Does Facebook Really Make Us Happy?

            Facebook, as we all know, is an extremely easy tool for connecting with friends and family all over the world.  Communication has become so much quicker and continual with the advent of social media platforms, such as Facebook; however, paying too much attention to your Facebook friends' updates could be bad for your mental health, according to a new study published by the University of Missouri.  Constantly scrolling through your news feed and looking at your friends’ posts has actually made many users experience feelings of depression or envy.  As a college student, I can see how this could especially affect young adults around my age because we are continuously bombarded by images of our partying, attending events, traveling and more.

            When we log onto Facebook, it is hard to avoid comparing ourselves to others when scrolling through the newsfeed.  For the majority of Facebook users, and social media users in general, we carefully craft our posts so that they showcase only the positive events in our lives.   We are able to fully control the ways in which we are perceived online and our posts may not often reflect a true representation of who we are or what is going on in our lives.  Human beings always enjoy sharing a good story, and when we post on Facebook it is almost like we are writing a positive narrative of our lives.

            The constant stream of positive posts from our friends can certainly make us feel bad about ourselves.   On Facebook and other social media platforms, it seems as though everything is wonderful for everyone else and all of their lives are amazing.  Although there are some people who express feelings of anger or misery in posts on Facebook, such as complaints about the horrible morning commute, most of us tend to share positive posts.  We all witness the declarations of love and happiness on peoples’ anniversaries, pictures of happy couples and giggling babies, and snapshots of friends on expensive vacations.   Sometimes it is hard for us not to consistently compare ourselves to others.

            Although it is easier said than done, for those of us who tend to linger on Facebook and look at the “wonderful” lives of our friends, it is important to try and put blinders on while viewing these posts.   Our Facebook newsfeed from friends has distorted our view of reality. We constantly encounter a steady drip of friends posting their adventures and this makes us feel like we are missing out on something.  It is important to remember that what we see are just pleasant snapshots of peoples’ lives, and not the entire picture.