January 31, 2019
A new study from researchers at Stanford University and New York University says taking a month off from Facebook can improve your well-being.
That’s one of the more interesting results drawn from the study of over 3,000 Facebook users, over age 18, who spend at least 15 minutes on the site each day.
The New York Times called the study “the most comprehensive” of its kind to date, though a Facebook spokesperson told the Times that the company considers these studies to be “one of many on this topic, and it should be considered that way.”
The study also noted positives Facebook gives its users, and in discussing the downsides of leaving Facebook for a month noted that participants in the study were less informed than they were before they stopped using the website.
But Facebook’s downsides — polarization, addiction-like behavior, and a general change in well-being — are clearly present in the study’s findings:
“We find that four weeks without Facebook improves subjective well-being and substantially reduces post-experiment demand, suggesting that forces such as addiction and projection bias may cause people to use Facebook more than they otherwise would.”
The study ultimately contends that there are two sides to the Facebook coin, and likens the public’s reaction to the rise of social media’s omnipresence to that of television or, in a more extreme example, nuclear energy: early optimism, then concern about dangers of over-exposure.
“The estimated magnitudes imply that these negative effects are large enough to be real concerns,” the study concludes, “but also smaller in many cases than what one might have expected given prior research and popular discussion.”
This past November, a Penn study linked social media use with depression and loneliness.
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