Recalculating GDP for the Facebook age[size=0.8em]By Gillian Tett
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How big is the impact of Facebook on our lives? That question has caused plenty of hand-wringing this year, as revelations have tumbled out about the political influence of Big Tech companies.
Economists are attempting to look at this question too — but in a different way. They have been quietly trying to calculate the impact of Facebook on gross domestic product data, ie to measure what our social-media addiction is doing to economic output.