Quit Facebook for a happier, stress free life: study

The Happiness Research Institute from Denmark came up with a Facebook experiment to find out if the social media do have an impact in the quality of our lives. They asked a group of individuals to refrain from the use of their Facebook account for one week. As it turned out, ditching Facebook for a while resulted to a higher level of life satisfaction, according to the study.

The researchers conducted the experiment on 1095 people in Denmark—94 percent of whom visit Facebook as part of their daily routine, 78 percent stay on Facebook for more than 30 minutes daily and 86 percent go through their news feed often.

The participants were then randomly divided into two groups: the control group or those who continue to use Facebook as usual and the treatment group who agree not to use Facebook for an entire week. And finally, they were told to evaluate their lives on different dimensions.

After taking a break from Facebook, 88 percent of the treatment group said that they feel happy compared to only 81 percent from those who go on using their accounts. The Facebook hiatus also resulted to an overall better mood for the treatment group with 41 percent saying they became worried compared to 54 percent from the other group; only 12 percent were angry versus the 34 percent of the other group; and 22 percent were feeling depressed against 33 percent of the other.

More people from the no-Facebook-for-a-week group also feel more upbeat with 12 percent more people saying they are enthusiastic, 8 percent more saying they feel decisive and 55 percent were less likely to feel stressed compared to those from the control group.

The data also showed that quitting Facebook for some time resulted to people feeling better about themselves with more from them likely to feel present in the moment and that they wasted their time less. The control group participants also believe that they were more satisfied with their social life and have had an increase in their social activities.

Researchers, however, admitted that although there seems to be a link between the quality of life and quitting Facebook, it may not be necessarily a causal relationship and further studies need to be done to find out whether the positive results could go beyond quitting Facebook for more than a week, qz.com wrote.

The Happiness Research Institute is an independent think tank headquartered in Copenhagen, Denmark. They explore why some countries, cities, and people are happier than others and what drives well-being and quality of life to inform decision makers of the causes and effects of human happiness, make subjective well-being part of the public policy debate, and improve the quality of life for citizens across the world.