
A “gold standard” study finds deleting Facebook is great for your mental health - smashcash
https://www.salon.com/2019/01/30/a-gold-standard-study-finds-deleting-facebook-is-great-for-your-mental-health/
======
nindalf
This is the second article discussing the same study. Previous thread was
based on the NYT article [1] -
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19041021](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19041021)

Very interesting to see the difference in tone in the headline alone between
NYT and Salon.

* NYT - 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.)

* Salon - A "gold standard" study finds deleting Facebook is great for your mental health. A unique study praised for its rigor finds numerous upsides to deactivating your Facebook account.

[1] - [https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/30/health/facebook-
psycholog...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/30/health/facebook-psychology-
health.html)

~~~
shmageggy
Having read the Times article, which I found very informative and balanced,
this highly editorialized headline makes me uneasy, especially because this
one already has twice as many upvotes. I feel like we're living in a bizzaro-
world where objectivity doesn't matter and all of reality is becoming a sleazy
used car lot.

------
scottlocklin
I despise facebook, but salon's article is ... clickbait. The results of the
study are generally positive, but fairly small, and I wouldn't describe their
stats as any kind of "gold standard." I don't think the study should be
praised for its rigor either. It's extremely mooshy, and I'm certain someone
FB friendly could do the same study and easily get a different result. Look at
the plots of the data in the appendices; they're silly:

[http://web.stanford.edu/~gentzkow/research/facebook.pdf](http://web.stanford.edu/~gentzkow/research/facebook.pdf)

------
Brigadirk
I quite liked facebook. I don't have the urge to constantly check it, nor post
much on it, but it was useful for events, casually keeping up with life events
of acquaintances, and keeping a rolodex of semi-friends (e.g. people I met on
holiday and would like to run into again).

I deleted it because the company seems thoroughly evil and doesn't respect my
privacy. But if anyone comes up with a privacy-respecting alternative I'd be
more than happy to become on of their first adopters.

~~~
RankingMember
The problem with the alternatives is they don't have the budget and installed
user base Facebook has. Sure, you'll get techie people to jump on board at
first (remember Google+?), but all the family members who don't know a Twitter
from an Amazon will stick with Facebook because the constant negative Facebook
press isn't enough to get them to leave and no longer see pictures of their
baby grandson. I'm not sure what the solution to this is.

~~~
mediocrejoker
I think the solution is for a photo sharing site to win over the tech crowd
with well-thought-out, fine-grained privacy controls and a sustainable
business model and then to make it dead easy for non-tech people to share
their photos with other non-tech people.

ie. I create a single account and my friends each create a single account and
I create groups out of those friends, and then I share my photos with a group,
and my friends can see and perhaps comment on the photos that have been shared
with them.

How much would it cost per user per month to make this sustainably ad-free?

~~~
tubbs
Just my 2 cents - but I would be ok with light, non-invasive advertising, like
that by which DuckDuckGo operates:

[https://fourweekmba.com/duckduckgo-business-
model/](https://fourweekmba.com/duckduckgo-business-model/)

~~~
8ytecoder
This. I'd rather like the advertising model turned inside out - like the old
days if you will. Instead of targeting me, target the content. If I'm looking
at an article about sleep show me a few limited mattress ads. It doesn't have
to track me after/before. Nothing goes into my account that says I have a
sleep disorder.

I hate ads in general and so provide me an option to pay for and remove it as
well.

------
t0mbstone
You don't have to quit Facebook to get the mental health benefits.

All you have to do is unfollow everyone! Literally everyone. Your feed will be
blank and peaceful, but you will still be able to maintain a presence on
messenger and maintain your profile for people to reach you. You can also
still interact with private Facebook groups and things, if you want.

This is what I did, and it curbed my addiction to checking facebook.

After a while, I slowly started following specific people again (mainly just
the people I interact with on a daily basis, and the few family members that I
can actually stand).

The moment someone starts stressing me out by posting nonsense or clutter,
they get unfollowed.

It's very zen, and my mental health has drastically improved from it.

P.S. If you Google "Facebook Unfollow All", there are multiple tools and
things like browser extensions which make this as simple as one button press
to accomplish. It can be pretty tedious to do manually by hand if you have a
lot of friends.

