Admit it: while cruising your newsfeed, filtering out the wildly illegible statuses and photos of newborn babies, you've felt a twinge of jealousy at a picture your arch nemesis posted of their incredible new apartment/adorable dog/sweet new job/flowers delivered.
We've all been there.
Now, a new study has revealed that most people on FB feel this way- there's a huge trend concerning Facebook and how users of the social media site feel about themselves.
A research team at the University of Michigan looked at people who experienced low self-esteem the more they used Facebook, the Los Angeles Times reported on Thursday.
For two weeks, people's moods got worse with every click. Every minute users looked around Facebook, they became more saddened and stressed, despite how many friends they had, how much their friends contributed to their page, or how often people got in touch with them.
This, according to University of Michigan social psychologist Ethan Kross, who headed up the study, was a key factor in the way folks used Facebook and, more importantly, felt about both themselves and the social media site.
"We were able to show on a moment-to-moment basis throughout the day how people's mood fluctuated depending on their Facebook usage," Kross said. "We measured lots and lots of other personality and behavioral dimensions, like, for example, frequency of Facebook use. But none of the factors that we assessed influenced the results. The more you used Facebook, the more your mood dropped."
Other studies have also examined the effect of social media on notions of the self. A recent study detailed the self-affirming aspect of looking at your own profile, while another suggested that people who use Facebook are more content with their lives and are more willing to participate in political discussions.
But the results of this study were undeniable-the more the 82 college-aged volunteers used Facebook, the more they felt lonely.
"The negative effect of Facebook use on happiness became more pronounced the more you interacted with other people within that time frame," Kross said.
University of Wisconsin communication researcher Catalina Toma said that the way people portray themselves online usually holds heightened senses of self-in other words, folks make their lives look cooler online by posting photos and witty retorts.
"Instead of doing a person-to-person profile, you're comparing a profile and a person," Toma told the LA Times.
