Slashdot Mirror
Narcissists, Insecure People Flock To Facebook
Meshach writes "A study out of Canada claims that Facebook is a magnet for narcissists and people with low self-esteem. The theory is that these people use the site as a means of self promotion or to feel important."
I found facebook as a great place to reconnect for the first time with girls that used to be pretty in high school, clinging to their pregnancy photos as though they were my own children, laughing with them.. printing them out and putting them on my fridge.. It's also a great place to have a decent, private conversation with your best friend's mom without him "getting all weird about this". A place for adults to communicate as they wish. A place for grownups.
slashdot: where everyone yells sarcastic metaphors to themselves to understand the issue
You're so vain, you probably think this post is about you.
They're extrapolating too far outside the sample. The sample was 100 university students. They don't adequately represent the population that uses Facebook. Plus, we have no idea how they ranked the narcissism and self-esteem listed in TFA. If narcissism was determined by how much you tell other people about what you do, of course people using Facebook would rank highly on that scale.
It's called the scientific method. Maybe you've heard of it. It requires you to not believe something just because everyone knows it.
They needed a fucking study to see that ?
If they said it without a study we'd have a bunch of "[citation please]" followed by sarcastic comments that a few anecdotes are meaningless, and how they happen know a bunch of humble self-assured people who use facebook a lot too.
So yes, they needed a fucking study. Its how we separate truth from truthiness. Science at work. Just because it confirms what most people might beleive is true doesn't make it unworthy of study. Sometimes looking into things that most people believe is true has surprising results.