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.'"

Comments

This just in:

[hoytak]

Information overload and a vague sense of ill-defined obligation leads to stress...

Really, any reason this is surprising?

Re:This just in:

[c0lo]

What does it say when I have only 24 facebook friends and I'm still stressed out by all the "noise".

That you are masochistic enough to stay in a situation nobody forced you in?

Re:This just in:

[ColdWetDog]

There's also the stress of having your sancha let the cat out of the box in an angry tirade readable by your saintly grandmother and your judgmental next door neighbor.

This cat. Is it alive or dead?

Re:This just in:

[corbettw]

This cat. Is it alive or dead?

Yes.

Re:This just in:

[causality]

What does it say when I have only 24 facebook friends and I'm still stressed out by all the "noise".

That you are masochistic enough to stay in a situation nobody forced you in?

I have rarely and almost never observed actual masochism. What I usually witness instead is a mentality that thinks like this: "if I jump through the hoops and pay the price then maybe I'll get something I want." The difference of course is that, by definition, a real masochist isn't doing it out of hope for some reward or the achievement of some goal.

For as long as Facebook stories have appeared on Slashdot, I have said that the desire for the attention and evaluation of casual strangers is unhealthy. It's one of those "to fill a void" type of desires that is not natural; it's a response to the kind of sense of alienation of which Erich Fromm gives such a great description. It's one of those things where one must be careful to retain one's sense and objectivity, otherwise it is easy to mistake the increasing status of "common" with any sense of "normal". When something is being done not because it is voluntary and considered a joy, but out of some sense of desperation and unhealthy desire for attention, of course stress and anxiety is going to scale up with increasing involvement.

How could it work any other way? It's not a matter of whether anyone is forcing anyone -- clearly that is not the case. It's a matter of well-intentioned but thoroughly misguided compensatory problem-solving.

Like Slashdot

[dwarfsoft]

"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 ;)

Wow...

[RobertM1968]

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.

durf

[Anonymous Coward]

if you do something a lot, it may start to feel like a burden, and it's likely to generate stress

Re:Absolutely.

[vic-traill]

The moral of this story is - friends on Facebook shouldn't be professional relationships. That's what LinkedIn is for, if you must.

Re:Scientific Research Run Amok...

[PPH]

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.

Re:Absolutely.

[Etcetera]

The moral of this story is - friends on Facebook shouldn't be professional relationships. That's what LinkedIn is for, if you must.

Absolutely. All current work contacts are slightly limited in that they can't see my wall (by default) nor past mobile pics. I still post things (like links) with permissive permissions sometimes, but they're definitely limited in what they see. After we're no longer colleagues, I remove their restriction and we can be "real" friends. Works well for me.

LinkedIn is for professional contacts. My bosses and their bosses are on there.

Re:Scientific Research Run Amok...

[Etcetera]

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.

100% correlation

[joeyblades]

I have zero Facebook friends and zero stress about it. QED

Re:100% correlation

[syousef]

I have zero Facebook friends and zero stress about it. QED

I have you beat! I have zero friends. Period! ;-)

Re:Scientific Research Run Amok...

[aethogamous]

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.

The prob is real friends who have no pics

[WillAffleckUW]

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.

Facebook needs low mods like /.

[retroworks]

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.

Fortunately, for me

[djlowe]

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

Re:Fortunately, for me

[djlowe]

Clicked submit, by mistake. Here's the rest: "I refuse to let social networks replace real life communication with my friends, as it appears to me that is the "cheap" way out: All one has to do is post a Facebook update, for example, and that replaces any need to really talk to your friends, even when that's what you need."

Re:Fortunately, for me

[ckhorne]

> I refuse to let social networks replace real life communication with my friends

Maybe it's because you're an "old fart," or maybe it's because you're resistant to change, but either way, you're missing the point of social networks. They ARE real-life communications with friends. Social networks are simply the next iteration of social change. I'm sure some long. drawn out extrapolation could be created, showing how technology changes communications. People said that the telegraph would destroy written communications. Or remember how ridiculous cell phones were just 20 years ago? The way that a culture communicates changes, and Facebook is simply a large manifestation of change.

You're a member of slashdot. Why? Surely if you wanted people to communicate with you, you could give them your personal email address? Slashdot is a social network, just like Facebook, but with a certain focus group and a certain topic.

You also seem to think that by being part of a social network, you're walking around naked, for all the world to see, and all your thoughts, good or bad, are splayed out for the world to mock mercilessly. But aside from a few security concerns that tend to make headlines, all the content that's available online is what you put online. Nothing more. Just as I would be mindful of what I said in certain situations, I'm mindful to what I say in any social network.

I was resistant to the Facebook movement, and I'm still not nearly as active as many people I know (I logon about once every 2-3 days), but I see and understand the value. It's real communication with real people; people who aren't involved are seen as old fogies or luddites, scared of this whole "internets thing." In the end, it's what you make it, but understand that it's happening with or without you...

Re:Fortunately, for me

[cyclomedia]

Indeed, but Facebook IS my real-life communication with my friends - all but one of my 21 facebook friends live > 150 miles from me and I use facebook to stay in touch with them. As far as I'm concerned it's just another comms tool alongside letter, phone and email. But one where you can interrupt other people's conversations with a witty remark, so it closer emulates hanging out with them in person than the other three communication methods I just listed.

Generally a poor investment of time / echo chamber

[tomhudson]

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. 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.

Re:FTFY

[tomhudson]

...the more Slashdot friends you have, the more likely you are to feel stressed out by the site.

Lets see, more than 100 freaks, more than 500 friends ... but they don't cause me stress. For most of us, it's more likely the b0rkenst0cked-out perl code and "site redesigns" that break things on a regular basis that are good for getting the natives restless ...

That and "come on guys, can't you at least proof-read a teeny tiny bit before posting the next story?" At least the number of dupes, trifectas (and even posting the same story SIX times the same week) seem to be down ...

Reduce your Facebook stress

[Anonymous Coward]

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!

Correlation not causation

[517714]

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.

Re:FTFY

[camperdave]

Yes, Slashdot has a friends feature. You access it through the little bubble icon beside the user ID in the header of a comment. You can flag a person as a friend, neutral, or as a foe. If someone marks you as a friend, they show up in your fans list. If someone marks you as a foe, they show up in your freaks list.

The reason for having the friends feature is so that you can bump up (or down) someone's comment score. Suppose you were a crochet hobbyist, and while reading Slashdot, you notice somebody making a crochet analogy. You could flag that person as a friend, and when your fellow "hooker" posted a comment it would be automatically modded up. Similarly, you could flag a needlepointer as a foe, because even with a straight needle they still miss the point. They would be automatically modded down.

Correlation, causation, and all that

[Moraelin]

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?

Re:Generally a poor investment of time / echo cham

[tomhudson]

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.

they should call it "fightbook"

[plurgid]

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.
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 ... or some "scriptural proof that Obama is the anti-christ".

GAWD .. it's like a troll convention for me.
I just ... can't ... stop ... arguing about shit on facebook.
Which is why I've blocked most of those donkeys, but still.
I wonder ... I couldn't be the only person who this has happened to.

Nerds don't understand facebook

[werepants]

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.