Top Economists Study What Happens When You Stop Using Facebook

[milestogo]

In the most recent issue of the prestigious American Economic Review, a group of well-known economists published a paper titled “The Welfare Effects of Social Media.” It presents the results of one of the largest randomized trials ever conducted to directly measure the personal impact of deactivating Facebook.

The experimental design is straightforward. Using Facebook ads, the researchers recruited 2,743 users who were willing to leave Facebook for one month in exchange for a cash reward. They then randomly divided these users into a Treatment group, that followed through with the deactivation, and a Control group, that was asked to keep using the platform. The researchers deployed surveys, emails, text messages, and monitoring software to measure both the subjective well-being and behavior of both groups, both during and after the experiment.

Here are some highlights of what they found:

“Deactivating Facebook freed up 60 minutes per day for the average person in our Treatment group.” Much of this time was reinvested in offline activities, including, notably, socializing with friends and family.

“Deactivation caused small but significant improvements in well-being, and in particular in self-reported happiness, life satisfaction, depression, and anxiety.” The researchers report this effect to be around 25-40% of the effect typically attributed to participating in therapy.

“As the experiment ended, participants reported planning to use Facebook much less in the future.” Five percent of the Treatment group went even farther and declined to reactivate their account after the experiment ended.

“The Treatment group was less likely to say they follow news about politics or the President, and less able to correctly answer factual questions about recent news events.” This was not surprising given that this group spent 15% less time reading any type of online news during the experiment.

“Deactivation significantly reduced polarization of views on policy issues and a measure of exposure to polarizing news.” On the other hand, it didn’t significantly reduce negative feelings about the other political party.

https://www.calnewport.com/blog/2020/02/29/top-economists-study-what-happens-when-you-stop-using-facebook/

[JudyM]

1. Interesting study.

Thanks for posting it!

[BigmanPigman]

2. I would like to see another study where they have

a group that has never used Fakebook compared to those other two groups.

[Skittles]

3. yes

that would be interesting indeed

[NJCher]

5. I volunteer

Know nothing about Facebook, don't want to know anything about Facebook.

Interesting study; thanks to the OP.

[milestogo]

4. Its still scary to hear that so many people are getting their news from Facebook.

I don't know if that's from following news facebook pages or reading what other people post.

[Nitram]

6. Bullshit. It depends entirely on how the individual interacts with Facebook and how they use

Facebook to interact with friends, family and the wider community. I DON'T use Facebook to boast about where I've been, what I've eaten, or anything else. I don't share trivial things about my daily life. I use Facebook (focus on the word "use" rather than how Facebook uses you) in many ways. All of them involve positive interactions with friends family, and strangers I've met on Facebook who have similar interests. Here are some of the ways I USE Facebook:

1. Keep in touch with family and friends all over the country and countries all over the world. I grew up overseas, and lived for 21 years in Japan after graduating from college. We share stories, photos, and feelings.

2. Share my photographs with whoever is interested in viewing and commenting on them. I found that Facebook is far more interactive than Flickr for that purpose.

3. Share my political opinions with both like-minded and oppositional FB folks. FB is a great support group for those of us who are traumatized by Trump. I also have discussions about Trump, and the Democratic primary candidates with people who are actually willing to engage in civil discussion. I block anybody who is abusive or manipulative.

4. Make new friends with people who have interests in common with me, whether that be the environment, biology, photography, art, philosophy, or politics.