Giving up Facebook reduces stress, a new study says. Challenge accepted!
A brand new Australian study published in Journal of Social Psychology revealed a decline in cortisol levels on participants who gave up Facebook just for five days.
Five days — sounds like the easiest stress relief ever.
But there‘s more than just a drop in stress
The authors of the study — Vanman, Baker, and Tobin — divided their 138 participants into two groups: Facebook Normal and No Facebook. Each of them was tested prior and after the experiment by measuring their salivary cortisol levels, as well as perceived stress and well-being.
Vanman explained PsyPost that quitting Facebook for five days reduced the levels of the renown stress hormone. However, there were some downsides as well:
“…people who were instructed to give up Facebook for five days were less satisfied with their lives. Many were openly happy when the study was finished because they could return to Facebook,” Vanman said in PsyPost.
Fear of Missing Out
Interestingly, the experiment did not only reduce stress levels, but it also seemed to decrease the perceived life satisfaction. According to the study, the explanation might be the four-letter-abbreviation called FOMO, Fear of Missing Out. It might sound like a teenage phenomenon, but adults experience it as well. In fact, Computers in Human Behaviour has published a study explaining it:
FOMO = a perception of others having rewarding experiences from which one is absent. It is characterized by the desire of staying connected to what friends are doing.
Too many options with limited time
What the FOMO study says about social media made me realize that perhaps some of the negative feelings and stress comes down to our expectations not matching our reality.
“…social resources provide a multitude of opportunities for interaction; on the downside, they often broadcast more options than can be pursued, given practical restrictions and limited time.”
Seeing the endless opportunities and having the whole world right in front of us on social media makes us want to do it all, yet that’s not possible with our limited time. And here we are, back at the common origins of stress: having more to do than we’re capable of doing with our limited resources.
It’s probably not just Facebook
Vanman mentions that even though quitting Facebook may reduce cortisol at first, it is still unknown whether it later starts to increase again, due to the feeling of missing out. He suspects that the effects are not unique to Facebook and can be similar when it comes to other social media platforms.
However, there’s something that bothers me. The fear of missing out just after five days without Facebook forces me to think about addiction. Maybe the participants wouldn’t any longer feel like that if they continued the experiment for a longer period? Maybe it is a matter of habit, of which five days is not enough to break? Perhaps the habit is the reason why they felt relieved to return to the routine?
Challenge accepted
That being said, I’ll start my own experiment of “quitting” Facebook for the next five days. As it sounds too easy, let’s ban the other popular social medias too, such as Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat. The report of my observations will follow.
Once INME’s stress solution is out, I can test my salivary cortisol levels at home. It looks like there will be more personal experiments coming up later this year.
Thanks for reading!
If you enjoyed reading this, you’ll find more wellness and stress-related articles on my profile and INME Health Publication. Oh, and a couple of claps make me always happy! Feel free to comment, discuss or disagree — interaction is where the learning happens.
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