Facebook Study: The Longer Period Spending, the Unhappier you Become

The longer period you spend on Facebook, the unhappier you become. That is the not-so-astounding finding of the first analysis calculating the social network’s effect on users’ emotional well-being.

In addition (surprise, surprise) the study discovers that getting interacting “directly” – you know, face-to-face, or over the mobile phone –makes you happier.A team of researchers from the University of Michigan analyzed 82 teenagers who had mobile phones with Facebook accounts. Scientists texted the participants five times each for two several weeks to analyze how Facebook use affect how individuals encounter moment-to-moment, and how pleased they are with their lives.

Each message text included a link to an online survey with five questions: “How do you encounter right now?”; “How concerned are you right now?”; “How lonely do you encounter right now?”; “How much have you used Facebook since the last time we asked?” and “How much have you interacted with other individuals ‘directly’ since the last time we asked?”

The writers of the study, released in the scientific publication PLOS, said they used experience sampling, the most efficient method for calculating in vivo actions and emotional meet.

It turned out the more individuals used Facebook, the more intense they experienced the next time researchers texted them. In addition, the more individuals used Facebook over the two several weeks, the more their life fulfillment levels dropped eventually.

Meanwhile, getting other individuals “directly,” by means of mobile phone or face-to-face, did not produce these negative results, the researchers discovered. In fact, the researchers concluded that direct interactions with other individuals actually led people to encounter better eventually.

“On the surface, Facebook provides an important resource for satisfying the basic human need for social relationship,” the lead writer of the analysis, University of Michigan social psychologist Ethan Kross said. “Rather than improve well-being, we discovered that Facebook use generates the other result – it undermines it,” he added.

Over 1 billion individuals use Facebook, and over half of them log in daily. No study has analyzed how getting Facebook affects subjective well-being eventually.

The researchers discovered no proof for two possible alternative understanding for their results. Younger and active Facebook users were not more likely to use Facebook when they felt bad. In addition, although individuals were more likely to use Facebook when they were lonely, “it was not the case that Facebook use provided as a proxies for feeling bad or lonely,” Kross said.

“We focused on teenagers in this analysis because they signify a primary Facebook user market,” the writers said. “However, analyzing whether these results generalize to added age categories is important. Future analysis should also analyze whether these results generalize to other on the internet public networking sites.”

The analysis came a week after British researchers released a review finishing that discussing pictures on Facebook is the “safest” way to lose friends and damage connections with co-workers and friends who do not “relate well to those who regularly discuss images of themselves.”

“This is because individuals, other than very close loved ones, do not seem to associate well to those who regularly discuss images of themselves,” Dr Bob Houghton, of the School of Manchester, said.

“It is worth keeping in mind the details we post to our ‘friends’ on Facebook, actually gets considered by lots of different categories of individuals, associates, buddies, family, co-workers and associates and each group seems to take a different view of the details distributed,” he included.