Easily lost in Facebook's hall of mirrors

A recent study in northern Europe has confirmed what we already knew, or at least suspected – that people are, for the most part, better off without Facebook. Released a few days ago, the findings from a survey of more than 1,000 Danes found that most people became “happier” after they stayed away from the social sharing site. 

Since a significant number of those surveyed also indicated they felt no adverse effect from logging on regularly, the results do not automatically represent a damning verdict on the world’s most popular social network, but they do underline the need to better understand and utilise the service.

Facebook early this year announced that its active daily users had topped more than a billion. The number is certainly not about to shrink, despite earlier analyses showing that users often suffer stress, sadness and envy while reading about their friends’ setbacks and achievements. 

The Danish study, conducted by the Germany-based Happiness Research Institute, adds weight to the belief that Facebook – not unlike television and, to a lesser extent, newspapers – can be both a source of despair and strangely addictive at the same time.

In this latest survey, half the Danish volunteers carried on using Facebook normally and the other half gave it up. A week later, 88 per cent of the latter group and 81 per cent of the former felt “happy”. 

One of the reasons why Facebook users get depressed is that they see other people leading lives seemingly more joyful or successful than their own. Such a reaction flies in the face of common sense, of course, since most of the people posting their news online naturally present rosier pictures of their lives – “highlight reels”. Perhaps this wilful ignorance of human nature is the more telling revelation in the study. 

It takes little to trigger envy and jealousy, but, as the institute’s chief executive, Meik Wiking, points out, “Facebook is a constant bombardment of everybody else’s great news, and many of us look out the window and see grey skies and rain.”

What’s seldom evident in studies of the online-sharing phenomenon is the fact that the people who feel miserable have only themselves to blame, not their friends or the social networks. They fail to recognise that Facebook, for all its acknowledged merits, can be a hall of mirrors, where users readily don and discard disguises. Vacation photos, images of striking facial makeup and bold political opinions abound, all in the cause of presenting oneself in the most interesting possible light. Self-aggrandisement is the norm, self-deprecation a rarity.

Through sheer volume of uploads, the social media have compounded an element of life that’s always been around. In the past, days would pass between hearing about one friend’s trip to Switzerland and another’s purchase of a new car. Now all the enviable announcements come within minutes, and it’s easy to feel like you’re the only person in the crowd with nothing to brag about.

As long as envy over friends’ accomplishments and dismay at their political views don’t fester into pathological plots or harmful self-hatred, there’s really little to worry about here. However, users of the social networks should strive to always present a realistic picture of their lives to the world, neither diluted nor distorted. Friendships and other close relationships are at stake. More crucially, if postings are skewed, the reactions to them will be, and so too the society they’re shaping.