custom social media brake
This identifier was used as an evidence-review target but was never published as a canonical Brali protocol. It is retained as provenance and deliberately does not link to a public route.
Evidence Ledger · Protocol candidate · reviewed 2026-09-01
Promoting Self-Regulated Social Media Use on Smartphones With a Mobile Intervention App (Wellspent): Randomized Controlled Trial
The reviewed source can support a conservative practical protocol.
Brali decision: Protocol candidate. This page summarizes a reviewed evidence boundary; it does not reproduce the source and it does not turn one paper into a universal prescription.
What the source supports
For an adult who already wants to spend less time in a specific social-media app, a short trial of a user-configured digital brake is reasonable: choose the target app, choose a personally meaningful session threshold, make continued use require an explicit quit-or-continue decision, and identify an alternative activity while retaining the ability to override the prompt. In this small randomized trial, the bundled intervention reduced time on the target app over the short study period. The source supports the package as a behavior-change experiment; it does not identify the full-screen checkpoint, customization, self-monitoring or any other component as the unique cause.
What it does not establish
- A full-screen quit-or-continue reminder by itself has been proven to reduce social-media use.
- Ten minutes, 45 minutes, three-minute reminder repeats, or any other example threshold in the app is an evidence-based optimal setting.
- Reducing app time in this study improved wellbeing, attention, productivity, sleep or mental health.
- The intervention treated social-media addiction or another clinical condition.
- The intervention reliably increased self-control or self-efficacy.
- The result generalizes to Android users, older populations, all apps or people who do not want to reduce their use.
- Short-term reduced use will persist after the intervention is removed.
- Blocking access more aggressively would necessarily work better.
Important limitations
- The randomized sample was small at 70 participants, and the study did not reach its original recruitment target.
- Twenty-six percent did not complete week 3; the final model for the primary problematic-social-media-use outcome included 46 participants.
- Participants were iPhone users, mostly students or young professionals, and self-selected into a study about social-media self-regulation.
- The control group received no active comparator and participants could not be blinded.
- The intervention bundled several behavior-change components, so the study cannot isolate the causal contribution of the quit-or-continue checkpoint, customization, alternative activities, goals, feedback or self-monitoring.
- Some psychological outcomes were self-reported; problematic social-media use and self-efficacy did not show robust improvement.
- The intervention period was short and there was no long-term follow-up establishing durable habit change.
- One author was employed by Wellspent GmbH during the intervention period and another was a company cofounder.
Source context
Promoting Self-Regulated Social Media Use on Smartphones With a Mobile Intervention App (Wellspent): Randomized Controlled Trial
- Source type: primary-study
- Design: Preregistered 3-week randomized controlled trial. Seventy iPhone users were randomized 1:1 to a customizable digital self-control app or a no-treatment control. The intervention was active in week 2 and optional in week 3. Linear mixed models were used across baseline and two follow-ups; formal blinding was not possible.
- Population: 70 English-proficient adult iPhone users who regularly used at least one social-media app, recruited through social channels and Freie Universität Berlin study-opportunity mailing lists. Mean age was 26.2 years, 67% were women, and most were students or young professionals. Fifty-two participants completed week 3; the primary problematic-social-media-use model contained 46 participants.
- Exposure / intervention: Users selected social-media apps they considered problematic, set daily usage goals and continuous-use nudge intervals, customized reminder frequency and tone, chose an alternative activity and could define vulnerable time windows. After a self-defined interval, a full-screen reminder required an active dismissal while preserving the choice to continue. The app also supplied feedback and self-monitoring.
- Outcomes: Objectively recorded daily minutes on the self-identified most problematic social-media app, entered by participants from iOS screen-time records; Problematic smartphone use; Problematic social-media use; Self-efficacy to self-regulate social-media use; Reminder acceptance and voluntary continued app use
Citation: Mertens L, Brockmeier LC, Roitzheim C, Radtke T, Dingler T, Keller J. JMIR Mhealth Uhealth. 2026;14:e56824.
DOI: 10.2196/56824
What this changes in Brali
Editorial note: Protocol-design direction: use this as a lower-friction alternative to Brali's stronger phone-offline experiment, not as a replacement. Ask the user to identify one app they already want to use less, choose a personally relevant continuous-use checkpoint, select a realistic alternative action, and force a deliberate continue-or-exit choice without hard blocking. Review actual target-app minutes and whether prompts were useful after a bounded trial. Do not prescribe a universal session length or infer mental-health benefit.
Use the boundary, not just the headline
When an AI agent or a person retrieves this decision, preserve both the supported claim and the unsupported or overstated claims. Dropping the boundary would turn a reviewed source into a stronger claim than Brali actually maintains.
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