Deactivating Facebook makes you more happy. But there’s a catch

Deactivating Facebook increases your happiness but reduces your political knowledge, according to a new study.

However, it didn’t impact political polarisation, researchers from the Centre for Political Research at Sciences Po in France found after surveying over 2,200 people during the 2022 French presidential election.

Half of those surveyed deactivated their Facebook account for a month during the two rounds of the election.

Among them, two subgroups were created with half of them receiving “information treatment” and the other being assigned to only deactivation.

This treatment consisted of messages sent to promote healthier digital habits.

The participants were surveyed on different emotions, the findings of which were used by researchers to create a well-being index, according to their research paper published in the journal Royal Society Open Science. 

More happiness but less political knowledge

By the end of the study, those in the deactivation-only group rated their joy, their fulfilment and their life satisfaction higher than the control group though it was modest. 

Researchers also tested the participants’ knowledge of the news. At the end of the experiment, people who deactivated their accounts were less knowledgeable about politics.

“Interestingly, Facebook deactivation assignment had no effect on people’s knowledge about sports and entertainment events,” noted the authors.

“These findings are consistent with the notion that social media, and Facebook in particular, provide political information to people who do not actively seek out the news,” they added.

Regarding polarisation, they found “that Facebook deactivation had essentially no effect on partisan polarisation, ideological polarisation or social polarisation”. 

The link between social media use and well-being was already noted in two previous studies conducted during elections in the United States in 2020 and the period of genocide remembrance in Bosnia-Herzegovina in 2019.

The authors of the French study wanted to verify if these previous results were replicated and to know more about polarisation. 

At the end of the survey, the group that received the information treatment showed limited influence when it came to political knowledge.

The author’s hypothesis is that they have a short-term influence but “are unlikely to motivate sustained behavioural change”.