Facebook has us hooked, but it has not really made a big splash among psychologists. It has had the reputation of being a kill-joy, said to increase people's envy and inciting people to feel that they are wasting time.
As experts explain: "People commit an affective forecasting error in that they expect to feel better after using Facebook, whereas, in fact, they feel worse."
However, recently Facebook has been linked with increasing happiness, depending on public users' levels of involvement. Hence, if friends comment or reply in response to other posts, instead of just clicking on 'like', it is found that people feel better.
"Receiving targeted, composed communication from strong ties was associated with improvements in well-being while viewing friends' wide-audience broadcasts and receiving one-click feedback were not," Moira Burke, a data scientist at Facebook, and Robert Kraut, the Herbert A. Simon Professor of Human-Computer Interaction at Carnegie Mellon University, write in the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication. "These results suggest that people derive benefits from online communication, as long as it comes from people they care about and has been tailored for them."
Burke and Kraut point out that there are some advantages in social media. They give us a feeling o 'belonging' and keep our relationships on balance. They also provide us with social support. The flip side is that it could also make us feel low and sad about our own selves, through what is called "social comparison". Looking at our friends' posts and feeling envious of their family and social lives could make us feel lousy.
Examining data on 1,910 adult Facebook users, who were part of Facebook's response to well-being, health, and recent major life events, the analysts looked at three aspects of such communication: "composed communication, including posts, comments, and messages received from a friend; one-click communication, such as likes and pokes; and broadcast communication, which included viewing friends' profiles, clicking on links in their news feeds, and so on."
Hence, communication can be sent either through personalized messages from close friends, or through other kinds such as likes, which could be inconsistent or statistically weak.
"[S]imply reading about friends, receiving text communication from weak ties, and receiving one-click communication did not affect well-being," the researchers write, "while receiving personalized, effortful communication from close friends was linked to improvements in well-being."
