Slashdot Mirror
Number of Facebook Friends Linked To Anxiety
Hugh Pickens writes writes "WebProNews reports that according to a new survey, the more Facebook friends you have, the more likely you are to feel stressed out by the site. 'The results threw up a number of paradoxes,' says Dr Kathy Charles, who led the study. 'For instance, although there is great pressure to be on Facebook there is also considerable ambivalence amongst users about its benefits.' Causes of stress included deleting unwanted contacts, the pressure to be entertaining, and having to use appropriate etiquette for different types of friends. 'Like gambling, Facebook keeps users in a neurotic limbo, not knowing whether they should hang on in there just in case they miss out on something good.'"
Information overload and a vague sense of ill-defined obligation leads to stress...
Really, any reason this is surprising?
Does having a witty signature really indicate normality?
"Facebook keeps users in a neurotic limbo, not knowing whether they should hang on in there just in case they miss out on something good"
Just like slashdot. Been here for years and I'm still waiting ;)
Cheers, Chris
Especially at Valentine's day unless everything is very traditional and normal.
And then there are groups of friends who do not get along but share you.
I find it stressful.
Debating whether to withdraw or not. It doesn't seem to be providing a lot of benefit.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
I dont find the amount of FB friends I have stressful, nor do I find deleting any of them stressful. I think people need to start reconnecting with the real world if they suffer stress from such things. Then again, the real world is a lot more stressful... maybe they should keep wasting their time on FB worrying about such "stressful" things - it's a lot less stress than the real world nowadays.
StarTrekPhase2 - The Five Year Mission Continues!
According to a new survey!? This has been going on as long as humans have been around (hello, social creatures?). This is nothing new, and certainly not limited to Facebook.
...the more Slashdot friends you have, the more likely you are to feel stressed out by the site.
if you do something a lot, it may start to feel like a burden, and it's likely to generate stress
but I really don't see the value in studying how people use facebook.
Its an experiment in behavioral psychology. One where the rat gets a shock no matter which lever it presses.
Have gnu, will travel.
Either delete your account, or better still take my approach and don't sign up in the first place.
After all, what's wrong with being a hermit?
I generally support just about any kind of scientific work, but I really don't see the value in studying how people use facebook. We all know it is for the most part a tremendous waste of time; I'm not sure what we have to gain by looking into how people use it.
I don't know if I'd say that. I have a lot of FB friends, about 80-90% of whom I've met in person at one point or another (I travel a lot and meet a lot of people, plus former classmates and colleagues, and people I'm attempting to connect with for the first time that I *should* know... Alumni from a group that I'm the Alumni outreach coordinator for).
Facebook in particular, and social networking in general, is the most efficient way known to man to maintain contact and a semblance of a relationship to a large number of people at once in a back-and-forth, interactive manner.
It's a time-waster if you sit there and just play social network games on it (Skinner Boxes). For the most part, I don't. I'm keeping up with the feed, commenting, liking, sharing, and re-posting. (It also helps that I have a job where I can keep a FB window open all day in-between other activities.
Maybe I just have more interesting friends than you? Or would otherwise work harder at keeping up with them? Don't know... But FB isn't a "tremendous waste of time" for me.
Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
Probably because they didn't know how to make their profile private and unsearchable so now they are getting friend requests from their bosses, family members etc... You really can't be yourself around them usually and a lot of people get fired over saying silly things like that one thing on the news today "teacher gets suspended over saying that some of her students are lazy whiners on her blog". lol, it is amazing how easy it is to get fired or suspended these days over trivial matter.
"although there is great pressure to be on Facebook" Um... since when? I still don't use it and probably never will. Who has the time for it? Slashdot on the other hand... oh crap!
I have zero Facebook friends and zero stress about it. QED
It became clear to me last year that 99% of facebook posts are absolute drivel. Facebook functionality could be used to define the word unutile. I went from daily check in's last summer, which slowed eventually to once a month. I deactivated my account in December.
I'm ditching my HTC desire because you can't uninstall facebook app unless I root it.
For all the facebook lovers out there I can only say that I feel really sorry for you.
i'm a new commer
I never have any stress because I don't have Facebook.
-- Cheers!
For starters it is a very convenient laboratory to test social networking theories. Do current theories about social networks in the real world apply in the virtual world? What aspects of virtual social networks apply to the real world? Theories about those aspects that do apply can potentially be tested much more easily in the virtual world than the real world.
