Social media makes people unhappy, especially if used passively: UBCO study

The more a person uses social media, the unhappier they are likely to feel, a new UBC Okanagan study has found.

Speaking to people face-to-face or over the phone, however, was found to improve people’s emotional state.

But the research – by Derrick Wirtz, associate professor of teaching in psychology at the university – found that social media isn’t necessarily all bad.

What really matters is how people use it – with passivity (eg, looking but not interacting) being the worst method of all.

Wirtz’s study, which was recently published in the Journal of Happiness Studies, focused on three platforms: Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

“Social network sites are an integral part of everyday life for many people around the world,” he said.

“Every day, billions of people interact with social media. Yet the widespread use of social network sites stands in sharp contrast to a comparatively small body of research on how this use impacts a person’s happiness.”

Wirtz said face-to-face contact is now “matched or exceeded” by online interactions.

But he found that while people tend to derive happiness from physical encounters, online interactions lead to negative feelings among some users.

One of the reasons is indulgence in social comparison, Wirtz explained.

He added: “Viewing images and updates that selectively portray others positively may lead social media users to underestimate how much others actually experience negative emotions and lead people to conclude that their own life — with its mix of positive and negative feelings — is, by comparison, not as good.”

Viewing other people’s posts without interacting with them sparks comparisons, often unfavourable, and yet does not provide the mood-boosting benefits of social interaction, Wirtz said.

“Passive use, scrolling through others’ posts and updates, involves little person-to-person reciprocal interaction while providing ample opportunity for upward comparison.”

As part of his research, study participants were asked about four specific functions of Facebook — checking a news feed, messaging, catching up on world news and posting status or picture updates.

The most frequently used function was passively checking the news feed.

Participants primarily used Facebook without directly connecting with other users, and the negative effects on subjective well-being were consistent with this form of use.

“The three social network sites examined — Facebook, Twitter and Instagram — yielded remarkably convergent findings,” he said.

“The more respondents had recently used these sites, either in aggregate or individually, the more negative effect they reported when they responded to our randomly-timed surveys over a 10-day period.”

Offline social interaction had precisely the opposite effect of using social media.

But that doesn’t mean people should completely cut social media out of their lives.

“If we all remember to do that, the negative impact of social media use could be reduced — and social networks sites could even have the potential to improve our well-being and happiness,” he added.

“In other words, we need to remember how we use social media has the potential to shape the effects on our day-to-day happiness.”