A new study has found that seeing friend's updates and vacation pictures on Facebook makes a user envious and miserable.
German researchers have found that seeing people's vacation pictures, status about their career and love live makes Facebook users jealous and miserable.
"We were surprised by how many people have a negative experience from Facebook with envy leaving them feeling lonely, frustrated or angry," researcher Hanna Krasnova from the Institute of Information Systems at Berlin's Humboldt University told Reuters. "From our observations some of these people will then leave Facebook or at least reduce their use of the site," said Krasnova, adding to speculation that Facebook could be reaching saturation point in some markets.
Researchers found that vacation pictures were the main cause of jealousy and often triggers the feeling of envy among Facebook friends.
The second biggest cause of envy was social interaction as users could compare how many birthday greetings they received to those of their Facebook friends and how many "likes" or comments were made on photos and postings.
"Passive following triggers invidious emotions, with users mainly envying happiness of others, the way others spend their vacations and socialize," the researchers said in the report "Envy on Facebook: A Hidden Threat to Users' Life Satisfaction?" released on Tuesday. "The spread and ubiquitous presence of envy on Social Networking Sites is shown to undermine users' life satisfaction."
The study was conducted on 600 people that were divided into two groups. The first group was subjected to a test that looked at the scale, scope and nature of envy incidents triggered by Facebook while the second group was subjected to a study that looked into how envy was linked to passive use of Facebook and life satisfaction.
"From a provider's perspective, our findings signal that users frequently perceive Facebook as a stressful environment, which may, in the long-run, endanger platform sustainability," researchers concluded.
