Your Brain Off Facebook

This Is Your Brain Off Facebook

Planning on quitting the social platform? A major new study offers a glimpse of what unplugging might do for your life. (Spoiler: It’s not so bad.)

Benedict Carey, Jan 30, 2019

This Is Your Brain Off Facebook by BENEDICT CAREY

So what happens if you actually do quit? A new study, the most comprehensive to date, offers a preview.

Well before news broke that Facebook had shared users’ data without consent, scientists and habitual users debated how the platform had changed the experience of daily life.

the use of Facebook and other social media is linked to mental distress, especially in adolescents.

Others have likened habitual Facebook use to a mental disorder, comparing it to drug addiction and even publishing magnetic-resonance images of what Facebook addiction “looks like in the brain.”

When Facebook has published its own analyses to test such claims, the company has been roundly criticized.

For abstainers, breaking up with Facebook freed up about an hour a day, on average, and more than twice that for the heaviest users.

research led by Ethan Kross, a professor of psychology at the University of Michigan, has found that high levels of passive browsing on social media predict lowered moods, compared to more active engagement.

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more on Facebook in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=facebook

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