Social Media Habits Are Easy to Form — And Easier to Break Than You Might Think
By the end of December 2025, I felt locked into “streaks” on several social media apps. My language learning app has encouraged me for five years straight. Reddit gave me a “badge” for consistently liking posts or making comments. And a puzzle app inspired me to share my ongoing “accomplishments” with friends. It was a bit exhausting.
For the start of the year, I felt compelled to break all my streaks. But first, I had to break my social media habits.
Scientists have been studying social media use and habits for decades, and there’s some good news for those looking to break their streak. Researchers who study behavioral habits find that social media habits are easily formed, which means they can also be easily broken.
Learn more: Boredom has its benefits, but can it really improve your attention span?
Form daily habits on social media
Researchers writing Personality and individual differences Generally define social media as any platform where you can create a shareable profile. There are the usual suspects like Facebook or Instagram. But any app, like a language learning app, that lets you create a profile and connect with others is also eligible.
Although most academic research on social media focuses on adolescents or young adults, scientists have an idea of how much social media adults consume. A 2025 study by the Pew Research Center found that most American adults use social media. Eighty-four percent of respondents said they use YouTube and 71 percent liked Facebook. About half were on Instagram and 37% used TikTok.
Most people use social media on a daily basis. Fifty-two percent used Facebook daily and 37 percent said they logged in several times a day. Nearly half visited YouTube daily and nearly a quarter visited TikTok.
How to Break a Social Media Habit
What makes so many people pick up their phones and scroll? Social media habits are learned behaviors in which people are initially rewarded for their use, according to a 2022 study in Current opinion in psychology. Apps can reward with badges, streaks or affirmations. Or, people may feel rewarded by interactions with other users, such as “likes” or comments.
Using an app to check likes or maintain a streak becomes a repetitive behavior that becomes habitual as the person begins to associate the app with specific cues. These signals can be internal – like a feeling of boredom – or come from external cues like a notification about a recent post. Indices can also be performance-based. If a person, for example, is always checking Facebook in the break room, they may pick up their phone without thinking.
“Habits can be good, they can be bad, they can be neutral,” says Joseph Bayer, an associate professor in the School of Communication at The Ohio State University who specializes in the psychology of communication technology.
Habits conserve cognitive energy. The brain, for example, does not need to think about every step of the recycling process.
“We need habits,” Bayer says, “we need ways to do things more efficiently; we can’t think about every micro-step.”
But disconnecting during repetitive movements can also be how some people find themselves with their phone in hand and immersed in a scroll of doom. In such situations, social media can be addictive, but if its use does not negatively impact the person’s finances, relationships, or overall well-being, it should be considered a habit and not an addiction, Bayer says.
Habits, unlike addictions, are much easier to break. “You get them back faster, but if you go a few days without it, you can put them out faster,” Bayer says.
Turn off social media
People wanting to break a social media habit should start by analyzing their usage.
“Ask: Do I end up there without intending to end up there? Do you think you do it out of habit? And what makes you think it’s a habit?” Bayer said.
People may also try to understand their own habits and find ways to limit their consumption by putting up barriers.
If a person walks into the break room at work, for example, and immediately starts scrolling through Facebook, they might try leaving their phone in their bag or even deleting the app. Or if a person always watches Reddit in bed, they can move their phone from the nightstand to the dresser across the room.
“Removing the cue is usually the strategy for removing the habit,” says Bayer.
Learn more: Scrolling social media, shopping online, and gaming can be more stressful than checking email or the news
Article sources
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