Facebook just admitted that using Facebook can be bad for you
Facebook just admitted that using Facebook can be bad for
you
Facebook said on Friday that there are certain use cases
of the social network that can be bad for your health.
It also found that some use-cases can be positive,
specifically social interaction, and said it's going to work to improve those
features.
By Todd Haselton December 15, 2017 CNBC.com
Facebook admitted on Thursday that using its social network
can be bad for you in some instances.
Facebook's director of research David Ginsberg and
research scientist Moira Burke published a post in which they addressed
questions about the impact Facebook has on our moods, and revealed some
compelling information.
"University of Michigan students randomly assigned
to read Facebook for 10 minutes were in a worse mood at the end of the day than
students assigned to post or talk to friends on Facebook," the blog post
said. "A study from UC San Diego and Yale found that people who clicked on
about four times as many links as the average person, or who liked twice as
many posts, reported worse mental health than average in a survey."
In other words, if you're using Facebook to mindlessly
browse through your feed or click posts, you may end up in a foul mood after.
Facebook also worked with Carnegie Mellon University for
additional insight, and found that "people who sent or received more
messages, comments and timeline posts reported improvements in social support,
depression and loneliness." Likewise, Facebook said students at Cornell
who used Facebook for 5 minutes while viewing their own profiles saw
"boosts in self-affirmation," while folks who looked at other
profiles did not.
In other words, using Facebook to interact with people --
as opposed to just "browsing" as the University of Michigan study
analyzed -- seemed to have a positive effect on people.
Facebook's blog post follows criticisms from former
Facebook exec Chamath Palihapitiya, who said recently that social networks such
as Facebook are "starting to erode the social fabric of how society
works" and that they're "ripping apart" society. Palihapitiya
has since walked back those remarks.
Facebook says it's going to take this data and work to
encourage more social interaction among users in an effort to cut down on those
who spend it to waste time and, ultimately, feel worse after.
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