Facebook use 'makes people feel worse about themselves'
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Re: Facebook use 'makes people feel worse about themselves'
#2I just read the Method section of this study and it seems really slanted to produce a correlation.
It asks 5 questions daily, 4 were about how well the participant felt and the last one was a direct question asking how long the user was on Facebook. It was also advertised as a "Facebook study" which is completely ridiculous.
A more condemning study would ask those first 4 questions then ask a handful of questions like "how long were you on twitter?" Or "how long did you watch TV" or "how long did you exercise today?".
And it shouldn't be advertised as a Facebook study.
Re: Facebook use 'makes people feel worse about themselves'
#3I can relate to this study --- even though I am not a young adult like the subjects of this study.
I stopped using Facebook a few months ago because I couldn't handle how it made me feel. I am bootstrapping a start-up ,working insane hours and depriving my family of the comforts/luxuries that I could have afforded when I had a corporate job. I am really happy that my friends are spending their summer vacation at resorts/beaches etc.; I feel horrible that my kids as stuck at home and they can't have the kind of stuff my friends' buy their kids and it is all my fault. I am not jealous -- I feel guilty and facebook updates from my dearest friends exacerbates my guilt.
So I stopped using Facebook temporarily -- I will be back on it when I can buy stuff. m
Re: Facebook use 'makes people feel worse about themselves'
#4Facebook in some ways is the ultimate HS or college party. Everyone has a front to present. So it's not surprising that it might make a lot of people feel bad because the reader is seeing everyone's outside and comparing it to their inside.
Re: Facebook use 'makes people feel worse about themselves'
#5Facebook can be a source of happiness if you are proactively managing how you're using it. In my case, it's the way that friends who I've stayed out of touch with can contact me out of the blue and ask me out to drinks because they're in the city. I post occasionally to my feed, but don't really spend much time reading what others are posting except to trade jokes/insults...thus limiting the time in which it seems my life is less fun than others'.
But by default, Facebook's algorithm can only make you unhappy if you're a passive user. The edge algorithm means you see the posts most liked by other people...virtually guaranteeing that you'll be subjected to a stream of awesome-than-life posts. And if you're a young adult, you also find yourself in the situation in which you're pining after someone and constantly viewing their profiles and liking their posts.
Well, in that case, FB is really going to hit you hard as it will assume you want to see lots of stories of your secret crush. And viewing what that person is doing in the time that you're not present around him/her creates nothing but anxiety.
Hell, you don't even have to be young to experience that.
Re: Facebook use 'makes people feel worse about themselves'
#6I've found that oddly enough, reddit has a kind of honesty that facebook doesn't, which you wouldn't think, since the former is full of people you don't know, and the latter full of people you do.
Re: Facebook use 'makes people feel worse about themselves'
#7I've found that oddly enough, reddit has a kind of honesty that facebook doesn't, which you wouldn't think, since the former is full of people you don't know, and the latter full of people you do.
Why would you think people you know would be brutally honest with you about how bad your posts are? That's exactly what internet anonymity allows. Since I don't have to see you face-to-face, I feel extremely comfortable with making fun of your irrelevant HN post.
Re: Facebook use 'makes people feel worse about themselves'
#8I can relate to this study --- even though I am not a young adult like the subjects of this study. I stopped using Facebook a few months ago because I couldn't handle how it made me feel. I am bootstrapping a start-up ,working insane hours and depriving my family of the comforts/luxuries that I could have afforded when I had a corporate job. I am really happy that my friends are spending their summer vacation at reso…
Going on Facebook, I see how everyone's social life is better than mine.
Going on Hacker News, I see how everyone's startup is doing better than my failed attempt.
Going on Hackaday, I see how everyone's working on cooler projects than mine.
The only place I feel good about myself is at work.
Re: Facebook use 'makes people feel worse about themselves'
#9I've found that oddly enough, reddit has a kind of honesty that facebook doesn't, which you wouldn't think, since the former is full of people you don't know, and the latter full of people you do.
The people you know have something to prove
Re: Facebook use 'makes people feel worse about themselves'
#10Seeing people on Facebook is a little bit like seeing everybody you know pass you by on the street, but because it happens so often you stopped saying hi.