People who use Facebook may feel more connected, but less happy.
A study of young adults released on Wednesday concluded that the more people used Facebook, the worse they subsequently felt.
“On the surface, Facebook provides an invaluable resource for fulfilling the basic human need for social connection,” said University of Michigan social psychologist Ethan Kross, lead author of the study.
“But rather than enhance well-being, we found that Facebook use predicts the opposite result — it undermines it,” he said.
The researchers recruited 82 young adults who had smartphones and Facebook accounts and assessed their subjective well-being by texting them at random times five times a day for two weeks.
The researchers said the study, published in the scientific journal PLoS, was believed to be the first measuring Facebook’s impact on happiness and life satisfaction.
“This is a result of critical importance because it goes to the very heart of the influence that social networks may have on people’s lives,” said University of Michigan cognitive neuroscientist John Jonides, another author of the paper.
The researchers monitored the study group by asking them how they felt, whether they were worried or lonely, how much they used Facebook and how much they interacted “directly” with people.
“The more people used Facebook at one time point, the worse they felt the next time we text-messaged them,” the researchers wrote. “The more they used Facebook over two weeks, the more their life satisfaction levels declined over time.”
In contrast, personal interactions led people to feel better over time, they said.
The scientists also found no evidence that Facebook use was merely a symptom of feeling low.
People were not more likely to use Facebook when they felt bad, although they did use the social network more frequently when they were lonely.
“It was not the case that Facebook use served as a proxy for feeling bad or lonely,” Kross said.
Yet the researchers stopped short of claiming the same effect for all Facebook users or other social networks.
“We concentrated on young adults in this study because they represent a core Facebook user demographic,” the study said. “However, examining whether these findings generalize to additional age groups is important. Future research should also examine whether these findings generalize to other online social networks.”
The study comes a week after British researchers published a report concluding that frequent photo posting on Facebook can damage real-life relationships.
The discussion paper led by David Houghton of the University of Birmingham said Facebook photograpgh postings, especially of oneself, are not always welcomed by less intimate friends.
“People, other than very close friends and relatives, don’t seem to relate well to those who constantly share photos of themselves,” Houghton said.
The researchers said that while Facebook creates a homogenous group of “friends,” most users have different types of relationships with those viewing their postings.
“It’s worth remembering that the information we post to our ‘friends’ on Facebook actually gets viewed by lots of different categories of people: partners; friends; family; colleagues and acquaintances; and each group seems to take a different view of the information shared,” the researchers said.
Showcasing phallus-shaped portable shrines and pink penis candies, Japan’s annual fertility festival yesterday teemed with tourists, couples and families elated by its open display of sex. The spring Kanamara Matsuri near Tokyo features colorfully dressed worshipers carrying a trio of giant phallic-shaped objects as they parade through the street with glee. The festival, as legend has it, honors a local blacksmith in the Edo Period (1603-1868) who forged an iron dildo to break the teeth of a sharp-toothed demon inhabiting a woman’s vagina that had been castrating young men on their wedding nights. A 1m black steel phallus sits in the courtyard of
JAN. 1 CLAUSE: As military service is voluntary, applications for permission to stay abroad for over three months for men up to age 45 must, in principle, be granted A little-noticed clause in sweeping changes to Germany’s military service policy has triggered an uproar after it emerged that the law requires men aged up to 45 to get permission from the armed forces before any significant stay abroad, even in peacetime. The legislation, which went into effect on Jan. 1 aims to bolster the military and demands all 18-year-old men fill out a questionnaire to gauge their suitability to serve in the armed forces, but stops short of conscription. If the “modernized” model fails to pull in enough recruits, parliament will be compelled to discuss the reintroduction of compulsory service, German
Filipino farmers like Romeo Wagayan have been left with little choice but to let their vegetables rot in the field rather than sell them at a loss, as rising oil prices linked to the Iran war drive up the cost of harvesting, labor and transport. “There’s nothing we can do,” said Wagayan, a 57-year old vegetable farmer in the northern Philippine province of Benguet. “If we harvest it, our losses only increase because of labor, transportation and packing costs. We don’t earn anything from it. That’s why we decided not to harvest at all,” he said. Soaring costs caused by the Middle East
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s officially declared wealth is fairly modest: some savings and a jointly owned villa in Budapest. However, voters in what Transparency International deems the EU’s most corrupt country believe otherwise — and they might make Orban pay in a general election this Sunday that could spell an end to his 16-year rule. The wealth amassed by Orban’s inner circle is fueling the increasingly palpable frustration of a population grappling with sluggish growth, high inflation and worsening public services. “The government’s communication machine worked well as long as our economic situation remained relatively good,” said Zoltan Ranschburg, a political analyst
RSS