~~~
JimiofEden
This was my approach as well, and I can highly vouch for it. I found myself
checking facebook at a party, or with friends. And caught myself doing it and
felt really, really stupid because of it. But I have a lot of friends that
schedule events purely on facebook or only contact me on messenger. So I
unfollowed everyone

I sometimes check specific pages of my friends, but I am more prone to just
contacting them and asking them how they are doing specifically. As a result,
some people have been pushed away, others have been pulled closer, and I've
found who I genuinely wanted to hear from and communicate with.

Though this plus restricting who can see my profile in the first place does
sometimes make it a bit difficult for people who I've casually met to
reconnect with me. Maybe I'll loosen that up a bit.

------
fiveoak
Anecdotally I use Facebook to coordinate social events with friends and find
that it's been a helpful tool to easily keep in touch with friends. I've
reconnected with friends through it too. I try and avoid political things and
post a lot of cat pictures from a local cat shelter that I volunteer at, which
people seem to enjoy. I dunno, I just try and keep my feed filled with mostly
positive/upbeat things so maybe that helps?

~~~
smokeyj
> I just try and keep my feed filled with mostly positive/upbeat things

You know Zuck has experimented with making people’s feeds negative to see the
impact on their usage?

I get Facebook works for you, but consider the company is run by a truly evil
and insidious man. As an organizer consider helping people leave.

~~~
jaabe
One of my social groups made our own personal space for organising events and
after 6 months we went back to Facebook because every other social group
didn’t leave.

So you get a new platform, but if you only do one event every few months then
there is no really no reason to check it, and then suddenly no one is doing
events.

Like it or not, Facebook is the modern yellowpages and you need something
everyone is on to replace it. I think that’s going to happen sooner or later.

It’s anecdotal of course, but very few people in my social circle use Facebook
for anything but organising events, and you don’t need their app, messenger or
even to log on more than once in a while to do that. If you couple that with
the fact that everyone is tired of their bullshit, I think they seem ripe for
disruption.

------
BeetleB
I suggest people actually look at the plots in the paper. As an example, on
P55, they show the effects on subjective well being for many metrics (life
satisfaction, loneliness, etc). Note that a number of these metrics have a
large enough standard deviation that it spans both the positive and negative
range.

Most news outlets focus only on the mean (most of which are positive). But
when your standard deviation is large enough to change the sign, don't put
much stock in the outcome. If there's one thing that was hammered into my head
when I took statistics, it's that a confidence interval of (-1, 5) does _not_
mean the true value is more likely close to 2 (or positive, or whatever).
There's no valid reason to focus on the positive values more, when your
confidence interval crosses the zero point.

------
marricks
Can confirm. I tried deactivating and then cutting down but that just never
works. Deleting is the way to go.

Old friends you want to connect with? There’s always email and a phone number.
People actually reach out to me outside of that awful service to say “Hey Foo
is in town” or “We’re having a reunion for Bar”.

Just delete it, notify people first, save the images you want, and torch it.
Everything incremental just allows you joining it again later which Facebook
is more than happy to facilitate.

~~~
ip26
It's a lot more difficult to do, but a deep cull of your friend list might
replicate a lot of the value. Those acquaintances you met ten years ago and
haven't spoken to since? Unfriend or at least unfollow. Get it down to the
people you actually talk to & care about.

~~~
marricks
People reconnected with such acquaintances a couple decades ago without
Facebook.

I find not having FB way better for those relationships anyways, instead of
creepily knowing their life story since I stopped seeing them )because of FB)
we have something to reconnect and talk about if I do run into them.

And I did manage my FB friends well, I deleted it when I realized FB
facilitated those conversations in ways I hated and most of my feeds was ads
anyways.

------
brightball
I can confirm. I deleted the FB app, and deactivated my account for months and
it was pretty fantastic.

The problem for me now is that I'm a Clemson alum and Clemson is doing awesome
right now...so I reactivated my Facebook just to celebrate everything with all
my friends from college.

I ended up finding a fairly happy medium of unfollowing every person who posts
anything even remotely political (even if I agree with it) and now my feed is
essentially football trash talking + friends celebrating life events.

~~~
wccrawford
So it was fantastic, right up until the point that it wasn't? That's the whole
point. Most people feel a _need_ for Facebook for some reason or other.

~~~
SketchySeaBeast
> So it was fantastic, right up until the point that it wasn't?