It's a great place to make predictions, for example, about anxiety. Do we know how social networks effect our health? Good place to try and differentiate between effects of face-to-face contact and friendship.
What can virtual social networks tell us about the real world? Can they be used to predict disease outbreaks?
People studying facebook for these kinds of things are usually not interested in facebook, but rather using it because it is a convenient way to examine social networks. Kind of like examining Drosophila in biology.
Substitute "real life groups of friends you hang out with in person" and "Facebook friends" and you have the same exact problems and anxieties.
I hope no one actually paid to conduct or review the results of that survey.
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
Like the subject says. No real paradoxes in there.
I have about 100 FB friend requests and the main prob is that a number, especially women, who I do in fact know, don't post pics or send an FR but don't have enuf info on the wall to be able to tell if it's really them or what.
And some recent local events made it so I didn't really want certain friends who weren't already FB friends to know what I was doing in the newsfeed until after I defeated their tunnel, so I left them in Pending status.
Then you get the spam fake ones and since I'm kind of known on the Net, I can't tell if they're real (and my other friends got suckered into approving the FR) or just know "of me" - I get fans in Canada and Japan and so on, which is really puzzling.
I hope FB dies soon so I can start fresh.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Thinking that people pay attention to what I'm writing might give me enormous stress. I try to stay at 1:, never above 2: Anyone who reads below 2: doesn't matter anyway.
Gently reply
Fortunately, for me, I've never bought into the whole idea of "social networks", and here's why: I don't view them as anything useful to me, as they exist now. Facebook, MySpace, etc.? Just an attempt to monetize the 'net, in the guise of making interpersonal communications "easy". And that's OK, for those of my friends that deem it useful, etc. But, I'm not buying into it, ever. Me? I'm an "old fart" - when a friend asks me to join them on such, my reply is this: "You have my personal email address, which I only give to friends. You have, in addition, my home phone number, my personal cell phone number as well. These suffice for you to contact me, whenever you wish, knowing that I WILL respond to them, because you are my friend. I have no need, nor desire, to publish the details of my life on sites that will only abuse such, nor do I wish to follow your life in excruciating detail on such beyond our interactions. It's not that I don't care, mind you, it's only that, as a friend of yours, I think I'm entitled to learn things affecting your life, your real life, in something more than posts, etc., but, I refuse to let social networks replace real life communication with my friends, as it appears to me that is
A lot of the people on facebook are there trying to promote some business or other. The sad part is, if you add up all the time invested, you see that the return is ALWAYS negative. Unless you already have a brand, you're not going to "create a brand" on facebook. So you have all these self-proclaimed "social media gurus" generally claiming that they can "promote your brand", and people buy into it because, just like individuals, they're afraid that if they don't, they'll miss something. "Everyone else is doing it, so it must be working for them ..."
Of course, the only thing they're missing is that It's all thin gruel.
If you're a business, you WANT your competitors to be investing time and energy in facebook. Not only does it make it easy to "stalk" your competition, but the time and money they're wasting there are resources diverted from elsewhere.
So it's just like it is with real life friends then.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
srsly, I started using that 'friend' button w/ people I agree with a lot so their posts sorta stand out (I read at -1 so sometimes there's a lot of crap to slog through, although curiously those posts aren't the low numbers but the higher ones). Heh, your name is enough reason to get that big green emerald on your posts.
I know who my "real" friends are on Facebook, and they're the only ones I pay close attention to (e.g. visit their pages.)
Then there are the couple hundred who share a cause. They post some interesting stuff and news articles for my feed.
And then there are another few hundred who were collected just to play that stupid "Mafia Wars" game. If I could know the difference between those who share a cause and those who were approved for the game, I'd get rid of the game "friends."
Unless you've got major self-esteem issues, I can't imagine collecting "friends" just to have a high friend count. And given the kind of drek most people post to their status, I just don't see how those virtual "friends" could possibly be satisfying.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
but number of fb profiles that cause stress. keeping all those profiles in order, remembering what nationality you are, etc can be a real pita.
There's a function called "lists" that you can use to organize (classify?) your contacts.
Here's a quick and easy way to pare down your friends list on Facebook:
"Hey, guys, I'm moving next month. Could any of you help me?"
