Facebook makes us feel lonely, angry and hinders concentration; The latest study carried out by The Happinness Research Institute based in Copenhagen (Denmark) shows that the key to happiness could be something as simple as logging out of Facebook for a whole week .
To see the impact of such a popular and widespread social network as Facebook, they asked a total of 1,095 Facebook users to rate their overall satisfaction level on a scale of 1 to 10 based on various factors such as how happy they were, how much they had enjoyed life, if they felt sad or worried … 94% of those surveyed confessed to entering Facebook at least once a day.
For “The Facebook Experiment,” the researchers divided the participants into two groups: the first group was asked not to use Facebook for a week ; the second group was told to continue with their life as normal (control group).
After this period of seven days, the experts presented them with a new questionnaire on happiness. The results revealed that those who continued to use Facebook experienced a slight increase in overall happiness (from 7.67 to 7.75 points out of 10). However, those who had to give up connecting to the social network showed a much more significant increase, going from 7.56 on average to 8.12 points out of 10. In general, the participants who had stopped using Facebook showed happier and less sad than the control group.
“ If we are constantly exposed to good news, we risk evaluating our own life as less good, under a negative prism . There may also be positive benefits from Facebook and social media, but I think the real thing is the effect it has on our perception of reality. This constant stream of news that we see on Facebook represents only 10% of the things that happen to other people. It should not be used as a basis for evaluating our own lives, ”explains Meik Wiking, leader of the study.
