In a study published Wednesday in PLOS One, Kenyon College researchers found that Facebook users would require an average of about $1,000 in exchange for giving up their account for a year.
Kenyon College economics professor Jay Corrigan, the lead author of the study, says they were interested in what Facebook was worth to people.
"We know that people don't pay anything out of pocket to use the service, so instead of being able to look at the price they pay, so we decided we would try to see how much we would have to pay them to get them to stop using the service," he says.
So researchers brought people into a controlled auction environment and asked them to submit bids for how much they'd be willing to pay to deactivate their accounts - for as little as a day or as long as a year. The lowest bid actually had to follow through.
And they did actually pay people.
"It feels like computers, and by extension the internet and social networks, have changed our lives, but it's really hard to find any evidence that they're making us richer or making us any more productive at work," Corrigan says.
He and his fellow researchers postulated that there was a different benefit.
"What if they're just making us a lot better off? Because we get access to these free services that are so valuable to us," he says.
Researchers found the magic number for how much that service meant to people, in dollars, depended on how they used it.
"People who use the service more often to invite friends to events required a larger payment in order to stop using the service," Corrigan says. "Likewise, people who posted status updates more often."
On the flip side, people who used Facebook to post photos placed less value on the platform. Corrigan thinks that's because the social network isn't unique in that respect.
"There are so many ways to post photos online," he says. "Instagram would be one example that springs to mind. It could be that people who are really devoted to social media are already using a different platform to post their photos."
