New Research Finds Switching Off Facebook Can Make You Happier

Obviously it’s not just us that gets like this. A new study by researchers at the Happiness Research Institute in Copenhagen has found that if you want to be happier, you need to log off social media. The study found that people's happiness rose in the space of just one week when they logged off Facebook. More than one thousand people took part in the study which was conducted in Denmark, where half of those studied continued to use Facebook as normal, while the other half were left out of the social media loop for a week. “We know that people care more about relative income, so how much you are making compared to your neighbours instead of actual income so we wanted to test how social media like Facbeook affect how we evaluate our lives,” said head of the Happiness Institute, Meik Wiking. “Because social media is this constant flow of great news that happens everybody else, every time I log onto Facebook somebody is getting married, somebody is getting a great job in New York, somebody is going to Bali.” All of these things can affect our happiness levels, as we compare the reality of our own lives to what is presented to us by others on Facebook and the research found that those who stayed off the site were recorded as being happier, less angry, less lonely and had an increase in “real world social activity”. Would you be able to switch off Facebook for a week? Let us know below!