A proof of concept study on digital interventions for reducing socio-evaluative stress and anxiety in youth

TL;DR

This study explores digital interventions to reduce social anxiety in youth, finding that slow breathing is particularly effective.

Contribution

The study introduces a novel approach using brief digital interventions to target socio-evaluative stress in youth.

Findings

Slow breathing significantly increased heart rate variability and reduced anxiety during social tasks.

Attention training and detached mindfulness showed limited effectiveness compared to slow breathing.

Digital interventions show promise as accessible tools for managing social anxiety in youth.

Abstract

Youth often struggle with heightened sensitivity to social judgement, increasing their vulnerability to fear in social situations. This study investigates brief digital interventions aimed at regulating cognitive and affective disturbances related to social anxiety, specifically focusing on fear responses in a social-evaluative threat context. One-hundred-twenty healthy youth were randomly assigned to one of four conditions: attention training, detached mindfulness, slow breathing, or an active control condition. To induce social-evaluative threat, participants delivered a public speech after a 12-min video intervention. We assessed subjective anxiety levels, metacognition, heart rate variability (HRV), and subjective and objective performance ratings throughout the experiment. Results indicated that the slow breathing intervention significantly increased HRV immediately after the intervention, during the public speaking task, and during the recovery and reduced state anxiety immediately after the intervention. In contrast, attention training and detached mindfulness did not yield significant effects, although detached mindfulness did increase HRV immediately post-intervention. These preliminary findings suggest that brief digital interventions, especially slow breathing, may effectively alleviate fear responses in youth during social-evaluative contexts, highlighting their potential as accessible support tools.

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1038/s41598-025-96602-6.

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