Facebook Makes Us All Sad Because Everyone Is Happy But Us

by Leila Brillson on January 28, 2011 at 01:45 PM

As a young woman in her mid-twenties, up to her ears in a career and living in the mile-a-minute metropolis of New York, in many ways, I am "living the dream." But like all of us, I log into my Facebook and see the myriad friends I left at home. One, in particular, let's call her Stella, just had her second baby, seems to have a preternaturally close relationship with her husband, and spends her day designing clothing from her home. How happy she must be, I think. Gosh, her life must be perfect. And then I feel sad for my work-oriented existence.

Not long ago, after posting a work-related status update, I received a message from Stella, who wrote: "I'm always amazed at how happy and successful you are. You look great, and I'm sure you are making all of your dreams come true. Sometimes I wish I would have left (our town), maybe I wouldn't be stuck in such a crap situation." A crap situation? But she looked so happy! Thus, the Facebook conundrum.

The January issue of Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin includes a study by a PhD student at Stanford who investigated a two-fold phenomenon. First of all, we hand-pick our Facebook statuses and pictures to make us into the best versions of ourselves. (Duh.) Second, looking at the similarly idealized spread of our friends' lives can make us depressed, simply because we tend to think that everyone is more happy than us. The study's director, Alex Jordan, told Slate, "[The subjects] were convinced that everyone else was leading a perfect life." In the three-part study, participants first reported that they hid their negative emotions more than their positive ones, because they underestimated how distressed their peers were. Though acknowledging they kept their sad feelings at bay, the third study investigated the correlation between how happy a subject perceived her peers to be and how unhappy that made them. Misery, it appears, doesn't like company as much as once thought.

Facebook, and social networking in general, serves as a great pile of salt to be rubbed in our collective wounds. Slate points out that the inherent one-upmanship of the site promotes positivity and sharing of good news, not bad. It has a "Like" button, not a "Hate" button. It celebrates the sanctity of friendship. Heck, it even tracks the evolution of a relationship (but unceremoniously dumps it after a split). All in all, Facebook, and the way we edit our profile pages, is meant to display the joyfulness of life (whereas, if I may posit, MySpace, with its moody and edited backgrounds and loud music serving as atmosphere, made it much easier to illustrate doubt and sadness). This tendency, says Stanford psychologists, make us feel like the metaphorical girl who chose career over family and gets to see all of her friends' loving and perfect children/husbands/houses-without-cockroaches every time she logs on to The Book. Metaphorically, that is.

Thus, by making working at creating the best Facebook versions of ourselves, we are perpetuating, as Slate eloquently puts, a digital keeping-up-with-the-Joneses. The shiny, happy world of Facebook may be both its appeal and its major downfall: without it, we might forget how much "fun" everyone else is having compared to our miserable blogger existence.

Tags: facebook, happiness, mental health, MentalHealth, psychology, SocialNetworking, stanford, web

source: Slate

Comments

TheOCEANisMUSICJan 31st 2011 2:35PM

Neutral

Well-intentioned but misguided.

Facebook is just offering a new tool with which people can exercise the muscles of their pre-existing self-perceptions.

A person who is obsessively narcissistic can perhaps abuse it for their own skewed self-image or to intentionally make others feel smaller, for example, but that person was already screwed up in the first place.

Likewise, a person who by nature has developed strong coping skills and positive self-image in life, can look at things like Friendship Pages or their own old history, and feel the glow of accomplishment, connection, and optimism.

Granted, people who tend to feel inadequate could probably benefit from time off from Facebook. But they benefit more from the kind of therapy & social support network that helps relieve their sense of inadequacy.

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JoseMar 31st 2011 5:01AM

Neutral

This explains it all http://vimeo.com/10601416

the happiness fallacy, oldest trick in the book ;-)

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street4life.nlApr 1st 2011 2:02PM

Neutral

Facebook should be renamed to Fakebook as I like to call it. I've learned that "friends" on fakebook are actually noisy individuals who want to know all about your life. If you come across these fakebook friends in real life no words are exchanged. Fakebook is all about pretending to be interested in someone's well being, political & religious perspective & judging simply by a moment captured in a photo. The research clearly is in support of the Facebook site, this is why the researcher painted the site in such a positive light. I thank God I don't have a Fakebook account.

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ClaudiaApr 17th 2011 7:36AM

Neutral

Facebook can be like an endless stream of Christmas letters. And is more geared towards middle of the road people. Myspace was too close to the edge... (the old one anyway).

But-- Facebook has good points. I have re-connected with some friends from long ago.

My biggest complaint -- some people are so paranoid about sharing anything. Its hard to meet new people. But I guess if they are THAT uptight - I probably don't want to be their friend.

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