Could Facebook be the source of all your sorrows?

According to the Internet world stats database, there are currently 835.6 million Facebook users today. Indeed, “Facebook” was the top Google search term in the US this year, which represents a 33% increase from 2011.[1] Some more fun facts about Facebook: 700 billion total minutes are spent on Facebook per month, and 2 million friend requests are sent out every 20 minutes.[2] So what does that all mean? What are the psychological implications of Facebook, insofar as it has become a platform for men and women to represent themselves- rather idealistically- to each other on the web?

According to many early studies, Facebook can have the potential to increase an individual’s self-esteem, by virtue of the fact that he/she is focusing on an ideal image of him or herself. In psychology, the hyperpersonal model theory suggests that when we focus on ourselves, our self-esteem correspondingly improves. Says Jeffrey Hancock, a professor of communication at Cornell University, Facebook can certainly cause us to see ourselves in a more positive light: “Unlike a mirror, which reminds us of who we really are and may have a negative effect on self-esteem if that image doesn’t match with our idea, Facebook can show a positive version of ourselves.”[3] Indeed, Facebook is a kind of collective imagination that allows users to re-create themselves. We can selectively choose which experiences get documented online- which relationships get the full Facebook disclosure- and which ones, if undesirable, can be weeded out as if they never happened. In this way, Facebook is unlike the real world; for online, we have the agency to decide how the rest of the world perceives us.

Yet recent work suggests that Facebook has a much more pernicious affect, particularly on women. In a study conducted by the Huffington Post, 68% of women use social media to stay in touch with friends, as opposed to 54% of men. And yet, despite (or perhaps, in correlation with this statistic), women’s happiness has been at an all-time low in recent years.[4]  According to an article in Slate, titled “The Anti-Social Network”,  “by helping other people look happy, Facebook is making us sad.”[5] Indeed, our self-esteem is subject to take a hit when we see the highlights of everyone else’s lives. Posts like “my boyfriend is so great!”, “Wonderful weekend with the family”, or other witticisms to represent the speaker in a positive light, actually have a negative impact on those who are reading them. As a very astute meme once informed me, “The reason we suffer with insecurity is that we compare our behind-the-scenes with everyone else’s highlight reel.” And Facebook certainly sharpens this effect: the more we perceive others to be happy, the more our own happiness pales in comparison. As Montesquieu once said, “If we only wanted to be happy it would be easy; but we want to be happier than other people, which is almost always difficult, since we think them happier than they are.” Indeed, the ‘happiness’ presented to us on Facebook is always impersonal; the pain that it conjures through comparison, however, is not. One researcher pointed out that Facebook profiles should be compared to airbrushed photos of supermodels in magazines, insofar as both are equally removed from reality.

Thus, as addicted as our generation is to Facebook, it might be good to consider the mythologies that the site perpetuates. In her new book on technology, Alone Together, MIT Professor Sherry Turkle argues that technology- e.g., sites like Facebook – actually makes us lonelier by preventing what she calls “true intimacy”. So next time you log on to your Facebook profile, and scroll through the news-feed that is seemingly buzzing with the success of the social world around you, stop to consider what all of it really means. And if you find yourself depressed- as, let’s face it, the majority of us have been at one point or another – consider taking a break from Facebook. The benefits of social media may not always be worth the negative psychological repercussions.  

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