The welfare effects of social media
Hunt Allcott and colleagues paid people to deactivate Facebook for four weeks before the 2018 United States midterm elections and compared them with people who kept using it. Deactivation reduced online activity, increased offline activities including time with family and friends, reduced factual news knowledge and political polarisation, raised subjective well-being by a small amount, about 0.09 standard deviations, and left people using Facebook less afterwards. It is the strongest experiment on whether online time displaces time with people, for one platform and one month.
Hunt Allcott and colleagues paid people to deactivate Facebook for four weeks before the 2018 United States midterm elections and compared them with people who kept using it. Deactivation reduced online activity, increased offline activities including time with family and friends, reduced factual news knowledge and political polarisation, raised subjective well-being by a small amount, about 0.09 standard deviations, and left people using Facebook less afterwards. It is the strongest experiment on whether online time displaces time with people, for one platform and one month.
Written from the verified research record for article 59 and this publication's joint verification of Harkness and Rosen.
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doi:10.1257/aer.20190658. Four-week Facebook deactivation before the 2018 United States midterms; reduced online activity, increased offline activities including time with family and friends, reduced news knowledge and polarisation, raised subjective well-being by about 0.09 standard deviations, and reduced later use.