Thinking of Quitting Facebook?

Does quitting Facebook lead to higher levels of well-being? A recent study reported in this journal ¹ found that to be true for >1,000 Facebook users (86% women) in Denmark, half of whom stopped using the social media for 1 week. Those who stopped using Facebook scored more highly on life satisfaction and had more positive emotions. This was especially true for heavy users, for those who have Facebook envy,^a and for passive users.

These results are similar to those of a recent study of 381 Facebook users in Poland, in which researchers divided the group into ordinary, intensive, and addicted Facebook users, using tools such as the Bergen Facebook Addiction Scale. ² Facebook addiction was negatively related to life satisfaction and positively related to lower self-esteem. The results indicate that intensive Facebook use “is negatively related to satisfaction with life.” Ordinary users were statistically different from both intensive and addicted users in both life satisfaction and self-esteem, and they didn't have a problem quitting Facebook.

What prompts one of Facebook's 1.86 billion users ³ to quit? One U.S. (Californian) study of >500 Facebook users showed that guilt feelings about using the social medium, plus a feeling of self-efficacy related to the Web site, were drivers that helped users decide to quit. ⁴ An earlier study of >400 users, mostly academics, revealed a variety of reasons for quitting Facebook: “privacy, data misuse, productivity, banality, addiction, ⁵ and external pressures.” ⁶

Another study in this journal ⁷ compared >300 Facebook quitters with an equal number of users, and found that quitters were more concerned with privacy and more conscientious than users. Quitters also had higher Internet addiction scores.

Toward the end of the 2000s, so-called virtual or digital identity suicide was popularized by researchers such as Finnish-born Tero Karppi (https://terokarppi.com/). In one paper, ⁸ he approached the problem of leaving Facebook by focusing on two art projects: www.seppukoo.com/, which created a personalized memorial page and sent it to all of a user's Facebook friends; and Web 2.0 Suicide Machine, which removed private content and friendships but did not delete accounts. Facebook blocked the former and there is no longer a Web site for the latter after Facebook lawyers sent a cease-and-desist letter.

Those who choose to quit don't find it easy to leave. ⁹ Facebook makes it intentionally difficult to delete a user profile, and a user who wants to leave must dedicate a lot of time and button clicking to make it happen. A user who begins this process receives a suggestion merely to deactivate the account, so that Facebook can still use the data in its aggregate reports.

Those who take a Facebook sabbatical may find that substituting phone calls to close friends reveal what is really going on with them, as did this Wired reporter ¹⁰ : he “spoke to a friend who was thinking about leaving a relationship, and another whose father was very ill,” and as a result felt more connected. Whether you quit Facebook completely or simply take a social media break, chances are that you will feel better for doing so.