The effect of deactivating Facebook and Instagram on users' emotional state

The surprise here is how little of an effect it has. Deactivating facebook makes you only 1/16th of one standard deviation happier. And instagram even less. And this was measured during elections, when the effect is likely to be greatest.

Kinda crazy that the magnitude is so small! (my next [admittedly rather cynical] thought is "who funded this?")

I think this is an important and often overlooked phenomenon actually. Studies of Internet engagement are filled with these skewed distributions that follow something like a Pareto principle, or I've heard it termed the 90-9-1 distribution in engagement where 90% of users just lurk a bit, 9% contribute casually, and then 1% are contributing like half of the content on the platform.

It would follow logically that whatever kind of brain rot social media causes, would affect 1% of the population very dramatically, another 9% somewhat more noticeably, and then there would be this vast ocean of people who are only marginally aware/affected. From the perspective of online activity they appear to not even exist.

This always seems counterintuitive to the 9% or the 1% (and just by commenting we're already in one of those demogs). But there's lots of data out there supporting these skewed distributions in online activity.

These percentages are similar to those that one sees for alcohol consumption or problematic gambling.

The business model of the casinos and the drug dealers and the alcohol venders is the same - you need a huge pool of unproblematic recreational users to find the problematic users who generate the bulk of your profits.

The same model works for video games and social media.