Being socially connected is a human need, but what happens when that bond between past and present friends takes place in a virtual, limited space where we are both protagonists and spectators? Hyperconnectivity has its consequences, and a study by the University of Michigan revealed that the more you use Facebook, the sadder you are. Yes, Facebook depresses you.
In the past, and constantly today, it has been proven that our passively reflective role before media and entertainment sources erodes our vision of them, plunging us into the empire of externally imposed things, provoking or at least contributing to generate in us all kinds of emotional responses, ranging from the imperative need to acquire a certain product to the omnipresent anxiety that comes from the modern social obligation to share everything that happens to us, without questioning the real need to do so.
For most users, the social network par excellence seems to be defined by what its members make of it, taking advantage of everything at hand, rather than by what is imposed from headquarters in Menlo Park, California. In fact, most users – and we are talking about more than a billion people – do not even question how Facebook works and the experience it offers; they simply live it, enjoying or suffering it randomly in a disciplined silence that, only occasionally, is broken to complain about changes in the service's interface, which last as long as it takes to get used to them.
https://old.neoteo.com/el-negocio-de-los-me-gusta/Our critical passivity regarding our experience is something that some scientists do not share; instead, they study it to identify some of the consequences of our daily interaction with mass invitations to games, political and philosophical debates, mindless celebrations of ego in all its forms, awkward moments, visual attendance to the successes of the “winners” in the form of photo albums, hurtful and utterly useless comments, harassing private messages, the relationship-destroying “seen” status, the internal and externalized struggle for “Likes”, and a long etcetera that we all, in different ways, share as users (or not, sometimes) of Facebook. All of that, according to a study, depresses us.
The Study
In a single line, the study hypothesized that the more we use Facebook, the sadder we are. The reason for this is hidden in what was previously explained. That is, on the surface Facebook seems to be the primary source of satisfaction for our need for social connection, but the truth – according to the study – is that instead of generating that satisfaction, Facebook can undermine our well-being, making us sadder and depressing us with the feeling of being less successful than others or not feeling sufficiently valued.
The study followed two groups of participants, asking them very simple but highly focused questions to rigorously control how much time they spent, how they used the social network, and how they felt. Participants were sent a text message five times a day for two weeks to examine how Facebook use influenced two components of subjective well-being: how they felt from one moment to another and how satisfied they were with their lives.
Focusing on the amount of worry and loneliness they felt at the initial moment and at the end of the responses, the result indicated that from the moment one starts using Facebook up to the present day, there is a deterioration of the experience. But additionally, an emotional variable was identified within the same day, since after using Facebook for several hours (or seeing a lot of content at once, which would be the same), users began to feel a little depressed by what they saw.
What happens when a social network that was adopted with the purpose of bringing us closer to people we had stopped seeing, to connect with our past and turn it into our present, becomes a social phenomenon that causes such unsustainable hyperconnection that it ends up depressing us? The researchers analyzed that Facebook use has long-lasting positive qualities after the first few days of use.
That is when the user begins to find friends, to visit everything they have done, to meet their families, their achievements. They also begin to interact with them and even end up at some reunion, where the preponderance of nostalgia leaves the present of each of these adult people and their ways of thinking and living in the world in the background, which are later reproduced on Facebook, but with a subjective cutout generally focused on generating a good reception.
The comparative power of Facebook is imposing, and the social competition that exists is highly recognized, although it operates more or less unconsciously in us. The study – as common sense already repeats these days – indicates that on Facebook we give the best of ourselves and we select what to share, how, with whom, when, and in what way, always betting on generating the best possible reception. It is the preponderance we spoke of earlier: the search for “Likes”; postmodern validators that we believe work in favor of our – not always consciously recognized – existential insecurity.
Following this hypothesis, the study by the scientists of the University of Michigan identified the deterioration in Facebook use over time for the average user, since as they complete their communities of known people, what remains is the daily interaction with what these other people share on their walls and the repercussion that this has on those who observe and evaluate it through comments and Likes, although also silently and unconsciously. The researchers note that “more than three quarters say they share only the good things that happen to them with their different communities of friends on Facebook, while 36 percent said they also share “bad things”.
Discounting that part of the 36 percent may not have been very honest, or that the other part understands as positive things that actually do not leave them looking so good, the preponderance of personal advertising negatively impacts the perception of personal success of those who observe it. Spending many hours in front of others' successes, according to the study, makes us feel less secure and sadder, leading to mild depression.
The study called this conclusion the FOMO theory (acronym in English for Fear Of Missing Out, “fear of missing out”), synthesized in the effect produced by seeing other people sharing happy moments while one is working or simply has nothing happy to share. In favor of this view, other recent studies indicated that the perception of social isolation in terms of how lonely someone feels is a much more powerful determinant of well-being than the true and objective social isolation that the person is suffering. Just as our relationships are a product of hyperconnectivity, our discomfort is partly virtual, although it exposes us to real consequences.
Under the same experiment, those responsible for the study spoke of another possible cause for the depression found, and that is that people use Facebook when they are already depressed and already feeling bad. According to what was previously explained, this would not refute the FOMO theory, since at the end of the trial period those who already felt bad did not feel better, but worse.
Source: PlosOne
