“The Effect of Deactivating Facebook and Instagram on Users’ Emotional State” — by Hunt Alcott, et.al.
We estimate the effect of social media deactivation on users’ emotional state in two large randomized experiments before the 2020 U.S. election. 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. Exploratory analysis suggests the Facebook effect is driven by people over 35, while the Instagram effect is driven by women under 25.
What is wrong with the simple model that Facebook and Instagram allow you to achieve some very practical objectives, such as staying in touch with friends or expressing your opinions, at the cost of only a very modest annoyance (which to be clear existed in earlier modes of communication as well)?
Here is also a new paper on phone app usage in the classroom, by Billur Aksoy, Lester R. Lusher, and Scott E. Carrell:
Phone usage in the classroom has been linked to worsened academic outcomes. We present findings from a field experiment conducted at a large public university in partnership with an app marketed as a soft commitment device that provides incentives to reduce phone use in the classroom. We find that app usage led to improvements in classroom focus, attendance, and overall academic satisfaction. Analysis of time spent outside the classroom suggests a potential substitution effect: students using the app allocated less time to study, particularly on campus. Overall, though statistically insignificant, we find improvements in transcript grades associated with app usage.
Again NBER. I just do not see the compelling case for the apocalyptic interpretations here.
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