Key result
Brief digital slow breathing increases HRV and reduces anxiety vs active control in socially stressed youth.
Why the study?
Youth often struggle with heightened sensitivity to social judgement, increasing vulnerability to fear in social situations.
Do brief digital interventions reduce socio-evaluative stress and anxiety in healthy youth?
RCT (n=120)
Open-label
Randomly assigned
No
Do brief digital interventions reduce socio-evaluative stress and anxiety in healthy youth?
Mean Difference: 15.96
p-value: p=<0.001
A brief digital slow breathing intervention effectively increases heart rate variability and reduces state anxiety during social-evaluative threat in youth.
Supports immediate digital slow breathing for acute anxiety in stressed youth; extends HRV modulation evidence to social-evaluative threat.
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.
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Akdağ et al. (2025) conducted an RCT in Socio-evaluative stress and subclinical social anxiety (n=120). Brief digital interventions (slow breathing, attention training, detached mindfulness) vs. Active control (neutral video) was evaluated on State heart rate variability (HRV) immediately post-intervention (MD 15.96, p=<0.001). A brief 12-minute digital slow breathing intervention significantly increased heart rate variability and reduced state anxiety immediately post-intervention compared to an active control in youth facing a social-evaluative threat.
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