Thousands of teenagers in Bradford have joined a study limiting their time on social media. Researchers at Born in Bradford believe the IRL (In Real Life) trial is the first major scientific study of what limiting social media does to young people's mental health. After a preliminary stage with 200 students aged 12 to 15, the team has recruited 4,000 from Bradford secondary schools.
The design is straightforward. Some students use a smartphone app that limits their social media; others carry on unrestricted. At the start and end of a six-week period, everyone fills in short questionnaires covering anxiety, sleep, body image and school life.
The results will help inform how the UK government implements the under-16 social media ban announced in May, due to be introduced by spring 2027.
Why this design matters more than the finding will
Almost everything published about teenagers and social media is correlational: researchers measure how much young people use these platforms, measure how they feel, and look for a relationship. That method cannot separate two possibilities that look identical in the data — that heavy use makes teenagers unhappy, or that unhappy teenagers use their phones more.
A trial that assigns the limit, rather than observing who chose it, breaks that tie. That is why this one matters regardless of which way it comes out, and why a government preparing to legislate wanted it.
It is worth being clear about the limits too. Six weeks measures a short-term effect, and an app-enforced limit is not the same intervention as a legal ban — a ban changes what everybody's friends are doing, which is most of what social media is. A trial can tell you what happens when one teenager uses less. It cannot tell you what happens when a whole year group does.
What the students themselves said
The participants were more balanced about it than the debate usually is.
Dawson, 12, said he spent about two hours a day on social media and was looking forward to less: "I think it will make stronger relationships because I won't be on my phone as much. I feel like I spend too much on it and I don't think I focus on the things I should." His father Adam hoped simply to see more of him: "I might see more of him downstairs, that would be a good start."
Others at Appleton Academy said plainly they would miss talking to friends. That is not a trivial objection — for many teenagers these platforms are where the friendships are maintained, and a restriction has a real cost as well as a hoped-for benefit. A trial that measures only the benefit would be the wrong trial.
Why Bangladesh should watch rather than copy
There is no equivalent evidence here, and the conditions differ enough that the result will not transfer cleanly.
Bangladeshi teenagers often share a phone, frequently use an account registered to a parent, and in many households get online later and less privately than a British twelve-year-old. An app-based limit assumes a personal device with an account the teenager controls — the same assumption that makes Western parental controls largely theoretical here, as the testing of ChatGPT's teen safeguards showed in the Common Sense Media piece.
What does transfer is the method. Before any Bangladeshi institution restricts phones in schools — several have — the question worth asking is whether anyone measured anything before and after. Collecting a short questionnaire at the start of a term and again at the end costs almost nothing and would produce local evidence where there is currently none.
Related: Meta's two-hour cap, Australia's findings on gaming platforms, and a paediatrician's guide by age.
