A new study by the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, revealed that spending enormous time on Facebook will eventually lead to jealousy, unhappiness and sadness.
The term, ‘Facebook envy’ which emerges from comparing our lives to the unrealistic posts by many of the 1.7 billion active monthly users of the social media platform started by Mark Zuckerberg is commonplace. And leads to depression.
The highlights of the study which corroborated other researches on social media are:
- 1, 095 participants across Denmark took part in the research.
- 86 percent of the participants were ladies.
- The average age of respondents was 34, and they had a median of 350 Facebook friends.
- Half of the respondents were asked to abstain from using Facebook for a week.
- And those who took a break reported a happier feeling of well-being than those who didn’t take time off.
- The study found that the connectedness promoted by the medium is negative, as Facebook envy emerged from comparison of lives.
- Constant engagement on Facebook led to envy, jealousy, sadness, unhappiness and depression.