Another study confirms what we've always believed: Facebook makes you feel lonely and bad about yourself. The study followed a group of 82 young adults and monitored them at different points throughout the day for a period of two weeks, checking in with them about their mood and frame of mind via text.
The kids were all using Facebook with varying frequencies throughout the study period, and researchers we're using that term sort of loosely here found that "The more people used Facebook at one time point, the worse they felt the next time we text-messaged them," and "The more they used Facebook over two weeks, the more their life satisfaction levels declined over time." This study came out of the University of Michigan and echoes several other recent studies.
Well being improved, according to the study, when participants actually interacted with friends or loved ones, either in person or online.
A Facebook-sponsored study from earlier this year found that the average American Facebooker now spends about 32 minutes a day on the site.
As we've discussed, we think there should be some etiquette rules around Facebook use, and that it shouldn't just be a lawless place where everyone is allowed to brag about their relationships and photograph their every breakfast. And a whole separate study out of Britain, released last week, found that people who post too many photos on Facebook are likely damaging some of their real-life relationships. Basically, all those people who egregiously post selfies every day and/or pictures of their marvelous lives are likely not thinking about the various constituencies of viewers that their photos will have like, not all 700 of your Facebook friends are your best pals who want to know where you are and want to see your smiling mug at all hours of the day. That truth should be obvious, we think, but one look at our news feed suggests otherwise for at least 50 people we know. But we digress.
Previously: Etiquette Week: How to Behave on Facebook
