“Deactivating Facebook leaves people less informed, but happier,” according to a study reported in the Feb. 3 Cape Cod Times.

Participants in the study turned off Facebook for four weeks. Afterward, they self-reported a “small but significant improvement” in happiness. Furthermore, the average person “freed up an hour per day.”

So how about a second experiment? Turn off Facebook for four weeks and use the freed-up daily hour to tend a garden. Yes, a daily hour in a garden. Merely that. What possible effect might that have on one’s happiness?

David Light


The writer is chairman of the Orleans Agricultural Advisory Council.