The effects of Facebook fasting
I didn’t need a study to tell me this.
But everybody likes a little positive reinforcement of what they believe already.
Heck, Facebook’s built one of the most successful companies in the world on that concept already. But don’t take my word for it.
Here’s the abstract from the 2020 study “The Welfare Effects of Social Media” in the American Economic Review:
“The rise of social media has provoked both optimism about potential societal benefits and concern about harms such as addiction, depression, and political polarization. In a randomized experiment, we find that deactivating Facebook for the four weeks before the 2018 U.S. midterm election (i) reduced online activity, 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 postexperiment Facebook use. Deactivation reduced post-experiment valuations of Facebook, suggesting that traditional metrics may overstate consumer surplus.”
A reduction in “factual news knowledge”? Absolutely.
In the news media, we’re well aware that a huge number of people get news primarily through stories linked from Facebook — so, when someone takes a Facebook or other social media holiday, they don’t simply lapse into pre-Facebook news from traditional sources. News goes dark for them, because they’ve slipped out of the habit of getting it from anywhere else. That only makes sense.
Political polarization? Absolutely, as well. The other truth about Facebook is that the world view it presents to you is not a real, warts-and-all world. It’s a world machined precisely for you.
The people you “associate” with on Facebook, your “friends,” tend to be likeminded, politically and socially. Essentially, as you choose your friends, you choose the mix of news that you receive. Not only that, but Facebook is actively considering what you read algorithmically, so that, even among the stories posted by your friends, Facebook’s moving up the one that your past reading profile suggests you’ll like.
It’s also not surprising to me that people felt better after shedding Facebook, or that they planned to use it less. I know I’m not alone in feeling that, when faced with the near-constant successes that everyone else posts to their accounts, my life feels lesser by comparison. Truth is, I barely post on Facebook now, and keep my account merely for work purposes — I have a much more lively presence on Twitter, because it seems to share ideas and information without constantly telling me I’m not cooking a gourmet dinner, not flying to Cuba for a sun-filled vacation, and not necessarily living the best life.
I don’t think I’m alone in that. You can only have your face rubbed in everyone else’s happiness so often before it leaves a permanent mark.
Oh, and the last line in that abstract? “Deactivation reduced postexperiment valuations of Facebook, suggesting that traditional metrics may overstate consumer surplus”? It means you may not miss it as much as you think once it’s gone.
The problem?
Well, the problem is that Facebook is still as seductive as ever. You’re bound to have something that just has to be humble-bragged about online. You may just need a break in your everyday office-home-family world for an uplifting spin through the inevitable cat, dog and cute baby videos. Or worse: you may have allowed your skills to atrophy enough that you’re not really sure you can find interesting things to read without depending on your social media crutch to find them for you.
You can be told that too much salt and fat is bad for your diet — it doesn’t mean you’ll give up bacon.
Mmmmm…. Bacon.