Facebook and Life Satisfaction

How many times have you logged onto Facebook this week? How many times today? More than once today?

Most people in the U.S. would answer yes to all these questions. Using social media is a natural part of our lives today. How many times have you opened your phone and wandered into Instagram, Snapchat, etc. without even thinking? Social media is something of a habit for many people living in our day and age.

Have you ever considered the impact that using social media so frequently could have on your attitude? Researchers in Denmark wanted to get down to the bottom of this question, so they took over 1,000 Facebook users and asked half of them not to log on for just one week.

The results? The folks in the group who stopped using Facebook experienced increased wellness. Specifically, they had greater life satisfaction and more positive emotions! The researchers hypothesized that some of those people who stopped logging on had less “Facebook envy”—they didn’t experience the negative feelings that come along with scrolling through our feeds and comparing yourself to your peers (which many of us are guilty of!). Anyone who falls into this category could benefit the most from limiting their Facebook use.

You can read more about the study here.

The researchers mentioned that these benefits become evident even when you simply cut back on your use of Facebook, so you don’t necessarily have to quit “cold turkey” to improve your mood!

One of our SOVA ambassadors writes about the benefits of quitting social media here.

What do these findings mean to you? Do you think they extend to other social media websites, like Instagram? Let us know your thoughts, and whether this new information makes you consider how often you are logging on to Facebook and other websites!