Facebook increases political knowledge, reduces well-being and informational treatments do little to help

Abstract

Nearly three billion people actively use Facebook, making it the largest social media platform in the world. Previous research shows that the social media platform reduces users’ happiness, while increasing political knowledge. It also may increase partisan polarization. Working to build a scientific consensus, we test whether the potential negative effects of Facebook use can be overcome with the help of minimalist informational interventions that a parallel line of research has shown to be effective at inducing people to be more accurate and civil. We conducted a pre-registered well-powered Facebook deactivation experiment during the 2022 French presidential election. In line with previous research, we find that deactivating Facebook increases subjective well-being and reduces political knowledge. However, deactivating Facebook had no overall effect on the level of political or social polarization during the election. Moreover, we find little evidence that minimalist informational interventions in a field setting helped individuals who deactivated Facebook to become better informed.

Keywords

• election
• Facebook
• news knowledge
• subjective well-being
• polarization