So what happens if you actually do quit [Facebook]? A new study, the most comprehensive to date, offers a preview.
Expect the consequences to be fairly immediate: More in-person time with friends and family. Less political knowledge, but also less partisan fever. A small bump in one’s daily moods and life satisfaction. And, for the average Facebook user, an extra hour a day of downtime.
Previous posts on this here and here.
Update 10/2/19: Another study, covered by Nieman Lab.
The forced week off Facebook had an impact on the restricted group. In addition to seeing less news, they also self-reported more “healthy behavior” (they said they ate out less, made fewer impulse purchases, were more efficient with time, and so on) and reported feeling significantly less depressed: “Our results suggest that using Facebook induces feelings of depression,” the researchers write. This could be because the students were doing more healthy things. It could also be because they were reading less news.
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