Economists paid thousands of people to quit Facebook for a month, and the effects went beyond what anyone expected
Arguments about whether social media is good or bad for us often rely on surveys that cannot show cause and effect. In 2018, a team of economists from Stanford University and New York University ran a large experiment to get closer to an answer.
In the study by Hunt Allcott, Luca Braghieri, Sarah Eichmeyer and Matthew Gentzkow, published in the American Economic Review, US Facebook users were recruited online and asked how much money it would take for them to deactivate their accounts for four weeks ahead of the 2018 midterm elections. Among those willing to quit for a reasonable price, the researchers randomly chose who would actually deactivate and who would keep using Facebook as usual, and they checked that people stuck to it.
The roughly 2,700 people in the main experiment were followed with surveys and text messages before, during and after the deactivation period.
Quitting Facebook freed up about an hour a day on average. People did not spend that time on other social media or the internet. Instead, they spent more time watching TV alone and with friends and family.
On well-being, the effects were small but positive. People who deactivated reported slightly higher happiness and life satisfaction and slightly lower depression and anxiety. The researchers estimated the improvement at about 25% to 40% of the effect typically found in studies of psychological interventions such as therapy, small for any one person but meaningful across a population.
There were trade-offs. People who quit knew less about current news. They also became less politically polarized, holding slightly less extreme views on policy issues.
Perhaps the most telling result came afterward. Once the experiment ended, those who had deactivated used Facebook less than before, and many said they planned to keep using it less. The experiment also reduced how much money people said they would need to stay off Facebook in the future, suggesting they had overestimated how much they valued it.
The study does not show that social media is harmful for everyone, and it focused on adults in the United States and on a single platform at a single moment. Later experiments around the 2020 election found mixed effects. But it remains one of the most rigorous tests of what happens when people step away from a major social network.
For anyone wondering whether to take a break, the findings suggest it is unlikely to cause harm, may bring a small lift in mood, and could change how much you want to come back.
Source
Allcott H, Braghieri L, Eichmeyer S, Gentzkow M. “The welfare effects of social media.” American Economic Review, 2020.
DOI: 10.1257/aer.20190658
