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Facebook Boosts Your Self-Esteem
An anonymous reader writes "Using Facebook can increase your self-esteem, according to a new study from Cornell University researchers, published in Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking. Researchers Amy Gonzales and Jeffrey Hancock conducted the experiment with three groups of 21 students each in the university's Social Media Lab. The first one was the control group, which sat in front of blank computer screens for three minutes. The second group of individuals had mirrors propped up against their computer monitors and spent their three minutes looking at their own reflections. The third group was allowed to surf their own Facebook profiles and its associated tabs for the allotted time. At the end, all three groups were given a self-esteem questionnaire."
This blank comments page boosts my self esteem considerably.
They should have had a group surfing the web, but not using Facebook.
Doing something remotely productive increases your self-esteem.
Doing something remotely productive increases your self-esteem.
So does posting on slashdot.
Doing something remotely productive increases your self-esteem.
You call being on Facebook "remotely productive"?
I'll bet everyone here on Slashdot one hundred billion dollars and personalized sharks with laser beams that this study will not be able to be reproduced.
It becomes debatable whether "Facebook" can be classified as something productive, however... but I would agree with you. I cannot see how sitting, staring at a blank computer monitor is a good control. Perhaps browsing normal websites not pertaining to oneself, or reading email, would be a better control. You know. NORMAL activities.
I don't use Facebook. Obviously my self-esteem can not be boosted any higher.
-- Cheers!
Oh, it's easy to reproduce. It's just an incredibly bad study.
I want to see a study of people in national parks vs. Facebook vs. MMO -- if we're lucky it'll give me hope for humanity.
Charisma is the measure of someone's ability to lie with a straight face.
That research is flawed. It sounds like a high school project more than anything college related. This would be the equivalent of saying, we had a group that did not cross the street and one that crossed the street, therefore we conclude that people who cross the street will feel successful. The article doesn't even mention what they were asked afterwards, but hey, as the media have done in the past, if they say they have WMDs they have WMDs, screw the sources.
Who gives a fuck? What esteem I hold myself in is nowhere near is pertinent as the esteem others hold me in. Being a self-involved twat engaging in pseudo-social activities on a social-networking website, where I present myself to the world in my best possible light (and often driveling endlessly about inane trivial personal thoughts and events in the hopes of getting "likes" and "fans" and "friends") is the equivalent of being a cup-stacking champion.
Now, please mod this comment down so that no sense of hypocrisy can be perceived in my spending three minutes posting on Slashdot.
Here's an example of one of the questions:
Which of the following statements would you say describes you most accurately?
I know to get a PHD you have to have original work but this seems like stretching it a bit. What if the facebook page had negitive comments attached. I don't think they checked that one. What if the picture on Facebook was a bad hair day? So many variables so little time.
Or maybe "sitting and staring at a blank screen for 3 minutes because your professor told you to" decreases self-esteem.
Sounds like a load of barnacles to me.
Also, purely observational studies? Why would these be news? Ok, observations that confirm a theory, great. But just observations and nothing else? Get back to me when you have real data.
Buh bye Karma, it was nice knowing you!
Eat sleep die
People like attention, so giving them more attention makes them happy. Oh wait, I guess adding "on Facebook" to the premise makes it different.
Of course those forced to stare at a blank screen had lower self esteem... they were thinking "Why the hell did I volunteer for this assinine study???" the whole time!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
It was under "idle" and had "facebook" in the title. So clearly it was slashdot's fault that you wandered in here and then weren't interested. Reminds me of the time I went to the doctor's office, signed up for a vasectomy and then those assholes gave me a vasectomy!
The Hippocratic oath in a nutshell: from "do no harm" to "rob me of my vas defrens."
THAT would be realistic!
I've found Facebook has the opposite effect (lower self esteem).
FOX NEWS.com should be BANNED from television and internet. Have the Congress take it over and give us Truespeak.
I have a minimal Facebook account, whereas I spend much more time on LinkedIn. I really don't care about my friends' personal lives. I don't care if they like Charlie Sheen, and I don't care if their little baby is so cute. What I do care about is the following:
Basically, I want to know if they're worth my time. LinkedIn gives me that, and more.
Well, I am. I'm surprised that those who spent the time staring into a mirror didn't have lowered self-esteem. Haven't we recently discussed cameras that make people better-looking because 90% of people don't like the way they look?
Mind you, if you'd put me in this study I'd have had a cat-nap. It's amazing how much better that can make you feel about things.
What did they do before self-esteem was invented? Seriously. I've heard "low self esteem" described as a cause for everything from gang violence to sex addiction. AFAIK, self-esteem doesn't crop up very much before the 70s, right? What did they use before that, just good old-fashioned demons I guess.
Has anybody done a study to test if FaceBook increases your chance of being posessed?
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Talking about yourself in 3rd person, in a positive, organized way == vanity.
What you can get with facebook, you can get with a mirror. Sort of the 1950's version of facebook.
I think it's more probable that sitting there for 3 minutes and thinking about how you are wasting your life depresses people.
Who pays for this shit? Cornell? Seriously?
The first one was the control group, which sat in front of blank computer screens for three minutes.
"I'm such a moron for volunteering for this boring study :-("
The second group of individuals had mirrors propped up against their computer monitors and spent their three minutes looking at their own reflections.
"I am here because I am too ugly to hang out with friends :-("
The third group was allowed to surf their own Facebook profiles and its associated tabs for the allotted time.