They seem to have found a happy medium with Facebook, which seems to be the
key with social media - stay in contact, but don't let it rule your life.
That, as well as pretty much everything else requires finding a balance.
Things that fit that "great until it's not" description:

\- Eating Chocolate Cake \- Sex \- Programming \- Driving \- Fasting \- Being
Awake \- Sleeping \- Not Working

------
ddtaylor
I unplugged from Facebook a few months ago. I haven't deleted my account
because I have some contacts that I have no other way of getting in touch
with, but I probably login to see if any important messages have been sent
every 3 weeks and sometimes longer.

Nothing of any value was lost. When I login and see all the garbage spammed at
me I ask myself "Why should I care about any of this?"

------
rchaud
Here's my FB setup that has in fact been good for my MH:

My feed contains:

\- Strongly moderated meme pages based on screenshots from a TV show. No
political posts allowed. Everyone's here to partake in the shared enjoyment of
a show.

\- Nothing from friends; 1-on-1 is better, and most status updates are
networking-style humblebrags anyway.

\- Nothing from news sites; this should be obvious to anyone who's seen how
the algorithm operates.

\- Nothing from Events: my event invites (posted on FB) arrive via email
notification.

Result? I almost never check my FB except when I actively think about wasting
time with some dumb memes.

A big part of why it's hard to leave FB is because it's become a part of
people's everyday ritual. I recommend starting to unfollow some pages and
people, and see how that impacts your FB use. Slowly, you can taper it off
more and more.

~~~
danpalmer
Would this setup be easier to achieve with Reddit? This is pretty much what I
use Reddit for (and then WhatsApp for 1-1, BBC for news, and my calendar for
events).

~~~
rchaud
This is essentially a Reddit-like setup. I do use FB Messenger to talk to
friends but aside from that, FB for me is basically Reddit with real names. I
don't really make use of the "social" aspect, as I've had the account since
2005 or so and posting on people's walls became passe around 2010 or so.

------
cntlzw
Can confirm. Deleted FB half a year ago. Nothing really happened. I still feel
in the loop with all my friends and even remember their birthdays. Checking FB
was just a noise that kept me distracted during the day.

------
PretzelFisch
I read things like this and wonder how is my Facebook feed so different. For
the most part I just see my friends and family posting about their day and
photos of the kids.

------
bpchaps
Anyone think the same holds true for HN? :)

~~~
vxxzy
In general, many people waste time on internet. The internet and all of its
available information is hard to resist (at-least in my case).

I've come up with a fix though! I simply have an addon in firefox that
refreshes the web-page in 20 seconds! It is just enough annoyance to give up
(especially after I am over halfway though an article..)

~~~
Brigadirk
I use a pomodoro-method timer addon that blocks a certain list of websites
when it's ticking.

~~~
sevensor
I recommend the procrastination setting. I have it set for 10 minutes -- I
just need enough of a kick in the seat to stop wasting my time.

------
bobochan
I am prepared for this to be a minority opinion, but I liked FB when I joined
and I _still_ really like it. There may be many alternatives, but as someone
who grew up with an acoustic coupler modem and an Apple //+, I do not take for
granted the fact that I can video chat with friends around the world for free
with Messenger. In a time of political and social conflict I am soothed by
daily stories of the mundane: a kid doing better than expected on a spelling
test, or scoring a goal in soccer; an unexpected meetup with an old classmate;
or a selfie of someone going on a hike. I get great recipes on FB.

Many friends have quit FB and reported that they feel better, and almost
everyone on this thread is reporting the same thing, so there must be
something to it. Honestly though, I have a hard time understanding why looking
at a FB feed would bother someone. If it is anxiety over privacy, then
absolutely, leaving FB absolutely makes sense. I get the feeling that it
agitates people for other reasons though, but I am not sure what those are.

~~~
tsumnia
> In a time of political and social conflict I am soothed by daily stories of
> the mundane

I think this is one of the reasons; instead of accepting hardships exist and
dealing with them, some people use social media as a filter for life. As such,
since they avoid hardships, they never trained on dealing with hardships. I've
spoken about it in my comment history, but I think some people lack
perseverance/grit in this regard. A gas station cashier may be less motivated
to get out of their job for a better career because they are busy getting
entertained on their phone rather while than being bored during dead times.

