Misconceptions make Facebook perfect scapegoat

In June 2013, Facebook’s daily active users reached 699 million on average, while the number of mobile daily active users topped at 469 million. Thanks to the success of the company’s apps for smart phones, mobile income as a percentage of ad revenue totalled 41 per cent, and is now poised to outstrip income from desktop platforms. Facebook ended the quarter with a big “Like” – US$10.3 billion in cash and short-term investments, leaving it very well capitalised, but also as a never-ending source of dislikes among parents, researchers and media watchdogs. How cool is that?

According to a recent study conducted by the University of Michigan and the Leuven University in Belgium, the social media powerhouse should be blamed as a growing cause of depression, particularly among teenagers who spend too much time online. As expected, the study concludes that the more someone uses Facebook, the less satisfied he (or she) is with life.

Yet, do you agree with the opposite statement – the more direct social contacts you have with others on the phone or in person, the more likely you are to feel positive? That doesn’t make much sense either. Last year, a Taiwanese woman killed herself on her 31st birthday by inhaling poisonous fumes while chatting with friends on Facebook and none of them alerted authorities. Her postings just indicated she was unhappy with her boyfriend who had failed to return home for her birthday.

This sad example, however, demonstrates how our misconceptions of social media tend to dictate our perceptions. Even if we agree that those who might feel a discrepancy between the social interactions they have and those that they desire tend to spend more time observing other people’s interactions, this study fails to clearly demonstrate whether the loneliness causes the clicking, or the clicking causes the loneliness.

Another example of overstatements regarding social media is the case of vacation photos in news feed, which researchers at Humboldt University and Darmstadt Technical University in Germany say are the most common causes of resentment and bitterness on Facebook. They found that “the most common emotion associated with Facebook use is envy, with one in three people feeling worse and more dissatisfied with their lives after visiting the site”.

No one can deny that Facebook amplifies our “fear of missing out” on something, but if that’s the case, their articles should read “surfing holiday photos causes depression,” not “using Facebook causes depression”. In other words, the correlation between surfing Facebook and feeling depressed must seem interesting, but it doesn’t necessarily mean causation. Facebook is a way to make superficial friends. True. The dynamics of meeting on Facebook cause you to judge social friends by their appearance. True. A profile is easily manipulated to project what the user wants others to perceive about them. True.

Yet, researchers have also found that a well-groomed Facebook profile can result in a boost to self-esteem; “Unlike a mirror, which reminds us of who we really are and may have a negative effect on self-esteem if that image does match with our ideal,” according to Jeffrey Hancock, associate professor of communication at Cornell University, who argues that Facebook can help you show a positive version of yourself, as “the fairest of them all”.

For sure, we can argue that it’s Facebook specifically that’s making you depressed – it’s not everything else. The nasty tweets; the ex-friends you can’t get rid of; the cyber-bullying on Ask.fm; the indexing of everything you do or say, or the photo of you, passed out on the floor of a bar that will exist on the Web until the next ice age.

We focus on Facebook because it’s the largest and most information-packed of our 21st-century social networks, but that only makes Facebook Exhibit A in a future where we’re all hyper-connected. We’ve all felt the pangs of envy or depression that Internet-induced FOMO provides. Facebook is just the perfect scapegoat.