New research indicates that what matters for overall happiness is how a person uses social media. Derrick Wirtz, an associate professor of psychology at the Irving K. Barber Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, took a closer look at how people use three major social platforms — Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram — and how that use can affect a person's overall well-being. .
“Social networking sites are an integral part of everyday life for many people around the world,” says Wirtz. “Every day, billions of people interact with social media. Yet the widespread use of social networking sites is in stark contrast to a relatively small amount of research on how this use affects one's happiness.”
Even before COVID-19 and self-isolation became standard practice, Wirtz says social media has changed the way we interact with others. Face-to-face contact is now matched or surpassed by online social interactions as the primary way people connect. While most people get happiness from interacting face-to-face with others, Wirtz notes that some come away from using social media with a sense of negativity—for a variety of reasons.
One problem is social comparison. Participants in Wirtz's study said the more they compared themselves to others while using social media, the less happy they felt.
“Viewing images and updates that selectively portray others in a positive way can lead social media users to underestimate how many others are actually experiencing negative emotions and to conclude that their own life – with its mix of positive and negative feelings – compared to that – is not so good', he says.
Wirtz notes that viewing other people's posts and images without interacting with them lends itself to comparison without the mood-boosting benefits that normally follow social contact, undermining well-being and lowering self-esteem. “Passive use, scrolling through others' posts and updates, involves little person-to-person interaction, while leaving ample opportunity for upward comparison.”
As part of his research, study participants were asked about four specific functions of Facebook:checking a news feed, sending messages, catching up on world news, and posting status or photo updates. The most commonly used feature was passively checking someone's news feed. Participants primarily used Facebook without interacting directly with other users, and the negative effects on subjective well-being were consistent with this use.
The more people who used one of these three social media sites, the more negative they reported afterwards. “The three social networking sites studied – Facebook, Twitter and Instagram – yielded remarkably converging findings,” he says. “The more respondents had recently used these sites, both aggregated and individual, the more negatively they reported when they responded to our randomly timed surveys over a 10-day period.”
Wirtz's research also included offline interactions with others, either face-to-face or a phone call. By comparing both offline and online communication, he was able to show that offline social interaction had the exact opposite effect of using social media, greatly improving emotional well-being.
But all is not lost, Wirtz says, as this research also shows how people can use social media positively, something more important than ever during COVID-19. He suggests that people avoid passive scrolling and don't compare themselves to other social media users. He also says that people should use social media sites to enable direct interactions and social connection – for example, talking online in sync or spending time in person with others, if possible and with the right precautions.
“If we all remember to do that, the negative impact of social media use could be reduced – and social networking sites could even have the potential to improve our well-being and happiness,” he adds. up.” In other words, we must not forget how we use social media to shape the effects on our daily happiness.”