I still have Facebook mostly for planning things with groups, but have all
notifications disabled. Now, I only check it once a week to see plans change
or if I was tagged in a picture. I just don't care about the rest.

~~~
bobochan
It seems like the sign on that equation is wrong though, no? If social media
was really a means of avoiding hardships then wouldn't leavers report great
angst from withdrawal? Instead they report being happier.

I keep seeing the word _humblebrag_ come up in discussions on FB and I have to
wonder if the real reason is that some people see social media as a form of
competition. We now see both the good fortunes and misfortunes of people in a
much wider global circle, which can provoke either jealousy or anxiety.

> I just don't care about the rest.

Everyone is different I guess. I could never say that I do not care about the
welfare of friends and family.

~~~
tsumnia
> I could never say that I do not care about the welfare of friends and
> family.

I never stated that. I don't care about using Facebook to actively follow
online personas of my friends. I see them multiple times a week, so I can find
out their welfare then. For random people I'm friends with? Eh, less
interested in the Tasty video they shared.

> wouldn't leavers report great angst from withdrawal

That's my point - that by not viewing life through a tailored filter, you have
to deal with the less pleasant parts. As these are minor hardships and not
major tragedies, happiness is coming partially from a sense of being able to
"handle" things.

I am not saying this is explicitly where the happiness comes from, but if
people quitting social media are reporting higher scores of happiness then
either the metrics are wrong or the next question is "why". At which point,
what are the factors that cause happiness, and how are those factors formed
outside social media?

~~~
bobochan
Unrelated, I read some of your posts about your PhD research. Sounds
fascinating! Best of luck.

------
insickness
It would be interesting to see a study on general social media beyond
facebook, such as reddit, instagram, hacker news, etc. I can waste hours on
non-facebook social media. It's nice for those times I'm tired and just want
to kick back and not think too hard. I'm fairly certain it lowers my attention
span but I wonder if there are other negative effects.

~~~
dsfyu404ed
Reddit is basically Twitter with a thin veneer of politeness. My guess would
be that it's not good for mental health unless you go fishing for validation
by towing the party line in every sub you visit.

------
tombert
Obviously one eccentric's anecdote doesn't mean anything for something in-any-
way scientific, but I deleted my FB about four years ago after I realized that
my primary usage of the platform was arguing with people. I spent hours at a
time constructing (what I thought were) brilliant arguments for my obviously
super-important viewpoints. Eventually it got bad enough to where I actually
lost friends IRL because of it, and I figured it wasn't healthy to dedicate so
much time to arguing, and I deleted my account.

I feel like a lot of my time suddenly became free, and I get am overall less
stressed out. It could just be a placebo effect, but there's about a zero-
percent likelihood that I'll reopen my account any time soon.

------
davesque
It's funny that a study is now required to show this. I remember before
Facebook was even a thing. Back then, it was just common knowledge that an
obsession with one's social life would lead to shallowness and a sense that
one's life lacked meaning as well as all sorts of other problems. It took me a
while to even get a Facebook account because of this. I think before Facebook
people used to have stronger intuitions about the negative sides of popularity
contests, the dynamics of group think, and the pressures of conformity.

------
yotamoron
I deleted my fb account 4 years ago. My only regret? Not doing it sooner.

------
gamblor956
Can confirm this is true. When other people deleted their Facebook accounts my
mental health improved from no longer seeing their negativity in my feed.

------
malvosenior
_”Those who deactivated also observed a decrease in political polarization and
news knowledge, and an increase in subjective well-being.”_

Surely not reading Salon and its ilk would also result in this. Half of the
toxic political posts on FB originate on sites like Salon, HuffPo... I think
they’re more at fault for the political polarization of our society than FB
which is mainly just a conduit.

~~~
twoquestions
FB also magnifies the worst posting from these outlets. You get the ultra
incendiary stuff shared by everybody, while the more chill stuff doesn't get
as much engagement and is ignored. I've been shown "Look at this awful thing!"
stories more than once.

~~~
balabaster
The ultra incendiary stuff is really just playing to the human propensity to
want a witch hunt. Mob rule. Squash what we don't understand and thus fear
because our lizard brains are becoming more conditioned to govern our thought
processes instead of our adult brain that can reason and think critically.
Playing to our emotional brain just feeds this constant cycle of emotion.

Eventually we'll all wake up from our slumber and realize how we've been
manipulated for so long, but until then it's just going to be witch hunt after
witch hunt.

There's only so long we can succumb to this before we all begin to wonder what
the fuck we're doing allowing the media to continually manipulate our own
sense of well-being in order to keep the sentiment in favour of their
stakeholders.

