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Facebook is currently in a fierce battle with Amazon and Apple to claim the throne when the dust settles in the war for world domination that is essentially Silicon Valley’s version of Game of Thrones without all of the bloodshed and incest. Last month, General Mark Zuckerberg had to deal with heavy fire and suffered serious casualties thanks to multiple scandals related to data collection.
An online movement inspired more and more people (including Elon Musk) to delete their accounts, and Zuckerberg— who once called the Harvard students who gave him their personal information “dumb fucks” when it was still called “The Facebook”— saw his net worth drop by almost $5 billion (on the bright side, he had Jeff Bezos’ $10 billion loss to make him feel a little bit better).
Facebook has attempted to do some damage control to little effect, and a recent study conducted by researchers at the University of Queensland and Australian Catholic University probably isn’t going to do them any favors. According to The Daily Dot, the team heading the study asked a group of people to stop using Facebook for five days while telling their control group to conduct business as usual, and it turns out giving up Facebook could have an impact on your life.
The researchers used a few measures to quantify the data, including monitoring the amount of cortisol found in the participants’ saliva (higher levels indicate higher stress). Tests revealed lower levels of cortisol after less than a week of non-use, although those who gave up Facebook said they were less satisfied than they were when they still checked it (this could be indicative of the dopamine rush you get whenever you see one of the red notifications in the photo up top).
As someone who relies on Facebook to stay up to date with the insane things that get posted by a guy I knew in high school who’s gotten way too into conspiracy theories, I probably won’t be getting rid of my account anytime soon, but some people might want to look into it.