The Welfare Effects of Social Media

116 Pages Posted: 31 Dec 2018 Last revised: 2 Apr 2019

See all articles by Hunt Allcott

Hunt Allcott

Microsoft Corporation - Microsoft Research New England

Luca Braghieri

Bocconi University - Department of Decision Sciences

Sarah Eichmeyer

Stanford University - Department of Economics

Matthew Gentzkow

Stanford University

Date Written: March 25, 2019

Abstract

The rise of social media has provoked both optimism about potential societal benefits and concern about harms such as addiction, depression, and political polarization. We present a randomized evaluation of the welfare effects of Facebook, focusing on US users in the run-up to the 2018 midterm election. We measured the willingness-to-accept of 2,743 Facebook users to deactivate their Facebook accounts for four weeks, then randomly assigned a subset to actually do so in a way that we verified. Using a suite of outcomes from both surveys and direct measurement, we show that Facebook deactivation (i) reduced online activity, including other social media, while increasing offline activities such as watching TV alone and socializing with family and friends; (ii) reduced both factual news knowledge and political polarization; (iii) increased subjective well-being; and (iv) caused a large persistent reduction in Facebook use after the experiment. Deactivation reduced post-experiment valuations of Facebook, but valuations still imply that Facebook generates substantial consumer surplus.

Keywords: Social media, political polarization, subjective well-being, consumer surplus from digital technologies

JEL Classification: D12, D90, I31, L86, O33

Suggested Citation

Allcott, Hunt and Braghieri, Luca and Eichmeyer, Sarah and Gentzkow, Matthew, The Welfare Effects of Social Media (March 25, 2019). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3308640 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3308640

Hunt Allcott (Contact Author)

Microsoft Corporation - Microsoft Research New England ( email )

One Memorial Drive, 14th Floor
Cambridge, MA 02142
United States

Luca Braghieri

Bocconi University - Department of Decision Sciences ( email )

Via Roentgen 1
Milan, 20136
Italy

Sarah Eichmeyer

Stanford University - Department of Economics ( email )

Landau Economics Building
579 Serra Mall
Stanford, CA 94305-6072
United States

Matthew Gentzkow

Stanford University ( email )

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