ArticleThe Journal of social psychology2018
The burden of online friends: the effects of giving up Facebook on stress and well-being.
Article in The Journal of social psychology, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. An erratum has been issued. It is linked to trial NCT06143852 (Comparing Change in Social Media Use and Well-being Among College Students Receiving a One-week Exercise or Mindfulness Intervention), which is not on this map. Cited by 37 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Comparing Change in Social Media Use and Well-being Among College Students Receiving a One-week Exercise or Mindfulness Intervention
Who cites it
37 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 164 citations in OpenAlex.
- The Relationship Between Social Media Addiction, Depression, Stress, and Anxiety: A Meta-Analysis.Advances in experimental medicine and biology · 2026Pooled it
- The effects of social media abstinence on affective well-being and life satisfaction: a systematic review and meta-analysis.Scientific reports · 2025Pooled it
- The Impact of Social Media Use Interventions on Mental Well-Being: Systematic Review.Journal of medical Internet research · 2023Pooled it
- Effects of restricting social media usage on wellbeing and performance: A randomized control trial among students.PloS one · 2022Trial
- A Mobile Intervention for Self-Efficacious and Goal-Directed Smartphone Use in the General Population: Randomized Controlled Trial.JMIR mHealth and uHealth · 2021Trial
- Social technology use and life satisfaction in a five-wave panel study of US adults.Nature human behaviour · 2026Article
- Social Media Addiction and Mental Health Among University Students in Saudi Arabia: A PLS-SEM Analysis with Study Discipline as a Moderator.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Article
- Development and Psychometric Analysis of the Digital Detox Scale.The Psychiatric quarterly · 2026Article
- Metacognition, Desire Thinking, and Problematic Social Media Use: Investigating Effects of Active and Passive Engagement in Facebook and Instagram Users.Scandinavian journal of psychology · 2025Article
- Mindfulness-Based Intervention in Schools: Addressing Social Media Burnout and Enhancing Well-Being in Adolescents.Children (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Social media interventions to improve well-being.Nature human behaviour · 2025Review
- Problematic Social Media Use or Social Media Addiction in Pediatric Populations.Pediatric clinics of North America · 2025Review
- Social Media Mindsets and Well-Being in Emerging Adults: A Serial Mediation of Facebook Addiction and Stress.Brain sciences · 2025Article
- Am I Happier Without You? Social Media Detox and Well-Being: A Meta-Analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Review
- Ten Myths About the Effect of Social Media Use on Well-Being.Journal of medical Internet research · 2024Review
- Exploring the Moderating Effect of Musculoskeletal Pain on Technostress-Induced Burnout: A Cross-Sectional Study of Bank Employees.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- The impact of hedonic social media use during microbreaks on employee resources recovery.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Taking a Break: The Effects of Partaking in a Two-Week Social Media Digital Detox on Problematic Smartphone and Social Media Use, and Other Health-Related Outcomes among Young Adults.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- A scoping review of social media in child, adolescents and young adults: research findings in depression, anxiety and other clinical challenges.BJPsych open · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
- Erratum issued
Authors and funding
3 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
People occasionally choose to cut themselves off from their online social network by taking extended breaks from Facebook. This study investigated whether abstaining from Facebook reduces stress but also reduces subjective well-being because of the resulting social disconnection. Participants (138 active Facebook users) were assigned to either a condition in which they were instructed to give up Facebook for 5 days or continue to use Facebook as normal. Perceived stress and well-being, as well as salivary cortisol, were measured before and after the test period. Relative to those in the Facebook Normal condition, those in the No Facebook condition experienced lower levels of cortisol and life satisfaction. Our results suggest that the typical Facebook user may occasionally find the large amount of social information available to be taxing, and Facebook vacations could ameliorate this stress-at least in the short term.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.