Quitting Facebook Leads To Drop In Cortisol Levels, Australian Study Shows

If you are one of the 2 billion people who use Facebook, then you will know how distracted the social media platform can make you.  And you will also know that Facebook doesn't always make you feel good. In fact, it can affect your mental health and general wellbeing, and Facebook can stress you out.

Of course it can stress you out.  You are exposed to news and videos that you wouldn’t normally see, some of which are pretty awful.  You see pictures of parties that you have not been invited too and everyone always looks happy.  Plus, you waste a lot more time than you intended.

It has been noted that the stress of Facebook is real and for people who quit, even for a day, their mental health improves.  The feelings of inadequacy go away and the constant news, which is often bad and depressing, is not constant.

Research has been done on Facebook users. They were separated into two groups.  The one group used Facebook as they normally do. The others quit for five days. Those who quit were shown to have much lower stress levels than those users who were still on.

The trick to using Facebook in a healthy manner is to ensure that your online friends are really your friends, only follow people who make you feel good, hide people or block the so called friends who post the terrible animal cruelty animals and only follow news sources that are real.  Fake news was an added stress for Facebook  users who would watch news and not know if it was real or not.  

Use Facebook responsibly too, and when you have had enough, give it a break.  Try and limit your time to just a few minutes a day - you will also see how much more productive you are.