"Oh hey, something to distract me from the pain of my own existence :-|"
I mod down anyone who says "I will be modded down for this", regardless of the rest of their comment
The first one was the control group, which sat in front of blank computer screens for three minutes.
Three minutes — of emptiness.
The second group of individuals had mirrors propped up against their computer monitors and spent their three minutes looking at their own reflections.
Three minutes — of a reflection of emptiness.
The third group was allowed to surf their own Facebook profiles and its associated tabs for the allotted time.
Three minutes — of an inverted reflection of emptiness.
</sarcasm>
Which is basically what is culminating in the sentence from TFA: "Facebook can show a positive version of ourselves".
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
This is only true for people who actually care about such 'petty' things.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
I've heard "low self esteem" described as a cause for everything from gang violence to sex addiction.
You heard wrong! It's video games and pornography now!
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
Evidently you don't run Windows.
Have gnu, will travel.
If you post something and a bunch of people like it or comment positively on it, of course that's going to boost your self-esteem. It makes you feel popular. I imagine the opposite to be true, too. If your posts are frequently ignored, that would probably tend to diminish your self-esteem. Facebook is just a different interface for basic human interactions, so I doubt this would really surprise any sociologists.
Before self-esteem we had this thing called self-respect. The difference is that you have to earn respect, even if the person you're respecting is you. This was too hard for many people to understand and instead we moved to a system where everyone is expected to feel good about themselves regardless of whether or not they have anything to feel good about. Of course, this lowers self-expectations for those few who embrace it but more importantly it makes people who don't or can't embrace it feel like crap ("why am I the only one who isn't happy with who they are?").
This study only shows that Facebook Boosts Your Self-Esteem if all you ever do is stare at a mirror or a blank wall.....
How about adding further control groups that:
Etc.
Sitting there worrying about your friends thoughts for three minutes is not going to make any permanent life style changes. Doing something can. These people were simply 'not doing anything' for three minutes, except for the ones fiddling with their FaceBook. At least they were doing something rather than nothing. Self esteem takes a dive when you feel useless, and at least these FaceBook individuals had something to keep them from feeling bored. What the study was measuring was boredom, not self esteem.
...people who are forced to stare at them selves for three minutes have a lower self esteem than those who just reached out the world. Extremely doubtful the summary and/or the researchers are drawing the correct conclusion.
What a surprise...someone who is forced to stare at themselves for three minutes becomes critically aware of their own flaws.
slashdot sucks these days...
What nonsense. Doing something constructive increases self esteem. Getting laid increases self esteem. Getting a job increases self esteem. HAVING A LIFE AWAY FROM A COMPUTER will increase self esteem too.
The methodology behind the research makes no sense, but look at the great headline they got out of it.
"From the depths of my skeptical and rationalist soul, I ask the Lord to protect me from California touchie-feeliedom."
The issue is that pessimism about yourself is a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you think you can't do something, you won't even try. Our information about what we can and cannot do is at all times very incomplete so we cannot ever know the full truth about what we can and cannot do. There often IS no rational way to fill in the blanks. Low self esteem is making an arbitrary choice to limit yourself by filling in the blanks in a way that hinders your performance. You might as well make that arbitrary choice in a way that doesn't hinder yourself. Self esteem is good for you.
Whether self esteem is beneficial to the rest of us is more open for debate - contrary to popular opinion, high self esteem is a prerequisite to be a successful criminal as well as a successful anything else. You won't be an inconsiderate jerk if you think you are worth less than those around you. That is the real source of critique of self esteem boosting (other than when it doesn't work) - the rest of us actually really do appreciate other people to be subordinate to us and that doesn't work so well if they have high self esteem. How dare those serfs think they are worth something? They haven't earned the right to look out for themselves like I have! Etc.
The fourth group of people were to spend 3 minutes looking at p0rn. They had to be excluded because at the end of the 3 minutes they just kept looking at the p0rn and did not fill out the self-esteem questionnaires.
"The ferrets, they're every where I tell you!"
If Face Book has a measurable change in self esteem. I can only imagine what Twitter does
Reading your quote, I'd say "cyberpsychology" is in need of a self esteem boost themselves.
I agree. I personally hate it when people in the service sector act subserviently to me. It's also subtly insulting because this person is implicitly stating that I'm the kind of person who enjoys subservient behavior. So I end up feeling an odd mixture of being insulted by and feeling pity for this person. I want to deal with real people and subservience replaces a real person with a fake one. Both the receiving and giving sides of subservience ultimately place people in immature roles - the tyrant brat and the good little boy. I want people in the service sector to be competent professionals and I want them to allow me to treat them as such. That includes the 15 year old putting my groceries in a bag.
Me too. My dog has more friends than I do.
Tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis
It was under "idle" and had "facebook" in the title. So clearly it was slashdot's fault that you wandered in here and then weren't interested.
If no-one moans about the pointless shit that gets passed off as news on here sometimes, the "editors" won't know how their readership feels until the day of the glorious revolution when they're lined up against a wall and shot.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
In my case, surfing FB would probably have made me aggressive. Mainly because I don't have a Facebook account and would have been in the white screen group.
If having to sit still and do nothing for 3 minutes causes you self esteem issues, you probably need some sort of counselling.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
You're taking what I said waaaay too literally.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
The "invention" of self-esteem to which I'm referring is actually The Self Esteem Movement which does indeed have its roots in the late 60s, early 70s.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?