According to a new study conducted by sociologists Hui-Tzu Grace Chou and Nicholas Edge at Utah Valley University, research showed a correlation between a Facebook user’s disposition about their life and the amount of time spent on the social network. Approximately 425 students were asked to identify how much they agreed or disagreed with statements like “Life is fair” and “Many of my friends have a better life than me.” In addition, the students were asked about how much time they spent on Facebook, their number of Facebook friends as well as how many of those friends they had actually met in person. The researchers also attempted controlling for factors like relationship status, gender, religious beliefs and race.
Seeing a pattern emerge, the two sociologists discovered that as people spend more time on Facebook, they start to believe that others have a better life than they do. Within the paper, Chou and Edge stated “Those who have used Facebook longer agreed more that others were happier, and agreed less that life is fair, and those spending more time on Facebook each week agreed more that others were happier and had better lives. Furthermore, those that included more people whom they did not personally know as their Facebook “friends” agreed more that others had better lives.”
Published in the Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking journal, the study also concluded that people that spent less time socializing on Facebook and spent more time with real-life friends were less likely to be unhappy. Since Facebook users are far more likely to depict the happiest times of their lives through carefully curated photos rather than catalog depressing events, many users are more likely to believe that happiness is a constant in their friend’s lives. An earlier study conducted last year by the American Academy of Pediatrics also found that children and teenagers can develop “Facebook Depression” when being overwhelmed with positive status updates and photos of happy friends.
It’s realizing that people you have known your whole life are incredibly boring and often lack the ability to spell properly. =(
so true! sometime back i used to have a main fb account where i do all my stuff, but i felt it was causing more damage than any other thing, so i close it and then created an account just to play or comment in other sites that require fb, i wasn’t total sure why i closed it but this gives me the right idea. Besides fb is more gossip than other thing!
Facebook is saddening because it’s so shallow and further reflects the kind of shallowness a media driven market culture exem,plifies.
Its not facebook, its the stupid shit they do in it.
The subjects were all students. Ah, yes, let’s ask 425 highly connected, stressed, drunk, depressed, insecure (jobs) homesick, in-debt and/or horny students if they agree/disagree that “Many of my friends have a better life than me.” Everyone has a better life than you when you’re in college:-) Not a very broad cross-section of the user base, in my mind, and thus a more accurate title should read: “Depressed or not, students still use Facebook.”
“Everyone has a better life than you when you’re in college?!?!” Where in the hell did you go to school? Sounds like you should have left the library long enough to experience the socialization en masse that typifies most peoples tertiary educational experience. Least problematic in this study is the composition of the test group… 425 students is a pretty fair sample and in many ways is an accurate representation of the typical Facebook demographic… and it cost NO money to get them to take the survey (bonus).
Sad that I didn’t create it!!! $$$
Facebook can make you equally happy if you thought broadcast and ignore most of everything else which is going on around you… :)
Kind of a gud thought wud be glad
if alows fb fuk too smthng lyk ‘gamer’ movie typ
a section/group only to fuk . Hit the gal u lyk n happy lol
;-)
Uh No!
Correlation doesn’t prove cause and effect! But if fb makes you sad you should delete your account.
True, correlation =/ causation, but if every study had to adhere to what appears to be your criteria for causation, empirical studies would be pointless. From my reading of the study, the explanatory framework for the correlation (i.e. the independent variable) is legitimate and accurate.
Exactly! I see no evidence that Facebook makes you sad, only heavy users of Facebook are more sad than those not using it lots.
Facebook can make you equally happy if you thought broadcast and ignore most of everything else which is going on around you… :)
They say in real life the grass isn’t always greener on the other side. Imagine that, it rings true for online life too. Or imagine if you could control what others see and know about you therefore allowing you to edit your life as you live it. I mean with that in mind we all should be living like rock stars on our profiles.
Great article. I totally believe it too. Sometimes being able to track everything your friends are doing isn’t exactly healthy lol
Good thing us Google+ users have Hangouts, so if we’re feeling glum all we have to do is start a Hangout and use our live webcam to chat face-to-face with all our contacts as if they were in person. The reason why Facebook users are sad is because there is no way to experience what those people would be like if you talked to them in person.
Thank you, Google, for finally making social networking as much like real-life socialization as possible!
I don’t agree.
At the most I think it’s exactly the opposite.
At the least unhappy people should better exercise their choice in who to be friends with: if happy events in another person’s life doesn’t make you happy you shouldn’t be facebook friends with them.
“Sad things make me sad…. happy things make me sad!” Facebook – giving millions of people of both genders perpetual PMS. :o