> People who deactivated Facebook for the six weeks before the election reported a 0.060 standard deviation improvement in an index of happiness, depression, and anxiety, relative to controls who deactivated for just the first of those six weeks. People who deactivated Instagram for those six weeks reported a 0.041 standard deviation improvement relative to controls.

Can anyone translate? Random web search find suggests multiplying by 37 to get a percentage, which sounds very questionable, but even then these improvements seem negligible.

This doesn't really line up with my lived experience. Getting myself out of shitty platforms and community spaces improved my mental state significantly (although the damage that's been done remains).

From the paper PDF (https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w33697/w336...):

> We estimate that users in the Facebook deactivation group reported a 0.060 standard deviation improvement in an index of happiness, anxiety, and depression, relative to control users. The effect is statistically distinguishable from zero at the p < 0.01 level, both when considered individually and after adjusting for multiple hypothesis testing along with the full set of political outcomes considered in Allcott et al. (2024). Non-preregistered subgroup analyses suggest larger effects of Facebook on people over 35, undecided voters, and people without a college degree.

> We estimate that users in the Instagram deactivation group reported a 0.041 standard deviation improvement in the emotional state index relative to control. The effect is statistically distinguishable from zero at the p = 0.016 level when considered individually, and at the p = 0.14 level after adjusting for multiple hypothesis testing along with the outcomes in Allcott et al. (2024). The latter estimate does not meet our pre-registered p = 0.05 significance threshold. Substitution analyses imply this improvement is achieved without shifts to offline activities. Non-preregistered subgroup analyses suggest larger effects of Instagram on women aged 1824.

Perhaps it wasn't clear what I meant. When I said significantly, I meant it in the colloquial sense, not in the statistical significance sense.

I was looking for a more digestable figure describing the extent of improvements, not whether the study found them confidently distinguishable (which I just assumed they did based on the wording, good to know they didn't for Instagram).

Anecdotal: Stopping commenting on reddit reduced emotional stress significantly. Reddit is one of those "social" anti-social circles where you can't afford to be on the "wrong side of argument" and every discussion can quickly spiral out.

Same with stopping replyhing to HN. I just downvote and upvote. Emotional stress significantly reduced.

If people didn’t like the way these apps make them feel, they would stop using them.

Direct PDF link:

https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w33697/w336...

Possibly relevant that the 6 week trial period occurred in the 6 weeks leading up to the American election in 2020.

The ML model exists to benefit Facebook, not you. It maximizes for your engagement with the platform, not your happiness or usefulness.

That's why i hope.

Remember when the feed was just a reverse chronological list of stuff you told Facebook you wanted to see? That was the peak. Once they started engagement farming using recommendation algorithms the site lost all of its appeal.

You can hope, but certainly you don’t expect it?

Yes. No expectation.

Sounds like a great way to totally kill Facebook

I mean more inteligent recommendation.

On Facebook, I started seeing a lot of tiktok-type content and apparently you can turn that off in the settings. It works pretty well.

How could you _possibly_ believe a company like meta would use a new technology to act in your interests rather than theirs?

The same way people think a politician would?

The politicians in my state do a fairly good job, so that is easy to believe.

it's obvious meritocracy in institutions is dead. people with half baked ideas float to the top for no reason now

Lol anyone who uses Facebook and Instagram are so weak. Imagine not being able to resist a random website.