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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.
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!
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.
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.
Your definition of "friend" is tragic.
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"?
The way FB makes me feel better can be summed up with one word: schadenfreude.
Somehow I feel very happy when people with poor vocabulary do not understand that word. Wish I knew how to describe it.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I think it's more probable that sitting there for 3 minutes and thinking about how you are wasting your life depresses people.
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
That might be the saddest misconception of friend I've ever seen. I feel sorry for you, and even sorrier for them.
This sentence no verb.
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?").
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.