99 Days of Freedom- Life without Facebook

by Startacus Admin

Do you remember a few weeks ago Facebook got itself into a spot of bother as details emerged of a mass psychological experiment that they had carried out on hundreds of thousands of unwitting users?

Basically they manipulated the news feed content that people were exposed to in order to gauge whether or not the level of positivity / negativity which people experience had any effect on the kinds of posts which they themselves made. This was rather naughty on the part of Facebook, but aside from raising serious questions about the level of psychological ‘control’ that social media has over us, it also spawned something of a retaliatory response from advertising agency ‘Just’ in the form of a new counter social media project called ‘99 Days of Freedom’.

As the name suggests, this project encourages people to abandon their Facebook accounts for 99 consecutive days - replacing their Facebook profile picture with an image stating that they are taking ‘time off’ with a live counter detailing how long they have left to complete . The idea is to gauge what effect on perceived levels of happiness (if any) that taking such a break will have on those participating - an innovative turning of the tables, so to speak.

With the tag line ‘Do you ever wonder what life is like without Facebook?’ 99 Days of Freedom will issue participants with a happiness survey 33, 66 and 99 days into the experiment in order to measure any difference in their perceived happiness level.

Of course you could argue that people's happiness is under influence from so many different variables that it would be foolhardy to suggest that any variation found could be attributed solely to the temporary removal of Facebook. Whilst technically this is true we reckon that the greater value of this experiment lies not in the statistics it will produce (which will be subject to the scrutiny of statisticians the world over) but the experience of leaving behind Facebook for 99 days and the discovery of the difference it makes on an individual level.

How much time would you save without facebook?

It’s no exaggeration to say that the the world has never seen anything quite like Facebook before. According to their own figures, there are 1.3 billion active users worldwide - all spending an average of 17 minutes on the social media site every day. We have popped out our calculator and found that this equates to 112 hours on average per year or well over 130 billion hours spent on the site collectively! During the 99 days each of those who takes part stand to save around 28 hours of time that would normally have been spent on the site.

Do you think you could give up Facebook for 99 days? Pop over to the 99 Days of Freedom website to sign yourself up!

If, like the folks at ‘Just’ you too have a great idea, project or startup, why not add it to our collaboration space where you can get loads of support from other self starters and investors.

If you like what you see here on Startacus, why not become a member of our growing community? It's free! And you'll get all this - exclusive access to our Business Toolkit, discounts and offers galore for your business via our member only business deals, the chance to network and connect with loads of fellow self-starters, and maybe even become our celebrated 'Self-Starter of the Week' and tell the world your startup tale! Join right here for free...

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Published on: 29th July 2014