THE amount of time you spend on social media sites impacts your mental health.
That’s the revelation by one of the leading universities in the US, the University of Houston, in its recent survey where it found that more time spent on Facebook caused depression.
According to the university researcher Mai-Ly Steers, this kind of social comparison paired with the amount of time spent on Facebook may be linked to depressive symptoms.
“The social media site, Facebook, can be an effective tool for connecting with new and old friends. However, some users may find themselves spending quite a bit of time viewing Facebook and may inevitably begin comparing what’s happening in their lives to the activities and accomplishments of their friends,” Ms Mai-Ly Steers said.
The researcher conducted two studies to investigate how social comparison with peers on Facebook might impact users’ psychological health.
Both studies provide evidence that Facebook users felt depressed when comparing themselves to others.
“It doesn’t mean Facebook causes depression, but that depressed feelings and lots of time on Facebook and comparing oneself to others tend to go hand in hand,” she said in her research made available to this newspaper.
The first study found an association between time spent on Facebook and depressive symptoms for both genders.
However, the results demonstrated that making Facebook social comparisons mediated the link between time spent on Facebook and depressive symptoms for men only.
Similarly, the second study found a relationship between the amount of time spent on Facebook and depressive symptoms was mediated by social comparisons on Facebook. Unlike the first study, gender did not moderate these associations.
“One danger is that Facebook often gives us information about our friends that we are not normally privy to, which gives us even more opportunities to socially compare. You can’t really control the impulse to compare because you never know what your friends are going to post. In addition, most of our Facebook friends tend to post about the good things that occur in their lives, while leaving out the bad.
“If we’re comparing ourselves to our friends’ ‘highlight reels’, this may lead us to think their lives are better than they actually are and conversely, make us feel worse about our own lives.”
Fijian psychologist Selina Kuruleca said the research and its support that the continued use of Facebook and social media contributed to depressive symptoms was well documented.
“It must be stated that it is not the use of Facebook per se that leads to depressive symptoms but rather the continued experience of reading about the positive things that people post about themselves that may lead users to experience envy of the activities and lifestyles of their friends on Facebook. These people are more likely to report feelings of depression,” Ms Kuruleca said.
She said Facebook was a great communication and networking resource, but if it was used as a way to measure how one was doing, as in comparing oneself and achievements with others could have a negative effect.
“Some of these negative feelings that people may have include feelings of envy that leads them to feel inferior to others, that it’s unfair that some people seem to have all the fun; people would become bothered about things that usually didn’t bother them and because more time was spent on the internet, less time on building and nurturing people and relationships in real time, people had neglected these real relationships.
“So when they wanted to talk to people in real time, they didn’t have that relationship base and hence would tend to talk less.”
