In case you forgot it, five years ago a Facebook study...
…confirmed what was already obvious.
Five years ago, H.B. Shakya and N.A. Christakis published their study about “Association of Facebook Use With Compromised Well-Being”. Five years later, I have a tiny feeling that it may be useful to list its most interesting findings, in the simplest possible way:
- “overall, the use of Facebook was negatively associated with well-being”
- increases in the numbers of:
- “likes clicked” (clicking “like” on someone else’s content),
- “links clicked” (clicking a link to another site or article),
- or “status updates” (updating one’s own Facebook status)
- was associated with a decrease in self-reported mental health
- “Exposure to the carefully curated images from others' lives leads to negative self-comparison, and the sheer quantity of social media interaction may detract from more meaningful real-life experiences”
What else? Just one thing
The only, equally obvious thing that is missing from that report, and not its fault of course, is this:
those findings apply to EVERY “social media platform” that is built on the same criteria, that is user addiction.
Sources of quotes and images, and suggested reading:
Who writes this, why, and how to help
I am Marco Fioretti, tech writer and aspiring polymath doing human-digital research and popularization.
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