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Why is everyone trying to ruin Facebook’s most popular pastime? Apparently, friend stalking is making Facebook users depressed. According to a new study out of Stamford, looking at other people’s happy moments and commentary on Facebook only makes people feel bad.
Dear sad Facebook users: You’re doing it wrong.
“Misery Has More Company Than People Think,” a paper in the January issue of Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, has found that most Facebook users only post positive items on their pages. So when others surf their content, they have a “grass is always greener” moment and start feeling worse about their real life, that is full of ups and downs and crappy moments.
According to Slate:
Jordan and his fellow researchers asked 80 freshmen to report whether they or their peers had recently experienced various negative and positive emotional events. Time and again, the subjects underestimated how many negative experiences (“had a distressing fight,” “felt sad because they missed people”) their peers were having. They also overestimated how much fun (“going out with friends,” “attending parties”) these same peers were having.
Here’s the problem. Facebook stalking is an addictive pastime. Once you’re in someone’s pages, it is incredibly hard to stop clicking. That is why you need to choose your victims carefully. And monitor your settings so that images of happy exboyfriends do not pop up in your feed.
Social media schadenfreude only works when you’re staring at photos that will make you feel GOOD. So to reiterate:
- Photos of hot girls from high school who are now fat: Good!
- Images of your last boyfriend in the Caribbean with his new girlfriend: Bad!
- Reading about people from high school who never did anything with their lives: Good!
- Wandering onto the page of your nemesis to see what s/he is doing right now: Could go either way. Tread carefully!
- Wall photos of your high school boyfriend who is now ugly and divorced: Good!
Ok. Now carry on!
