The Influence of Social Media Study Breaks on Students’ Learning Katherine Frei, Manya Gupta, Inez Zung, Megan N. Imundo, Elizabeth Ligon Bjork University of California, Los Angeles Though social media use during learning (e.g., using Facebook in class) harms memory for information (Thorton et al., 2014), little is known about the impact of “social media study breaks” on encoding and retrieval of information. Undergraduates read the first half of an educational passage, completed one of four different study breaks–social media (viewing an Instagram feed), reading celebrity interest magazine articles, solving anagrams, or no break (control)–then read the rest of the passage. After a short delay, they took a short answer test on the passage. Initial data (n = 57) reveal no significant effect of condition, indicating social media breaks may not harm learning, unlike social media use during learning. Additional data affirm that most (52%) undergraduates incorporate social media into their study breaks and 88% report using Instagram at least once a week. Our findings clearly show that social media use as a study break is popular. They further suggest that its use is not necessarily detrimental to learning, despite many educators’ beliefs. In fact, social media use may play a nuanced and motivated role during student learning.