People who are lonely in their real lives are more likely to use Facebook and other social networking sites to deal with their loneliness, a new study finds.
The study was conducted by researchers from the University of Wisconsin. The researchers noted that because many people are lonely in their real lives, they tend to use Facebook to find new friends with common likes, dislikes and interests. Previous studies have established that social networking sites have a huge role to play in making people feel isolated. However, researchers of the new study found that Facebook does not cause loneliness and people use the social network in an effort to feel more connected.
"Compared to non-lonely people, lonely people spend more time on Facebook. Lonely individuals who are shy or have low social support may turn to Facebook to compensate for their lack of social skills and/or social networks in face-to-face settings," explained Hayeon Song, assistant professor of communication at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee in the US, according to NDTV.
For the study, researchers looked into a collection of analyses that examined the connection between Facebook and loneliness. They were surprised to find that the lonelier someone is, the longer he or she spends time on Facebook.
"The interesting point of this study is that it both supports and corrects the original internet study, which is one of the most influential studies in internet research and was produced by researchers at the Carnegie Mellon University," stressed Song.
"To the question of whether or not the internet increases psychological dysfunctions such as loneliness, the internet study suggested that internet use has detrimental effects. Our study supports this in that internet use is associated with loneliness," Song maintained.
"However, we found the previously suggested causal direction to be erroneous: lonely people spend more time on the internet rather than internet use making people lonely," the researchers concluded.
Findings of the study were published online in the journal Computers in Human Behavior.
