Study Shows Facebook Increases Self Esteem

[Cat of Doom]

yeah iv NOTICED

All the fat, lame ass losers from my school, who are about as fun and interesting as my dad, are loud, extravert, and just seem to love taking gazillionz of photos of themselves, all from above shots so you cant see how fat they are, then photoshopping the shit out of it, on facebook.

 

[Natdaprat]

EDIT: I noticed the article doesn't really mention how they tested for anything, basically it went like this. The people in the study wrote short essays that would be reviewed after they were finished, one group was allowed to take a Facebook break while the other wasn't, and the people who stopped to check Facebook were able to better handle the reviewers tearing into them and attacking their work with non-constructive criticism after. That may not be exactly how it went, for one thing I'm not sure if they actually wrote the essay there or had a preexisting essay critiqued, but that's the basic gist of the study.

That certainly sounds better than the study I read here. How is staring at a blank screen or a mirror a study?! That'd bore me senseless and make me jealous of the kids who get to go on facebook and stalk people. That would lower my self esteem.

And I thought this was obvious, why else would people use it? When someone posts "Just got a new tattoo with ma girlyz!!" and get 10 likes, that will make them feel better about themselves. Or anyone likes their pictures. It's simple human behaviour.

 

[Rotting Corpse]

So....they proved that updating facebook will temporarily increase your self esteem more than...staring at a blank monitor? Who the hell gave these researchers money? This is easily the stupidest thing I've heard all week. Of course updating your facebook status is gonna make you feel better about yourself, you were comparing it to people STARING AT BLANK MONITORS!

 

[znix]

Lol what a stupid study. If people had been playing some cool game instead of facebook, they would probably have come away feeling good about themselves as well. It sure as hell beats staring at a blank monitor or a mirror. Come on now, practically ANYTHING would be more exciting than their two ultra boring alternatives.

 

[Geeky Anomaly]

I really don't see how these results can be viewed as viable. If I had a choice of staring at a blank screen, looking into a mirror, or updating a profile...you bet actually doing something would be more interesting. I'm no psych major, but I think a better test would have been to subject 3 groups to different activities. Say perhaps, watching TV, reading a book and updating their profiles; then seeing if updating one's facebook page affected them differently than the other activities. Because that's what facebook is, it's an activity; it fills our free time slots. They were comparing one activity to 2 non-activities. That's apples and oranges. I realize that the subjects didn't have a choice in the matter; but I still think that the results are skewed because the people in charge of the experiment took things a bit too literally.

"In all 3 activities, they are LOOKING AT SOMETHING, that is the common denominator for our control groups!"

 

[pacati]

Perfect example of a bad study. They asked the wrong questions as they conceived the study.

The main problem is, if facebook is making you feel inferior, you usually stop using facebook. They only studied people who were actively using facebook. So of COURSE it's great for THEM.

 

[draythefingerless]

This study is wrong in so many levels. Psychology and psychoanalisis have become so full of bullshit.

Perfect example of a bad study. They asked the wrong questions as they conceived the study.

The main problem is, if facebook is making you feel inferior, you usually stop using facebook. They only studied people who were actively using facebook. So of COURSE it's great for THEM.

I really don't see how these results can be viewed as viable. If I had a choice of staring at a blank screen, looking into a mirror, or updating a profile...you bet actually doing something would be more interesting. I'm no psych major, but I think a better test would have been to subject 3 groups to different activities. Say perhaps, watching TV, reading a book and updating their profiles; then seeing if updating one's facebook page affected them differently than the other activities. Because that's what facebook is, it's an activity; it fills our free time slots. They were comparing one activity to 2 non-activities. That's apples and oranges. I realize that the subjects didn't have a choice in the matter; but I still think that the results are skewed because the people in charge of the experiment took things a bit too literally.

"In all 3 activities, they are LOOKING AT SOMETHING, that is the common denominator for our control groups!"

nuff said.

 

[Unrulyhandbag]

Well at the very least it's nice to hear a study about technology that doesn't make you a depressed, homicidal loser for once

depends how you read it. That study result could easily and just as accurately be written, "lying on internet makes you feel like a better person" and then the press could feed it to the public as "FACEBOOK UNDERMINES SOCIAL VALUES!!!".

Personally I rarely use facebook and never lie on it but I'm a depressive that picks his friends carefully anyway and prefers meeting face to face, so that just reinforces the above.