The Colorado Rapids social media channels have been silent this week. No tweets, reels or snaps for a reason.

“It’s important to take mental health breaks,” the club tweeted Monday. “As part of Mental Health Awareness Month, we will be stepping away from our social accounts for the week and be back online Saturday.”

Along with the pause of their social media channels, the Rapids announced a series of programs around mental health awareness including a call for fans to volunteer during May with Mental Health Colorado, Project Helping, Go4Graham and the Denver Park Trust, the team’s Managing Editor of Digital and Social Media Taylor Miller-Gregorio posted.

A “Mental Health Awareness Night” is planned for May 27 when the team plays FC Cincinnati at Dick’s Sporting Goods Park and a 40-minute soccer clinic, question and answer session with Rapids players tied to a “Mental Wellness Clinic,” according to ColoradoRapids.com

A 2022 study “Social Media and Mental Health” found “the diffusion of social media coincided with a worsening of mental health conditions among adolescents and young adults in the United States, giving rise to speculation that social media might be detrimental to mental health.”

The study found that Facebook’s rollout on college campuses “increased symptoms of poor mental health, especially depression.”

“When I started to really look into the trends of deteriorating mental health among the young adults, though, I came to realize how truly bad the situation is, and that stuck with me,” said Alexey Makarin, an assistant professor at MIT and co-author of the study, in an interview with MIT’ Sloan School of Management.

The Pew Research center found in February 2021 that 69% of adults age 18-29 have social media accounts with 70% using Facebook, 71% Instagram and 48% on TikTok. In 2019 Pew’s survey showed 90% in that age group used social media.

The link between poor mental health and social media use was explored in a 2018 study by psychologist Melissa Hunt at the University of Pennsylvania. Hunt’s research results showed “significant reductions in loneliness and depression” among undergraduate students who limited their use of Facebook Instagram and Snapchat to 10 minutes per day over three weeks, versus a control group of students who used the platforms as usual.

“Using less social media than you normally would leads to significant decreases in both depression and loneliness. These effects are particularly pronounced for folks who were more depressed when they came into the study,” Hunt said in an interview with Penn Today.