快猫短视频

Hoping to start a relaxing year? Try聽quitting social media. People who gave up Facebook聽for five days experienced a decrease in stress, but they also reported a lower life satisfaction.

Thanks to social media, we can check in with our friends and family like never before. But previous studies have found that this can lead to a fear of missing out, resulting in increased and decreased .

Wondering what a break from Facebook would do to a person鈥檚聽well-being, Eric Vanman at University of Queensland in Australia and his colleagues recruited 138 active Facebook users and asked 60 of them to drop Facebook for five days. The other half of the participants were told to use Facebook normally.

The team found that people who gave up Facebook had a significant decrease in their cortisol levels after five days, suggesting they were less stressed. But they also reported that they were less satisfied with their lives than before the experiment started. There was no change in the control group.

Vanman says that one explanation could be that these participants were not prepared to disconnect from their friends 鈥� a main reason they joined Facebook in the first place. So, even though quitting the platform could reduce some of their stress levels, it wasn鈥檛 what they actually wanted to do.

Cortisol levels are not just linked to stress, they are also affected sleep quality and quantity, says Melissa Hunt at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. 鈥淟ots of young people stay up late or even wake up in the middle of the night to check social media,鈥� she says. 鈥淪o [the decline in cortisol] could have been the result of improved sleep.鈥�

Recent leaks involving personal data have led some people to consider quitting Facebook, but it鈥檚 unknown what the long-term effects are.鈥淚t could be that breaks of a week or two are all that is required to reduce stress levels from engaging with social media,鈥� Vanman says. But he suggests a longer break may also increase stress due to the fear of being cut off from friends.

There may be a sweet spot in terms of time spent on social media, says Hunt. 鈥淐onsiderable research suggests that the folks with the greatest well-being are those who use social media in a limited way, not those who abstain completely,鈥� she says.