Misery has More Company on Facebook
ELLEN LI
News Editor
In the online community known as Facebook, there are one billion registered users. According to Morrison Foerster’s Socially Aware blog, each user has an average of 130 friends and spends a monthly average of 6.9 hours on the site, mostly to keep in touch with old friends or maintain other offline relationships.
Furthermore, according to a joint study released in January by Humboldt University and Technical University in Germany, one in three users feels frustration and envy after using the social network. The researchers in the study cited “good news,” such as vacation photos and the profiles of successful friends, as the source of their dissatisfaction.
“By and large, online social networks allow users unprecedented access to information on relevant others—insights that would be much more difficult to obtain offline,” project manager and Humboldt University researcher Dr. Hanna Krasnova said, according to NBC.
The researchers also found that people who peruse the website without contributing were most affected. Passive users who use Facebook for information, such as through friends’ postings and photo browsing, but do not engage in interpersonal communication have negative experiences after using the site.
“Seeing what people have and how they can hang out after school makes me feel depressed, lonely and poorer than I really am because they have things or get to do things that I can’t have or do,” an AHS student, who asked to have their name withheld, said.
To combat their negative feelings, some users feel compelled to embellish their own Facebook profiles, which only incites envy among other users. This paradox is a phenomenon that researchers have termed “envy spiral.”
In addition, Facebook members try to avoid these feelings by “unfriending” or avoiding adding people who cause the negative experiences, which may result in social tension.
Researchers also observed that some of these users will then leave Facebook or at least reduce their use of the site.
“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,” the report said, adding to speculation that Facebook could be reaching saturation point in some markets.
Nevertheless, students at AHS still see the merits of using this social networking site as a convenient mean of communication.
“I have a positive experience with Facebook,” junior Diana Ly said. “I get to keep up [to date] with friends and my clubs.”