The UK’s Daily Mail reports that seeing others’ pictures on Facebook can lead to personal unhappiness. Hui-Tzu Grace Chou and Nicholas Edge, sociologists at Utah Valley University, conducted the study that surveyed undergraduate students.
The Daily Mail’s Tom Leonard writes,
After allowing for gender, religiosity and whether people were single or attached, the study found that ‘the more hours people spent on Facebook, the stronger was their agreement that others were happier’… Those who had used Facebook for longer were also ‘significantly’ likely to agree with the statement that ‘life is unfair’.
Chou sees this as a “common psychological process” known as correspondence bias, where false conclusions about others are based on limited knowledge. Conversely,
people who spent more time actually socialising with friends in the flesh were less likely to feel they had been handed life’s short straw.
This reminds me of Pete Rollins’ poignant reminder that Facebook (and other web 2.0 type things) give us the opportunity to create socially constructed selves which are, ultimately, merely projections of how we want to be seen by others:
…it is obvious that my twitter, facebook, and website, are mere propaganda machines that pretend to offer you an insight into me while ensuring I remain hidden behind an idealized image. I hide myself in my public profile…
Chou and Edge are merely revealing the destruction regarding how such idealized profiles negatively affect others.
[Hat Tip: John Drane for posting this article on - get this - Facebook! He's much better connected than me.]
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