TY - JOUR A1 - Allcott, Hunt A1 - Gentzkow, Matthew A1 - Mason, Winter A1 - Wilkins, Arjun A1 - Barberá, Pablo A1 - Brown, Taylor A1 - Cisneros, Juan Carlos A1 - Crespo-Tenorio, Adriana A1 - Dimmery, Drew A1 - Freelon, Deen A1 - González-Bailón, Sandra A1 - Guess, Andrew M. A1 - Kim, Young Mie A1 - Lazer, David A1 - Malhotra, Neil A1 - Moehler, Devra A1 - Nair-Desai, Sameer A1 - Nait El Barj, Houda A1 - Nyhan, Brendan A1 - Paixao de Queiroz, Ana Carolina A1 - Pan, Jennifer A1 - Settle, Jaime A1 - Thorson, Emily A1 - Tromble, Rebekah A1 - Velasco Rivera, Carlos A1 - Wittenbrink, Benjamin A1 - Wojcieszak, Magdalena A1 - Zahedian, Saam A1 - Franco, Annie A1 - Kiewiet de Jonge, Chad A1 - Stroud, Natalie Jomini A1 - Tucker, Joshua A. T1 - The effects of Facebook and Instagram on the 2020 election: A deactivation experiment JF - Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences N2 - 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. Y1 - 2024 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2321584121 VL - 121 IS - 21 ER -