It's pretty sick, honestly, but eventually we will all wise up to it - it's
inevitable. Let's just hope it's before we destroy our humanity.

------
dekhn
It's not accurate to call a study gold standard it fits randomized but the
patients can see which arm of the study they ended up in

------
emgee_1
The morally right thing do, if you did not already, is to delete Facebook.

I pity you if fb is running your life.

Heck why do I have a smartphone?

:;)/-&@&)($&!

------
dnate
For those not ready to completely delete their facebook account yet, I
recommend:

1\. deleting the app

2\. Using a custom facebook style (like this one [1]) which deactivates the
news feed. That way you can still use it to check your messages occasionally
and have to _actively_ make the decision to scroll through the news feed by
deactivating the extension.

3\. Deleting messenger once you have told all relevant people that you will be
less reachable through facebook, more through email / signal whatever
alternative you use.

I have been using facebook less and less that way and realized how often I was
mindlessly scrolling through the feed.

[1] [https://userstyles.org/styles/128616/quiet-facebook-
official](https://userstyles.org/styles/128616/quiet-facebook-official)

~~~
DanHulton
Same. I've been using "News Feed Eradicator for Facebook":
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/news-feed-
eradicat...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/news-feed-eradicator-
for/fjcldmjmjhkklehbacihaiopjklihlgg?hl=en)

I still keep my FB account for messages and events, since my friends and
family won't all delete Facebook en masse, but this has removed a whole bunch
of wasted time.

------
samdoidge
At what cost to your social life and relationships?

~~~
ddtaylor
To be fair most relationships that put an important emphasis on Facebook to be
maintained are probably not very important.

~~~
samdoidge
Personally, Facebook has allowed me to rekindle / develop several
relationships.

------
throwaway5752
On the web app once a week to keep in touch with older relatives. Nothing
installed on mobile, no whatsapp/instagram. Loving it.

------
moretai
Why isn't this common knowledge? People have been off facebook for a long
time. Are people that shallow? That stupid?

------
romeisendcoming
Never used it. Thought it was complete vanity and laziness as is much of
social media.

------
teliskr
I’m sticking with MySpace

------
advertising
Got off fb 5 years ago. Now on instagram is my problem.

------
antisthenes
What is a "gold standard" study?

------
porpoisely
Even better for your mental health is stop reading news.

[https://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/apr/12/news-is-bad-
ro...](https://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/apr/12/news-is-bad-rolf-dobelli)

The truly toxic part of facebook and much of social media today is the amount
of news and politics that have been allowed on it.

~~~
fredley
I agree, I actively tried to go on a news diet last year, it was _really_
hard. Especially in the current climate (in the UK and US at least), avoiding
news chatter is nearly impossible, and trying to cull your curiosity to read
up on such stuff takes serious willpower, even if you cut out the places that
inject it into your thoughts (e.g. literally any feed). I find myself
compulsively checking news sites at least a few times a day. Obviously (as a
Brit), there's nothing but depressing news to be read...

~~~
naravara
The best thing for me was when I went to India for a week. Because the time
zones are almost flipped, I slept while all my news sources were active and
vice-versa. I basically just checked my news feed once in the morning and once
in the evening and life felt much smoother, even though I was doing a lot of
fairly stressful work at the time.

It's basically just a morning and evening edition paper.

~~~
fredley
I lived in India for a year and I remember this experience very well!
Essentially nothing would change during the day on British/American news
sites, and I had no interest in domestic news.

------
newcombinator
If Facebook is detrimental to your mental health you're probably a snowflake
and should delete facebook.

~~~
dang
Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to Hacker News? We ban
accounts that do that, and you've already done it more than once.

In addition to
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html),
you might find these links helpful for getting an idea of the spirit of this
site:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/hackernews.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/hackernews.html)

[http://www.paulgraham.com/hackernews.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/hackernews.html)

[http://www.paulgraham.com/trolls.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/trolls.html)

------
cjohansson
It must be depressing working for Facebook knowing you make a negative impact
in peoples lives. If their engineers had higher morals they would find a
better place to work at

------
ricardonunez
If you want to use Facebook for the groups or business purposes, you can
disable the news feed. I use the Firefox add-on 'Disable Facebook News Feed'
or 'Kill News Feed' on Chrome. If you want to reduce their tracking on Firefox
use the tab containers.

