reporting—for example—that the intervention “did not take very long, [it was] very convenient” and “helped [them] reflect on [themselves] and [their] abilities” and that they “found [themselves] surprised that [they] could complete the skill so quickly and have it become normal practice.”

On average (mean 2.01, SD 0.99; based on averaged response categories 1=0%-20%, 2=20%-40%, 3=40%-60%, 4=60%-80%, and 5=80%-100%), participants in the intervention condition reported engaging in social savoring for 20% to 40% of their time spent on social media during the intervention period. Nevertheless, there was variability in the extent to which participants reported engaging in social savoring such that participants indicated engaging in social savoring for 0% to 20% of their time in 45% of their reports, 20% to 40% of their time in 25% of their reports, 40% to 60% of their time in 16% of their reports, 60% to 80% of their time in 9% of their reports, and 80% to 100% of their time in 5% of their reports. Reports of social savoring increased in the days following the intervention (days 9 to 13; b=0.09, 95% CI 0.03-0.16, SE 0.03; P=.01), indicating greater social savoring engagement over time.

Multilevel models assessed whether the daily reports of social savoring were associated with the daily reports of social comparison, affect in response to social comparison, loneliness, and state self-esteem. Associations were not significant for social comparison (P=.82), social comparison affect (P=.30), and loneliness (P=.19). For state self-esteem, within-person (b=4.88, 95% CI 1.03-8.74, SE 1.97; P=.01) and between-person associations (b=6.70, 95% CI 1.48-11.93, SE 2.67; P=.01) emerged. The within-person associations indicate that on days in which participants reported engaging in more social savoring, they also reported greater state self-esteem (β=.18). The between-person associations indicate that participants who engaged in more social savoring relative to their peers also reported greater state self-esteem (β=.41).

We found main effects of time of assessment on social comparison and connectedness (refer to Table 3 for means): at posttest, participants reported lower levels of social comparison in the control (t₂₇=2.33; P=.01; η_p²=1.00) and intervention (t₂₄=3.51; P=.002; η_p²=0.34) conditions and higher levels of connectedness in the control (t₂₇=−6.85; P<.001; η_p²=0.63) and intervention (t₂₄=−3.99; P=.001; η_p²=0.40) conditions.

Two-way mixed ANOVAs (Table 3) indicated that there was a significant effect of the interaction between condition and time on the level of performance self-esteem. As shown in Figure 3, participants in the intervention condition reported higher levels of performance self-esteem at posttest than at baseline (t₂₄=−3.61; P=.001; η_p²=0.35), whereas the levels of performance self-esteem among those in the control condition did not differ across time points (t₂₇=−0.42; P=.68; η_p²=0.01). Although participants in the intervention condition also reported higher levels of appearance self-esteem at posttest than at baseline (t₂₄=−2.83; P=.01; η_p²=0.25) and those in the control condition did not (t₂₇=−0.55; P=.59; η_p²=0.01), the interaction between condition and time indicated that the between-group difference was not significant.

To examine the effect of the intervention on participants’ daily experiences with social media, we separately averaged their responses to the items on loneliness, social comparison, state self-esteem, and the impact of social comparison on days 2 to 8 (ie, before the introduction of the intervention) and days 9 to 14 (ie, after the introduction of the intervention). Thus, we created 2 composite scores for each daily variable: one referent to the days before the intervention and another referent to the days after the intervention. We then performed 2-way within-participant ANOVAs to test whether participants in the intervention condition differed from those in the control condition in their average daily experiences on days 2 to 8 and days 9 to 14.

As shown in Table 4, participants who watched the intervention video did not report any changes in loneliness (P=.24), state self-esteem (P=.92), comparisons on social media (P=.82), or feelings associated with comparisons (P=.76).

The findings of this study are limited to a small sample of primarily White and women college students enrolled in a selective private Southeastern university in the United States. We attempted to replicate these findings in a sample of community members recruited through social media sites (eg, Instagram [Meta Platforms Inc], Reddit [Reddit Inc], Facebook [Meta Platforms Inc], and Twitter [Twitter Inc]). However, recruitment through these platforms was limited, and it was difficult to gain sufficient interest and retention from the community members. Indeed, of the 574 community members who completed the baseline survey, 48 (8.4%) provided good quality data (ie, no “straight-lining,” no nonsense responses to open-ended items, and no spam or repeated IP addresses), and only 11 (1.9%) completed the daily surveys to sufficient extent, a limited response rate that precluded comparisons with the present findings. These findings suggest the need for the development of innovative retention strategies if this intervention is to be implemented on a larger scale.

In addition, factors outside the content of the intervention appear to have influenced participants’ self-reported experiences. Specifically, the evidence that loneliness and social comparison levels decreased in both intervention and control groups suggests that merely reporting their own social media use daily influenced participants’ perceptions of these domains—and potentially how they interacted with social media. Another limitation is that we were unable to verify the true extent to which participants practiced the skills. Future studies using interventions such as the one used in this study may benefit from including a written practice during the introduction to the intervention, as done in the study by Hurley and Kwon [44], and daily written exercises to verify that participants spent time practicing social savoring.

Finally, the changes brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic may have shifted how participants interacted with social media such that social media use may have generally supported social connections. Given the restrictions imposed on participants at the time of the survey (eg, primarily web-based classes and restrictions on the size of gatherings), FoMO may have been less common than it would have been before the pandemic and thus less flexible to change.

Despite these limitations, the initial evidence from this pilot study suggests that a web-based social savoring intervention may help minimize the potentially harmful consequences of social media use. A fruitful avenue for future work is to examine the effectiveness and acceptance of this intervention for people diagnosed with disorders characterized by higher levels of comparison with others (eg, eating disorders). Specifically, savoring the joys of others may be a helpful strategy to feel more positively about one’s own skills and physical appearance.

Future studies should examine the effectiveness, feasibility, and acceptance of this intervention in a larger and more diverse sample. Given the evidence of an association between social comparisons on social media and eating disorders, depression, and anxiety [16,21,54,60], it would be valuable to examine the effectiveness of the present intervention among those with such psychopathologies. With changes such as those described earlier (eg, adding a daily written practice), a web-based intervention may be more easily delivered and accessed by a wider portion of the population.

In summary, a 7-minute animated intervention video that taught the skill of social savoring improved self-evaluation in performance domains. Participants valued this prosocial approach to engaging with social media content, as evidenced by the increased practice of this skill over time and their purported willingness to share this technique with friends. Such promising results with such minimal intervention suggest that the use of social savoring as more tightly integrated with social media engagement (eg, cued by certain social media content, behaviors, and platforms) may result in a more potent invention capable of enhancing prosocial feelings and social connections while mitigating the harm of social comparisons.