No competing interests, personal financial interests, funding, employment, or other competing interests were reported by the authors of this paper.

This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

This research received approval from Carleton University's research ethics board (Protocol 111107).

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request. The data are not publicly available due to ethics constraints and the potential for breaching participant privacy and confidentiality.

All participants provided were informed, orally and in writing, about the purpose of the study, its requirements, and potential risks involved as per the informed consent process. Participants who met the eligibility criteria provided informed consent.

As this research involved a brief social media reduction intervention that is still in the proof-of-concept stage, we did not deem this study as a clinical trial, therefore no registration was obtained. However, this research, involving human participants, conforms to the recognized standards of the Declaration of Helsinki and CONSORT Guidelines.

Helen Thai served as lead for data curation, formal analysis, visualization, writing–original draft, writing–review and editing and contributed equally to methodology. Christopher G. Davis served as lead for conceptualization, supervision. Wardah Mahboob served in a supporting role for project administration, writing–review and editing. Sabrina Perry served in a supporting role for project administration, writing–review and editing. Alex Adams served in a supporting role for project administration, writing–review and editing. Gary S. Goldfield served as lead for conceptualization, supervision. Helen Thai, Christopher G. Davis, and Gary S. Goldfield contributed equally to investigation. Christopher G. Davis and Gary S. Goldfield contributed equally to writing–review and editing.