Laravel 5.4 response()->json() exclude header

When I return $users like so response()->json($users), it includes headers automatically.

The output would look like this {"users_online": HTTP/1.0 200 OK Cache-Control: no-cache, private Content-Type: application/json Date: Wed, 10 May 2017 02:44:43 GMT []} in which I don't need.

How would I exclude the header part so it would return just like this {"users_online": []} ?

via Chebli Mohamed