Delete Your Facebook Account to Protect Data and Reduce Stress

Yes, deactivate your Facebook or Social Media accounts. It’ll not only protect your data, but also reduce your stress levels and risk of mental and physical disorders, says a study recently conducted. The study is conducted by University of Queensland in Australia and published in The Journal of Social Psychology under the title “Quitting Facebook can reduce stress”.

According to the finding, taking a break from Facebook, even if it is for less than a week, can lower the levels of the stress hormone cortisol in a person’s body.

“Taking a Facebook break for just five days reduced a person’s level of the stress hormone cortisol” confirms Eric Vanman from the University of Queensland, who led the study. 

At the same time researchers from the University of Queensland in Australia also found that deleting the social networking account also make people feel more unhappy. “While participants in our study showed an improvement in physiological stress by giving up Facebook, they also reported lower feelings of well-being, People said they felt more unsatisfied with their life and were looking forward to resuming their Facebook activity” Eric Vanman said. 

During the study, the researchers involved two groups of Facebook active users, in which one group is instructed to stay away from Facebook for five days and the other group continued to use the social networking site as usual.

Two groups comprising of 138 participants who participated in the study provided saliva samples at the start and end of the research to measure changes in their cortisol levels. Elevated levels have been linked to insomnia, obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, depression and cancer.

Eric Vanman said there were a number of theories behind the mixed results. “Abstaining from Facebook was shown to reduce a person’s level of the stress hormone cortisol, but people’s own ratings of their stress did not change, perhaps because they were not aware their stress had gone down,” he said. 

Reportedly, the participants experienced less joy and happiness in those five days without using Facebook. Social disconnection made them feel less content with their lives as they could not get in touch with their Facebook friends.

The findings may help to explain why Facebook claims that it has not seen any significant decline in the usage of the world largest social networking despite the #deletefacebook movement, which was prompted by the critics after the news of the leak of 87 million Facebook users details to the data company Cambridge Analytica.

In the past also, studies of Facebook’s effects have come up with conflicting results. A paper published in 2013 found that people’s well being declined the more and more they used Facebook. Psychologists say that many people compare themselves in low light with others on social media who appear to live perfect lives in comparison to them. Facebook admitted last year that the social networking site could be bad for users’ mental health but suggested that the solution was to use it more actively and consciously.

While researchers in the Netherlands claimed last year that Facebook is like an addictive in the same way as cigarettes, drugs and alcohol.

In the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, you can try to opt out for a Facebook vacation at least for five days deactivating your profile and see and feel the peace within as the researcher himself is planning to do. Dr Eric Vanman found that he is not alone in taking ‘Facebook vacations’, his other colleagues at the University of Queensland also is interested in taking similar breaks for several days or weeks when they found it too stressful at work but can’t deny that they want to reconnect afterwards.