Cut out anyone who ignores the request or doesn't give a reasonable excuse. Enjoy your friends list that's gone from three digits to nearly one!
The study does not establish causation, it finds a correlation. Without a control group it is not possible to make the conclusions stated in the article. The hypothesis is stated as a conclusion. Interesting, but flawed.
The US government have made it clear that we have no inalienable rights; any we do not defend vigorously will be taken.
Because I heard about this one kid who didn't have a single facebook friend in the world.
In his book The Lonely Crowd, Riesman postulated the existence of personality types whose sense of right and wrong developed in a way that was correlated with societal type. These personality types were distinguished based on how their sense of right and wrong developed.
In a relatively simple, pre-industrial society, individuals were "outer-directed"--they developed their sense of right and wrong from long established traditions. They thus felt *shame* when they deviated from society's expected ways of behaving.
In more advanced societies, the "inner-directed" individual developed. Competing traditions made it difficult to follow a single set of cultural rules and socialization via primary relations such as family became more important. These individuals thus had to develop an inner "gyroscope" to help them determine the expected ways of behaving. These individuals felt *guilt* when they failed to conform to their own expectations.
Lastly, in modern societies, the "other-directed" individual developed. This personality type strives to be liked, not necessarily respected. In order to gain approval of their friends, coworkers, and bosses, they strive to learn their interests/hobbies/political leanings etc. so that they may share them and become more likable.
Now for the relation to TFA--other-directed individuals feel a sense of *anxiety*. The constant desire to be liked and esteemed via developing similar interests means you have to constantly be in tune with what other people are thinking and doing. Facebook amplifies our ability to seek out and mimic the hivemind of our friends. That this may cause anxiety isn't a "paradox" as implied by the researchers--its a phenomenon suggested over sixty years ago by a sociologist.
No one questions the validity of it....
relevant paragraph:
Apparently, if you agree with something there's no need to analyze where did it come from. The conclusions per se are interesting but many are debatable and might vary greatly if we switch the social frame of the users.
TFA didn't even feel necessary to put this:
Isn't it possible to argue that students related to the subject might be more prone to over analyzing and over thinking these situations? Or maybe they're more likely to answer truthfully?
Anyway, Too small, too specific sample to end up with arguable conclusions.
"Science can amuse and fascinate us all, but it is engineering that changes the world. " - Asimov.
Causes of stress included deleting unwanted contacts
The cool thing about Facebook is the fine-grained control you have over posts. It's possible to create lists of friends, and then by default exclude them, or vice versa exclusively post to a certain list.
8 of 13 people found this answer helpful. Did you?
I have an account, but haven't logged in in... well, I can't even remember when.
I signed up on Facebook, added some friends, went through all the privacy / apps settings to lock everything down and... nothing interesting happened. I deleted my account and nobody asked me why. If my friends have something really important to say to me, I expect them to tell me face-to-face, on the phone, by email, or using our private message board, in that order. Facebook is just for progress-bar-filling-games and boring personality/trivia tests.
Interesting. Can you cite any sources that support your claim that investing in Facebook does not pay off?
Well, a lot of things that aren't surprising, also aren't true. Especially when it comes to people, stereotypes and "common sense". That's why we want to see them confirmed by actual data.
In particular, here I'd really want to know which direction the causation goes. Because it's really the important bit.
- Do people generally get stressed by having to deal with lots of other people?
OR
- A person who is insecure and socially-anxious, _because_ they are insecure and socially-anxious, add large amounts of imaginary friends to a list to feel less isolated?
Or maybe a bit of both?
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I have a job where I can keep a FB window open all day in-between other activities.
...But FB isn't a "tremendous waste of time" for me.
Sounds like it's a tremendous waste of your employers time though (i.e. the time they paid you for)
Interesting. Can you cite any sources that support your claim that investing in Facebook does not pay off?
Try the reverse. Try to find any facebook success stories that didn't involve either massive amounts of money or an already-existing brand. Facebook is simply a time-waster. When's the last time you bought a good or service because of someone's facebook presence? Or because they had oodles of fans? Or because 10 people liked it? It's a waste of time for small and medium-sized businesses, and large businesses don't need it.
Sorry, but you made the initial claim, so you have the burden of proof.
Maybe this says more about my circle of friends than it does about facebook, but this is how it has become a source of stress for me:
When it started out, it was just me and some friends I'd made over the past say 8 or 9 years.
