Scientists at the Happiness Research Institute in Copenhagen evaluated two groups of social networkers; one who continued to use Facebook and one who stopped for a week. Before the study, 94 percent of the people visited Facebook on a daily basis.
According to the results published in The Local, the group who had stopped using Facebook recorded a higher satisfaction score out of ten, increasing from 7.56 to 8.12 — raising their average happiness rating.
But the group who continued to scroll, search, instant message and read Facebook recorded a marginal increase in their happiness score from 7.67 to 7.75.
Mike Wiking, head of the Happiness Research Institute suggested the results were due to people's tendencies to compare themselves to other people's profiles on social media.
"Facebook distorts our perception of reality and of what other people's lives really look like. We take into account how we're doing in life through comparisons to everyone else, and since most people only post positive things on Facebook, that gives us a very biased perception of reality."
Wiking warned that Facebook should not be "used as the background for evaluating our own lives…
"If we are constantly exposed to great news, we risk evaluating our own lives as less good."
Of the group of 1,095 Danish people who took part in the social media experiment, those who didn't use the site were more decisive, enthusiastic and less worried, lonely and stressed compared to those who carried on checking in on the site.
So, there you have it, a group of people who stopped using Facebook for a week were 0.56 times happier than those who didn't, according to research.
However, such marginal results might go very far in preventing the temptation to scroll, search, click and instant message despite it having the slight potential to improve your mood.
