The Psychology of Facebooking

When formulating the possible motivations for creating a Facebook account, happiness and connectedness seem to come to mind.  But new studies, such as those collected in The New Yorker article written by Maria Konnikova, reveal a different result entirely.

University of Michigan psychologist Ethan Kross and his colleagues conducted a two-week study concerning social media and its psychological effects.  According to Konnikova, the study transpired as follows:


Over two weeks, Kross and his colleagues sent text messages to eighty-two Ann Arbor residents five times per day. The researchers wanted to know a few things: how their subjects felt overall, how worried and lonely they were, how much they had used Facebook, and how often they had had direct interaction with others since the previous text message. Kross found that the more people used Facebook in the time between the two texts, the less happy they felt—and the more their overall satisfaction declined from the beginning of the study until its end. The data, he argues, shows that Facebook was making them unhappy.

Surprised?  Results such as those found in Kross' study are not uncommon or even new.  "In 1998, Robert Kraut, a researcher at Carnegie Mellon University, found that the more people used the Web, the lonelier and more depressed they felt. After people went online for the first time, their sense of happiness and social connectedness dropped, over one to two years, as a function of how often they used the Internet."  

The trend of treating the Internet as an anti-depressant has been in existence for over a decade.  But, its effectiveness at curing deep, onset issues of self-esteem and self-worth are nonexistent.  

Not only do social networking sites such as Facebook increase loneliness, but studies conducted by researcher Hanna Krosnova and her colleagues at the Berlin Institute of Information Systems suggest that Facebook increases envy between users.  The more people upload to Facebook, the more they notice the achievements of their "like-minded peers" as being (or appearing to be) superior to their own. 

"We want to learn about other people and have others learn about us," writes Konnikova,"but through that very learning process we may start to resent both others’ lives and the image of ourselves that we feel we need to continuously maintain."  What attracts users to Facebook is the very quality which repels them;  users want to upload and advertise the best parts of their lives, their work, and their experiences, but can also be offended when other users have representations that exceed their own.

So what is the solution?  Reserving posts for deep, philosophical insight and intellectual discourse as opposed to selfies?  Limiting posts to once or twice per day?  Balancing Facebook usage with real-time social interaction?  

The results, similar to the results gathered in Konnikova's study, will vary.  But recognizing the potential for these outcomes will protect users from the various psychological effects which can set in while exploring the digital-social realm.



(Also, as a side note, check out Konnikova's book, Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes.  Unrelated?  Yes.  Worth it?  Absolutely.)