Deleting your Facebook may increase your well-being but reduce your political knowledge

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2024-10-09 10:01

International

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Deactivating your Facebook social media account might slightly increase your well-being, but reduce your political knowledge, according to international researchers, who had 1117 people voluntarily deactivate their Facebook accounts during the 2022 French Presidential Election. The team surveyed the participants about their mood and well-being, political knowledge, and level of political and social polarisation during the election, and compared their results with 1129 people who did not deactivate their accounts. They found that people who deactivated their accounts reported having slightly higher well-being, but lower political knowledge. However, they did find that people's level of political and social polarization did not change despite deactivating their Facebook account.

Media release

From: The Royal Society

Facebook Increases Political Knowledge, Reduces Well-being, and Informational Treatments Do Little to Help

Royal Society Open Science

Amid widely shared concerns that social media makes people unhappy, spreads misinformation, and polarizes societies, we paid randomly selected participants to deactivate their Facebook accounts during the 2022 French presidential election and compared them to a randomly selected group that continued using Facebook. Our study directly replicates and extends previous research by sending some participants messages nudging them to be more informed, civil, and open-minded. We find that those who deactivated Facebook were slightly less happy, less informed about politics, but no more or less polarized that those who kept using Facebook. The informational messages had little impact.

Journal/
conference: Royal Society Open Science

Research:Paper

Organisation/s: Center for Political Research at Sciences Po, France

Funder: No funding has been received for this article.

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