We held similar views on a lot of things, and mostly we were using it to point each other to interesting music (via youtube -- the new streaming napster), and share pictures of our kids.
Some time ... I don't know ... about 3 years ago ... it reached the saturation point where all of the people I went to high school with found it.
Also we elected Obama. That, as it turned out, was the perfect storm to turn facebook into a 24-hour flame-a-thon.
I went to school in rural Georgia. I left that area for a lot of reasons (then moved back for some different reasons, but that's another story).
The point is, all my great friends from high school who were just cool as shit when I was a kid now seem to be ourtaged, glenn-beck-watchin, gun-totin', end-times-expectin', scared-shitless neo-cons.
And these guys are constantly posting shit that makes my brain hurt. That's not to say all right wing views are uninformed, half-witted snopes fodder. It's just that this seems to be the shit these guys are attracted to, and it's like there ... all the damn time.
And so ... yeah I don't feel any stress about "being entertaining" or "ettiquette" or any of that crap. ... or some "scriptural proof that Obama is the anti-christ".
But every time I just wanna see what's going on with my friends, there's some guy I went to high school with posting a conspiracy theory about FEMA camps, or secret Muslim infiltration of the armed services
GAWD .. it's like a troll convention for me. ... can't ... stop ... arguing about shit on facebook. ... I couldn't be the only person who this has happened to.
I just
Which is why I've blocked most of those donkeys, but still.
I wonder
Facebook is a drag on the economy.
Facebook (and most social networking, for that matter) is not about collecting random strangers as friends, and neither is it made for replacing face-to-face conversation. What it works well for is staying in touch with people that you value, but don't have time to keep up with all the time. It also works extremely well for sharing and finding news about upcoming stuff that your friends might be doing - concerts, parties, nerf battles all being recent examples of mine. These things would be clumsier to organize and advertise through email, text messaging, or personal calls, and Facebook works perfectly for this.
I have 200-300 friends, and I know each and every one of them either in real life or through a shared, non-facebook interest. Every sane person I know uses facebook in a fashion similar to the one I just described. It is nothing more or less than a convenient means for maintaining a better awareness of your social network in meatspace.
I don't have any and I'm stressed about that
I agree with you.
But I can't think of a single company that started on facebook and became successful.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Webpronews does not talk about the methods that were used in the study. We don't know any details about how the result was found, how big the sample set was, did they have a control set of people who don't use facebook at all or how many. We don't know who Dr. Kathy Charles' field of study or profession is. Also, what about myspace users, video games, television, texting, and are these thing in the same group or external, and who is webpronews anyway??
Actually, it;s an Anonymous Coward, in the Library, with a Rope - tomorrow :-)
Another and more likely possibility is that stressed people often look for a cause for that stress, and being an anxious type, there is a real good chance they are going to blame it on something else. (House's law)
Given the popularity of Facebook, it is no surprise that people who feel a great need to "belong" to whatever is the fad of the moment, will flock there, bringing along all their anxieties and troubles.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
This is only relevant for people who give a rat's ass about any of the ten thousand "friends" parasitically hanging off their Facebook account.
I find it rather illogical that the number of friends one has links in anyway to stress or anxiety. I have 57 friends on my facebook and I don't feel stressed or anxious because of it. While I do have anxiety/depression it is well controlled with Prozac and I have had the symptoms long before facebook ever existed. Even still, those facebook messages do not have to be answered, nor does the ringing phone. I frequently hit ignore or let my voice mail pickup. The power of choice is truely amazing.
I have about 914 friends, and climbing on facebook, and yes it does increase your anxiety rate. The main reason I have so many is to play Mafia Wars. Many think it is a ridiculous game, but that is what draws me. It keeps changing when you least want it to. However, you also would like to get to know these friends more than just for Mafia, so sometimes you are satisfying the firend urge without having played your game, which is what you wanted to do.
It's not just individuals. Same story goes for businesses.
A lot of the people on facebook are there trying to promote some business or other. The sad part is, if you add up all the time invested, you see that the return is ALWAYS negative.
Not true. At all. My wife has doubled her personal training business through Facebook. It is a way to be social, and acquiring/retaining personal training clients in an exercise in one-on-one social skills. Of course, most businesses are trying to use the one-on-one social network medium as a broadcast medium...and that don't work.
It's a very limited example. The exception that proves the rule, really.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba