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Academic Research

  • Working Paper

    The Effect of Deactivating Facebook and Instagram on Users’ Emotional State

    • Hunt Allcott, 
    • Matthew Gentzkow, 
    • Benjamin Wittenbrink, 
    • Juan Carlos Cisneros, 
    • Adriana Crespo-Tenorio, 
    • Drew Dimmery, 
    • Deen Freelon, 
    • Sandra González-Bailón
    • Andrew M. Guess
    • Young Mie Kim, 
    • David Lazer, 
    • Neil Malhotra, 
    • Devra Moehler, 
    • Sameer Nair-Desai, 
    • Brendan Nyhan, 
    • Jennifer Pan, 
    • Jaime Settle, 
    • Emily Thorson, 
    • Rebekah Tromble, 
    • Carlos Velasco Rivera, 
    • Arjun Wilkins, 
    • Magdalena Wojcieszak
    • Annie Franco, 
    • Chad Kiewiet de Jonge, 
    • Winter Mason, 
    • Natalie Jomini Stroud, 
    • Joshua A. Tucker

    Working Paper, April 2025

    View Article View abstract

    We estimate the effect of social media deactivation on users’ emotional state in two large randomized experiments before the 2020 U.S. election. People who deactivated Facebook for the six weeks before the election reported a 0.060 standard deviation improvement in an index of happiness, depression, and anxiety, relative to controls who deactivated for just the first of those six weeks. People who deactivated Instagram for those six weeks reported a 0.041 standard deviation improvement relative to controls. Exploratory analysis suggests the Facebook effect is driven by people over 35, while the Instagram effect is driven by women under 25.

  • Working Paper

    The Effects of Political Advertising on Facebook and Instagram before the 2020 US Election

    • Hunt Allcott, 
    • Matthew Gentzkow, 
    • Ro’ee Levy, 
    • Adriana Crespo-Tenorio, 
    • Natasha Dumas, 
    • Winter Mason, 
    • Devra Moehler, 
    • Pablo Barberá
    • Taylor Brown, 
    • Juan Carlos Cisneros, 
    • Drew Dimmery, 
    • Deen Freelon, 
    • Sandra González-Bailón
    • Andrew M. Guess
    • Young Mie Kim, 
    • David Lazer, 
    • Neil Malhotra, 
    • Sameer Nair-Desai, 
    • Brendan Nyhan, 
    • Ana Carolina Paixao de Queiroz, 
    • Jennifer Pan, 
    • Jaime Settle, 
    • Emily Thorson, 
    • Rebekah Tromble, 
    • Carlos Velasco Rivera, 
    • Benjamin Wittenbrink, 
    • Magdalena Wojcieszak
    • Shiqi Yang, 
    • Saam Zahedian, 
    • Annie Franco, 
    • Chad Kiewiet de Jonge, 
    • Natalie Jomini Stroud, 
    • Joshua A. Tucker

    Working Paper, May 2025

    View Article View abstract

    We study the effects of social media political advertising by randomizing subsets of 36,906 Facebook users and 25,925 Instagram users to have political ads removed from their news feeds for six weeks before the 2020 US presidential election. We show that most presidential ads were targeted toward parties’ own supporters and that fundraising ads were most common. On both Facebook and Instagram, we found no detectable effects of removing political ads on political knowledge, polarization, perceived legitimacy of the election, political participation (including campaign contributions), candidate favorability, and turnout. This was true overall and for both Democrats and Republicans separately.

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