With more than two billion users worldwide, Facebook resists and remains the most popular social network, despite the recent Cambridge Analytica affair. But to make matters worse, it seems that Mark Zuckerberg's social network makes us stress, without us even knowing it... This is a study conducted by the University of Queensland in Australia and relayed by the newspaper The Independent who reveals it. Entitled “The weight of our digital friends”, it is based on a sample of 138 people. To achieve this, the researchers split the group in two, the first half was deprived of Facebook while the other was instructed not to change their habits. A week later, the scientists measured their concentration of cortisol, the stress hormone. During this experiment, they also asked participants a series of questions regarding their mood, loneliness, and life satisfaction.
Results ? People who didn't go on Facebook had much lower levels of stress and were happier in their lives.
“Our research suggests that a typical user will find the vast amount of information available on Facebook to be overwhelming. Giving up Facebook from time to time could therefore help to combat this stress, at least in the short term…” explains Eric Vanman, the main author of the study.
On the other hand, it is important to note that many users were very happy to return to the platform, after only 5 days of abstention. They claimed to have the impression of having "missed out on a lot of things", and in terms of stress, this can even cause the opposite effect. “We don't really know how long it takes to reduce cortisol levels or when it will start to increase again before someone decides to go back to Facebook. For example, it may be that disconnecting for the first few days reduces stress, but the more you feel like you are missing something, the more cortisol starts to increase again…”, continues Eric Vanman. The researcher and his colleagues suspect that these effects are not only related to the famous social network and believe that further study on this subject is necessary to determine it...
Until then, we still recommend some "Facebook detox" from time to time!
