There may be more benefits to deleting your Facebook account than just protecting your private data – it could also reduce your stress levels
A University of Queensland research team led by Dr Eric Vanman of the School of Psychology, investigated the effects of a short break from Facebook on a person’s stress and well-being.
“Taking a Facebook break for just five days reduced a person’s level of the stress hormone cortisol,” Dr Vanman said.
“However, while participants in our study showed an improvement in physiological stress by giving up Facebook, they also reported lower feelings of well-being.
“People said they felt more unsatisfied with their life, and were looking forward to resuming their Facebook activity.”
Vanman says there were a number of theories behind the mixed results.
“Abstaining from Facebook was shown to reduce a person’s level of the stress hormone cortisol, but people’s own ratings of their stress did not change — perhaps because they weren’t aware their stress had gone down,” he believes.
“People experienced less well-being after those five days without Facebook — they felt less content with their lives — from the resulting social disconnection of being cut-off from their Facebook friends.
“We don’t think that this is necessarily unique to Facebook, as people’s stress levels will probably reduce anytime they take a break from their favourite social media platforms.”
The study involved two groups of active users of Facebook, with one group instructed to stay off Facebook for five days and the other group using Facebook as normal.
All 138 participants in the study provided saliva samples at the beginning and end of the study to measure changes in their cortisol levels.
The idea for the study came from Vanman’s own experience of quitting Facebook from time-to-time.
“When I told colleagues about my ‘Facebook vacations’, I found I wasn’t alone,” he says.
“Others admitted that they took similar breaks from Facebook when they found it too stressful or overwhelming – quitting Facebook for several days or weeks but then reconnecting.
“One of my students kept herself off Facebook by having her friend change her password so she wouldn’t be tempted to come back on, but eventually she broke down and got the password from her friend after two months had passed.
“Facebook has become an essential social tool for millions of users and it obviously provides many benefits. Yet, because it conveys so much social information about a large network of people, it can also be taxing.
“It seems that people take a break because they’re too stressed, but return to Facebook whenever they feel unhappy because they have been cut off from their friends.
“It then becomes stressful again after a while, so they take another break. And so on.”
