Hawaii Sunset (Photo : Reuters/Jason Reed)
A new Danish study that builds on past research suggests that giving up and staying off Facebook can make people happier and less stressed. It showed that people who quit using the social network for a week were happier without Facebook and appreciated life more than the control group that continued to visit Facebook.com during the experiment.
The Facebook study was conducted by the Happiness Research Institute (HRI), and included 1,095 people in Denmark who were an average 33 years old. Half of the participants continued to use the social media site, and the other half stayed off Facebook a full week.
One week later, 88 percent of the group that had stopped using Facebook reported they were happy. The figure was 81 percent for those still visiting the famous website.
In addition, 84 percent of the group with no access to Facebook appreciated their lives. However, only three-quarters of the social network users felt the same way.
A total 20 percent of the Facebook users were "dissatisfied." This figure was 8 percent higher than those who stayed off Facebook.com.
However, the biggest difference was in how stressed out the study's volunteers felt. The Facebook users group was a whopping 55 percent more likely to have feelings of stress than the non-users.
Furthermore, those who did not login to Facebook experienced a better social life and focused better. However, the social network's users had no changes in both areas.
Meik Wiking is the chief executive of HRI. He explained that his study differs from similar ones in that it was conducted over a week instead of one day or one afternoon. It provided more than a "snapshot" of people's happiness, according to The Huffington Post.
Wiking has deleted the Facebook app on his own smartphone. He recommends that users not just make posts about good things that happen in life, but instead show a bigger picture of how life really happens.
Critics have argued that the Danish study includes some major weaknesses including the research's use of self-reporting methods and control groups, to create a causal relationship by assessing the subjects' happiness levels, according to Tech Times. It's more complicated.
This video explains what happiness is:
