Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by martyb on Tuesday February 12 2019, @05:21PM   Printer-friendly
from the what-about-twitter? dept.

Quitting Facebook Might Make you Happier, but Dumber: Study:

Those who managed to abstain from Facebook had at least one hour or more of extra free time and reported marginally better moods, though, notably, not enough to support the theory that heavy social media use makes people miserable. They were also five to 10 percent less polarized on political issues than their control group who remained on Facebook throughout the study.

But when it came to factual knowledge of current events — the Facebook-breakers scored lower than they had prior to deactivation.

Abstract:

The rise of social media has provoked both optimism about potential societal benefits and concern about harms such as addiction, depression, and political polarization. We present a randomized evaluation of the welfare effects of Facebook, focusing on US users in the run- up to the 2018 midterm election. We measured the willingness-to-accept of 2,844 Facebook users to deactivate their Facebook accounts for four weeks, then randomly assigned a subset to actually do so in a way that we verified. Using a suite of outcomes from both surveys and direct measurement, we show that Facebook deactivation (i) reduced online activity, including other social media, while increasing offline activities such as watching TV alone and socializing with family and friends; (ii) reduced both factual news knowledge and political polarization; (iii) increased subjective well-being; and (iv) caused a large persistent reduction in Facebook use after the experiment. We use participants' pre-experiment and post-experiment Facebook valuations to quantify the extent to which factors such as projection bias might cause people to overvalue Facebook, finding that the magnitude of any such biases is likely minor relative to the large consumer surplus that Facebook generates.

Reference:
Hunt Allcott, Luca Braghieri, Sarah Eichmeyer, and Matthew Gentzkow, The Welfare Effects of Social Media (pdf); National Bureau of Economic Research.


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by tibman on Tuesday February 12 2019, @05:39PM (5 children)

    by tibman (134) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday February 12 2019, @05:39PM (#800181)

    Quitting FB makes you less informed about current events. Not dumber.

    --
    SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +4  
       Insightful=3, Informative=1, Total=4
    Extra 'Insightful' Modifier   0  
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   5  
  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 12 2019, @05:47PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 12 2019, @05:47PM (#800185)

    And of course it only makes you less informed about current events if you don't use other sources of information about current events.

    Not to mention that there are certainly some current events you don't need to be informed about. Like the newest gossip about some celebrity.

    • (Score: 4, Insightful) by bob_super on Tuesday February 12 2019, @06:24PM

      by bob_super (1357) on Tuesday February 12 2019, @06:24PM (#800211)

      I only read major news websites from 3 or 4 different countries every day, plus Ars, SN, El Reg ...
      But I don't use FB, so I'm dumb.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 12 2019, @05:59PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 12 2019, @05:59PM (#800192)

    Considering that the information on FB isn't necessarily reliable and that there are other sources of information, I'm not sure how you reach that conclusion.

  • (Score: 2) by krishnoid on Tuesday February 12 2019, @06:46PM (1 child)

    by krishnoid (1156) on Tuesday February 12 2019, @06:46PM (#800227)

    The time constant for "current" and the importance threshold for "event" seem to have quickly and silently changed for everyone with the global Internet. So how does being "less informed" on these items show its lack of/value, setting aside "dumber"?

    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by hemocyanin on Tuesday February 12 2019, @07:01PM

      by hemocyanin (186) on Tuesday February 12 2019, @07:01PM (#800244) Journal

      In some ways, the internet has turned the world into a small town where every busybody is in everyone's business but instead of whispering rumors, they're now shouted.