https://boingboing.net/2020/02/10/study-facebook-quitters-repor.html * [logo] / Rob Beschizza / 4:30 am Mon Feb 10, 2020 Study: Facebook quitters report more life satisfaction, less depression and anxiety [zuckerberg-zoomed] Follow Us Twitter / Facebook / RSS Facebook is designed to make you anxious, depressed and dissatisfied, three states of mind that make you more vulnerable to advertising and other forms of behavioral manipulation. Small wonder, then, that people who quit using Facebook report higher levels of life satisfaction and lower levels of depression and anxiety [pdf]. Bloomberg's article about the study is a few months old but one that should be revisited regularly between now and November. People who deactivated Facebook as part of the experiment were happier afterward, reporting higher levels of life satisfaction and lower levels of depression and anxiety. The change was modest but significant -- equal to about 25 to 40 percent of the beneficial effect typically reported for psychotherapy. Why are people willing to pay so much money for something that reduces their happiness? One possibility is that social media acts like an addictive drug -- in fact, the people Allcott et al. paid to deactivate Facebook ended up using it less after the experiment was over. But another possibility is that people use services like Facebook because they're compelled by motivations other than the pursuit of happiness. SHARE / TWEET / 19 COMMENTS facebook / social media GET THE BOING BOING NEWSLETTER [ ] [ ] [Subscribe] Facebook refused to remove racist and anti-Semitic group page until it got a letter from New Jersey Attorney General [facebook] Ten months ago the director of New Jersey's Division on Civil Rights alerted Facebook about a racist and anti-Semitic group page it was hosting, but Facebook took no action, reports Ars Technica. 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