Many are aware that social media poses a lot of pressure on people and, in spite of the initial aim to reconnect with old friends, social media has become one of the many causes for depression. Believe it or not, a professor and his research collaborators have finally made what many have known about the dangers of Social Networking Sites (SNS) official: Facebook and other SNS' really can be a bad for a person's well-being.
The people behind the study are Professor Izak Benbasat from the University of British Columbia's Sauder School of Business and his collaborators, Peter Buxmann, Hanna Krasnova, Helena Wenninger and Thomas Widjaja. According to "Why Following Friends Can Hurt You: An Exploratory Investigation of the Effects of Envy on Social Networking Sites among College-Age Users," the root cause of the negativity is envy.
Of course, it doesn't apply to everyone but it is also undeniable that the reason is valid. "[The study] uses social comparison theory and the responses of 1,193 college-age Facebook users to investigate the role of envy in the SNS context," the abstract explains. They asked their respondents a series of questions and what they found is that much of their increased use of social media is motivated by the envy they feel when they see their connections having a blast. This will motivate them to post things that make their lives look better and, in turn, would also create envy.
"So there's a cycle going on. So you feel envious and now you are trying to make other people feel envious to compensate," Benbasat said. According to the result from the respondents, the most envy-inducing posts are travel photos which, while they serve to share highlights of your life, tend to cause others who don't currently have the same luxury of time and finances to become jealous and attempt to compensate with their own travel photos and experiences when their turn comes.
"Parents and teachers should take note as young people can be particularly vulnerable to the dark side of social media," Benbasat warned.
Perhaps, now that a sound study backs up the idea that SNS activities lead to depression and anxiety, people would be more careful with how they use their social media accounts.
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