Researchers of a new study found that though using Facebook makes a person feel well connected with his friends and family, it also decreases a person's happiness level.
Having a profile on any social networking or microblogging site has become a life essential. These sites have taken the place of many traditional communication methods. People can now see what their family and friends are doing with the click of a button. While "Facebooking" has many positive attributes like promoting the desired sense of social connection and feeling well connected, it doesn't necessarily make people happier, found researchers of a new study.
"On the surface, Facebook provides an invaluable resource for fulfilling the basic human need for social connection," said University of Michigan social psychologist Ethan Kross, lead author of the article, in a press release. "But rather than enhance well-being, we found that Facebook use predicts the opposite result-it undermines it."
For the study, researchers looked at the "Facebooking" behavior of 82 young adults. All the participants had facebook profiles and smart phones. Researchers used the method of experience-sampling to measure how people think, feel, and behave moment-to-moment in their daily lives. Each participant was sent texts at random times five times a day for two weeks. These texts included questions like:
- How do you feel right now?
- How worried are you right now?
- How lonely do you feel right now?
- How much have you used Facebook since the last time we asked?
- How much have you interacted with other people "directly" since the last time we asked?
Researchers observed that people who used Facebook more often over a certain period of time, felt worse than those who used Facebook less frequently. At the end of the study, all participants were asked to rate their level of satisfaction. Researchers found that the participants who used Facebook more often during the two-weeks of the study showed a drop in their level of satisfaction.
"This is the advantage of studying Facebook use and well-being as dynamic processes that unfold over time," said emotion researcher Philippe Verduyn, another co-author of the article and post-doctoral fellow of the Research Foundation-Flanders (Belgium). "It allows us to draw inferences about the likely causal sequence of Facebook use and well-being."
A similar study conducted earlier this week by researchers from Scotland's Heriot-Watt University found that too many Facebook "selfies" could destroy a person's real-life close relationships.
