Is Facebook Affecting Your Happiness?
Did you know that one in every nine people on earth uses Facebook? On average, each user spends 15 hours and 33 minutes a month on it. If you’re like most people, there isn’t a day when you don’t peak to your Facebook account, even for just a sec. But did you know that Facebook and other social media websites may not only be affecting your productivity levels but also your overall well-being?
Here’s what stats show – 33 per cent of Facebook users feel unhappy during their visit. People who browse but do not actively communicate on Facebook are more vulnerable to experiencing negative feelings. And here’s more surprising – the more friends you have on Facebook, the more likely you will feel unhappy!
You might be wondering WHY.
Facebook Envy
The leading cause is envy. One of the easiest ways to feel unhappy is to compare ourselves with other people. Just by looking at the glossy photos of our social media friends taken from fancy restaurants, tourist destinations, and the like, it’s easy to fall into the trap of comparing our real lives with other people, not realising that those images not even constitute 10 per cent of who they are the moment they log out from Facebook. Apart from these stunning photos, reading ‘success stories’ through news feeds make it more likely for many people to compare themselves to others and forget about the things they should be happy about in their own life endeavours.
Self-Esteem
Scientists all over the world continue to investigate the impact of Facebook on well-being and most of the published studies point out to its negative effects. For instance, a survey conducted by the University of Gothenburg in Sweden found a negative relationship between self-esteem and Facebook usage. Their findings show that as Facebook interaction increased, users’ self-esteem decreased. This effect was more likely to be experienced by women than men.
Nonetheless, Facebook may also uplift one’s self-esteem in a sense that it allows people to look and sound witty, according to Prof Jeffrey Hancock of Cornell University. In his study, published in 2009 in the journal Cyberpsychology, Behaviour and Social Networking, participants were grouped into three and were assigned different tasks. The first group sat at computers that depicted their Facebook profiles, the second sat at computers that were turned off, and the third sat at computers that were turned off and with mirrors propped up next to them. Prof Hancock and colleagues found a drastic increase in self-esteem in participants who used Facebook, particularly those who edited their profiles.
But it appears that the risks outweigh the benefits. It’s because most Facebook users log in not just to update their profiles but also to check their news feed, resulting to lower self-esteem. In a study presented in the 2012 Society for Personality and Social Psychology meeting held in the US, participants who used Facebook to read some of their friends’ status updates reported feeling much less satisfied with their lives than those who didn’t check their news feed. “The problem is that Facebook gives us a limited view of our friends’ lives, and that view tends to be unrealistically positive,” said study author Dilney Goncalves, a professor at IE Business School in Madrid. He added that the more friends a user has, the more likely he or she is to spend time enviously reading about someone’s paradise vacation, new girlfriend, or job promotion.
Don’t let Facebook make you sad
Yes, it’s true that Facebook has plenty of benefits. It keeps us entertained, and helps us establish a desirable ‘personality’ online, and meet new people. But our Facebook habits could also undermine our happiness. If you think the way you use Facebook is affecting your well-being, here are some tips you might find useful:
Limit your number of friends. Cut ties with excess acquaintances and reduce your social circle with your close buddies and relatives. Remember, it’s the quality of friendships you have, not the quantity.
Reduce your online time. The reason for this is obvious. If you spend less time on Facebook, the more likely you will feel bad. Reducing your Facebook time also gives you more time on more important things.
Log out. The next time Facebook gives you the ‘blues’, just log out. Don’t prolong your agony. This pretty simple act is a manifestation that you have control over your emotions and that you are not going to let anything affect you and make you feel down.
Have a Facebook reality check. Just because all your friends’ posts and photos on Facebook are all positive doesn’t mean they don’t have any problems at all. Remember that many people make use of their social media accounts as a form of self-advertisement. They post only the ‘good’ stuff because it’s what they want other people to see, not really how their lives really are.
Fine-tune your news feed. You may want to downgrade a smaller portion of your friends’ updates, ‘unsubscribe’ to the updates of those you’re not really close with. You may also like to subscribe to fan pages of organisations, charities and groups that interest you and encourage you to stay positive.
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