The effects of Facebook and Instagram on the 2020 election: A deactivation experiment.

We study the effect of Facebook and Instagram access on political beliefs, attitudes, and behavior by randomizing a subset of 19,857 Facebook users and 15,585 Instagram users to deactivate their accounts for 6 wk before the 2020 U.S. election. We report four key findings. First, both Facebook and Instagram deactivation reduced an index of political participation (driven mainly by reduced participation online). Second, Facebook deactivation had no significant effect on an index of knowledge, but secondary analyses suggest that it reduced knowledge of general news while possibly also decreasing belief in misinformation circulating online. Third, Facebook deactivation may have reduced self-reported net votes for Trump, though this effect does not meet our preregistered significance threshold. Finally, the effects of both Facebook and Instagram deactivation on affective and issue polarization, perceived legitimacy of the election, candidate favorability, and voter turnout were all precisely estimated and close to zero.

Déclaration de conflit d'intérêts

Competing interests statement:Some authors are or have been employed by Meta: W.M., A.W., P.B., T.B., D.M., A.F., and C.K.d.J. are current employees. A.C.-T., D.D., and C.V.R. are former employees. All of their work on the study was conducted while they were employed by Meta. The following academic authors have had one or more of the following funding or personal financial relationships with Meta (paid consulting work, received direct grant funding, received an honorarium or fee, served as an outside expert, or own Meta stock): M.G., A.M.G., B.N., J.P., J.S., R.T., M.W., N.J.S., and J.A.T. The costs of the study were funded by Meta. None of the academic researchers nor their institutions received financial compensation from Meta for their participation in the project. The overall project was evaluated and approved by the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) Institutional Review Board (IRB). Academic researchers coordinated with their specific university IRBs to ensure they followed regulations concerning human subject research when analyzing data collected by NORC and Meta as well as when authoring papers based on the results. Additionally, the research group was provided ethical counsel by the independent company Ethical Resolve to inform the study designs. For additional information about the above disclosures as well as a review of the steps taken to protect the integrity of the research, see