• * Auction one: 122 students at a Midwestern college. The average bid for deactivating Facebook for one day was $4.17; for three days, $13.89; and for one week, $37.00. To calculate a one-year estimate, the researchers annualized this data, which showed a range of $1,511 to $1,908.
  
  
• * Auction two: 133 students and 138 adults from a large Midwestern university/town. The average bid to deactivate Facebook for one year in the student group was $2,076 while the average bid in the community group was $1,139.
  
  
• * Auction three: 931 adults (mean age: 33) within the U.S. obtained using the Amazon Mechanical Turk open marketplace. The average bid to deactivate for one year in this sample was $1,921.
  
  

“While the measurable impact Facebook and other free online services have on the economy may be small, our results show that the benefits these services provide for their users are large,” wrote the authors in the press release. The authors also noted that Facebook remains the top social networking site in the world and the third most visited site on the Internet, after Google and YouTube, despite market fluctuations and controversies.