We know that social media is addictive, but how much value users are getting? In a series of experiments scientists asked people how much would they accept to stop using Facebook for a year and discovered that the price is over USD 1,000.

$1,000 to dump Facebook for a year

Researchers of Tufts University from Massachusetts, MA, USA, discovered the actual dollar value that users put on utilizing social networks like Facebook.

The average payout that people would accept to deactivate their accounts for one year was over USD 1,000, Science Daily reported.

The data was received via a series of auctions in which people were offered real money to give up social networking to stop accessing their accounts for a day or more.

Facebook has acquired over 2 billion users globally, which includes company accounts.

Jay Corrigan, who is a professor of economics at Kenyon College, is an experienced researcher when it comes to experimental online auctions. Corrigan believes that people “derive tremendous value from Facebook”, which makes them spend millions of hours worldwide daily.

No Facebook for a year? Give me $1,000

During the study researchers designed 3 actual auctions among college students, a community group and one was set online. The winners were paid real amounts in dollars once they could prove their membership indeed was inactive for the set period of time.

1. Students agreed to give up Facebook for 1 day for $4.17 on average and $37 for a week. When researchers recalculated it in annual terms, it gave them values from 1.5 to 1.9 thousand dollars.
2. The second group included both adults and students. Students would give up their Facebook account for one year for over $2,000, while grownups were content to stop using the social network for 12 months for $1,139.
3. Users of an Amazon marketplace whose average age was 33 years would give up Facebook for $1.9 thousand on average.

It was apparent that college students saw a higher value in using the social network than grownups out of university. Some participants refused to give up social networking for the amounts of money offered.

Some participants refused to consider giving up their favourite social network for a payout.

Market value vs. user value

Facebook as a company is valued at approximately $400,000,000, which would average about $180 per user (2.2 billion accounts). However, when we consider the value people in developed countries put on the user of this tool, it’s less than one quarter of what they would accept to give up their online networking connections.

The company remains the top social network worldwide. It is the third more visited online website after Google and YouTube.

While some people and companies don’t even have a Facebook account, users feel a very strong connection to the free of charge tool allowing them to keep in touch with friends.

It shows the value of online connections that people don’t always recognize until they are faced with the material choice.

Would you take $1,000 to give up Facebook for a year?

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