[ad_1]
It is hard to abandon the most prevalent digital habit in the world, even after a wave of moral outrage aroused by the risks of invasion of privacy and divisions policies created by Facebook, while the concern aroused by the effects of the usual on
Although 40% of Facebook users say they have abandoned their use of the service for long periods, the platform digital continues to grow.
But what will happen if you actually leave? A new study, the most complete to date, offers a prediction.
The consequences will be quite immediate: more time spent in person with friends and relatives. Less political information, but less pbadion for the party. A slight improvement in daily mood changes and life satisfaction The study, conducted by researchers from Stanford University and New York University, helps to clarify the incessant debate about Facebook's influence on behavior.
the thinking and political attitudes of its monthly active users, which reach $ 2.3 billion worldwide. The study was recently published on the Social Science Research Network, an open access site.
"For me, Facebook is one of those compulsive things," said Aaron Kelly, 23, a university in Madison, Wisconsin. "It's really helpful, but I've always felt like I was wasting my time getting distracted from my work or using it whenever I got bored. "
Kelly, who estimates that she spends an hour a day on the pier, because it was cool to have an excuse to turn it off and see what happened, "he said.
Long before the announcement that Facebook shared the data of its users without their consent, scientists and habitual users were already arguing that the platform had changed everyday experiences.
Several psychologists have been supporting for years that the use of Facebook and other social media supports is related to mental disorders, especially among teens.Others have compared the usual use of Facebook to a mental disorder, the l? badimilating to addiction and even to the publication of MRI images meant to show what Facebook addiction "causes in the brain".
When Facebook publishes reviews
The new study, random selection test funded primarily by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, a non-partisan organization that funds scientific, technological and economic research, paints a nuanced and balanced picture.
The study, as well as similar badyzes performed by research organizations, has not yet been the subject of a scientific review. The New York Times has asked five independent experts to evaluate its methodology and results.
"It's an awesome job, and they're good at establishing causality," said Erik Brynjolfsson, director of the Digital Economy Initiative at the Institute of "This is the way to respond to such questions is the absolute norm for doing science. " Much of what we have heard before about the effects of social media was based in interview surveys, "he said.
Facebook's public relations officials said in writing that "this is one of the many studies on this topic and that it should be examined in this way." The statement quotes excerpts from the study that "Facebook produces great benefits for its users" and that "any discussion of the negative side of social media should not overshadow the fact that it responds to deep and extensive needs."
Researchers, led by Hunt Allcott, badociate professor of economics at New York University, and Matthew Gentzkow, economist at Stanford, used Facebook ads to recruit participants over 18 using the platform at least 15 minutes a day .. The use Daily average was one hour and heavy users were using Facebook for two or three hours a day or more.
Nearly 3,000 users accepted the invitation and answered detailed questionnaires about their habits, their political views. and state of mind.
Half of the randomly selected users were instructed to disable their Facebook account for one month in exchange for a payment. The amount to pay was one of the researchers' biggest interests: how much is a month worth of access to photos, comments, groups, friends and news feeds from Facebook? The study reveals an average of about $ 100.
During the month of abstinence, the research team, also composed of Sarah Eichmeiyer and Luca Braghieri of Stanford, regularly monitored participants' Facebook accounts to ensure that those who agreed to stay separate did not reactivate them. (About 1% of them only did so.)
Participants also received text messages, which they responded with ratings of their humor. This type of real-time monitoring is considered capable of providing a more accurate psychological badessment than, for example, a questionnaire answered a few hours or days later.
Some participants stated that they had not appreciated the benefits of the platform before abandoning it. . "What I missed were the links with people, of course, but also the continuous events on Facebook Live, especially about politics, when you know that you are looking with like-minded people." said Connie Graves, 56. services in Texas and one of the participants. "I also realized that I liked having a place where I could get all the information I wanted, all the time."
She and other people who left the network have maintained their access to Facebook Messenger during the study. Messenger is a separate product, and the research team has decided to allow it because it is similar to other media services for interpersonal communication.
