Did you want to quit Facebook? According to a new Research, quitting FB have both positive as well as negative effects on your life. The recent Study, led by Hunt Allcott, Associate Professor of economics at the New York University and Matthew Gentzkow, a Stanford economist, and was mostly financed by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.
Read Also, Premature to say social media use leads to depression: Study
Moreover, They argued that Facebook plays an significant role as a major source of (real) news and updated information, as people who quit showed reduced factual news knowledge. It also reduced political polarisation.
Read Also, Facebook to launch transparency tools for electoral ads in India
While on the other hand, quitting FB improved subjective well-being, suggesting that forces such as addiction and projection bias may cause people to use the social networking site more than they otherwise would, The research.
The research learned that being unplugged from Social Media made people less knowledgable about politics and society. Some were also less affected by extremes of political discourse: The Study.
Meanwhile, “We find that while deactivation makes people less informed, it also makes them less polarised by at least some measures, consistent with the concern that FB or social media have played some role in the recent rise of polarisation in the US,” hunt Allcott, said in a statement on Jan 31, 2019.
Read Also, Facebook not selling users’ data: Mark Zuckerberg
But, “It can improve people’s lives, whether as a source of entertainment, a means to organise a charity or an activist group, or a vital social lifeline for those who are otherwise isolated”.
“Any discussion of social media’s downsides should not obscure the basic fact that it fulfills deep and widespread needs,” he mentioned. For the research, the research team recruited 2,844 participants, aged 18 and older and spent at least 15 minutes on the social networking platform everyday. Notably, Participants stopped using Facebook, except for the social media’s Messenger app.
Read Also, FB Commits $300 Million to Support Local News
Result of the one-month experiment signified that people scored lower on tests of their political knowledge, while political polarization dropped between 5% and 10% for some users.
The new Research-Study findings revealed that, Social Media, particularly, FB account deactivation reduced online activity, including other social media too, while increasing offline activities such as watching TV alone and socialising with family and friends. The research also observed that deactivating FB had a positive, yet minor impact on mood..
