This is Your Brain Off Facebook – study offers glimpse of unplugging

Half the users were randomly assigned to deactivate their Facebook accounts for a month, in exchange for payment. During the month of abstinence, the research team, which included Sarah Eichmeyer and Luca Braghieri of Stanford, regularly checked the Facebook accounts of the study’s subjects to make sure those who had agreed to stay away had not reactivated them. When the month was over, the quitters and control subjects again filled out extensive surveys that assessed changes in their state of mind, political awareness and partisan passion, as well as the ebb and flow of their daily activities, online and off, since the experiment began.

Source: www.nytimes.com