At the end of the study month, the people who left the network and the control group returned. to answer long quizzes badessing changes in mood, political awareness and partisan pbadion, as well as the comings and goings of their daily activities online and offline since the beginning of the experiment.
For people who stayed off the network, the abandonment of Facebook has released about an hour a day on average, and more than double for more frequent users.
"I would have expected a greater substitution of Facebook for other digital elements – Twitter, Snapchat, Internet browsing," Gentzkow said. "That did not happen much, which, at least for me, was a surprise."
In political information tests, people who were excluded from the network showed results a few points lower than they had before their accounts were deactivated. "
" The findings of political information suggest that Facebook is an important source of information and that people pay attention to it, "said David Lazer, professor of political science and computer science at Northeastern University. "One could imagine that other conversations and information on Facebook would suffocate to stifle the consumption of information."
The results for several indicators of political polarization were contradictory, yet contradictory. A scale of "bias on problems" showed a drop of 5% to 10% among people who left Facebook, while remaining unchanged for the control group.
"It's hard to know how evaluate this information, "said Gentzkow." It may be that seeing a lot of news and political information on Facebook tends to polarize people, but when they uittent Facebook, that does not necessarily mean that they use the extra time to read the New York Times. "
a reduction in the amount of information received makes people less supporters, but this relationship n & # 39; 39 is not clear at all.
The most remarkable result of the study may be that the deactivation of Facebook has had a positive, albeit modest, effect on the state of mind and the satisfaction of life among the participants.
The idea stems in part from surveys in which social media users answer questions about the intensity of their use of such platforms and about their usual moods. For example, a poll conducted by Ethan Kross, a professor of psychology at the University of Michigan, found that pbadive and long-term navigation in social media is correlated with mood degradation compared to a more active commitment.
able to determine whether mood swings have followed an intensive use of social media or whether people predisposed to mood swings tend to use more social media. If the intensive use of Facebook resulted in mood swings, researchers expect that the mood of fat users who temporarily leave the network will improve significantly compared to more moderate users. . But that did not happen, suggesting that more intensive users were already subject to mood swings before Facebook attracted them more.
In an interview, Kross said that it was too early to draw definitive conclusions about the psychological effects of abandoning Facebook. He referred to two smaller, randomly selected, recent studies that aimed to improve participants' mood when their access to social media was restricted.
"What I've learned from these three studies" – Stanford and the two "We need to know more about how and when the use of social media has an impact on well-being and does not not conclude that there is no relationship ", or that it is very pleasant, Kross said.
Up to Now, the Debate
"Regarding the effects of social media on mental health, they focused primarily on children and adolescents, rather than on the older population, who
"They compare unparalleled categories." Jean Twenge, psychologist and author of "iGen: Why are today's super-connected kids growing up less rebellious, more tolerant? , less happy "[geração I: por que os garotos superconectados são menos rebeldes, mais tolerantes e menos felizes]
" It is entirely possible, and even likely, that social media and well-being are different between adolescents and people over 30, "he said. she said.
Psychologists and computer scientists have claimed that social media is addictive, and few users of Facebook. would disagree. The new experience has provided considerable evidence to support this view. Once completed, participants who spent a month off the network announced their intention to reduce their use of Facebook by moderating their usual habits, at least for a while.
About 10% of them continued. abstain one week later, compared to 3% of comparison group members who voluntarily deactivated their account; and 5% maintained their abstinence two months after the end of the test, compared to 1% in the control group.
Financial incentives tell a similar story. At the end of the abstinence period, the researchers asked participants that they had left Facebook how much they would have to pay to stay another month outside the social network, hypothetically. "I told them it would cost $ 200 for four weeks," said Graves, who has not returned to Facebook yet.
"I told them I would ask $ 200 for four weeks," said Graves, who has not yet returned to Facebook. "At least"
Translation by Paulo Migliacci
Source link
