Can Facebook cause depression?

According to a study, people who use Facebook passively tend to compare themselves with others and are in danger of developing depressive symptoms.

A recent study has claimed that people who use Facebook passively, that is, don't post themselves, tend to compare themselves with others and are in danger of developing depressive symptoms.

Most people use Facebook to share the best glimpses of their lives. However, studies have claimed that self-esteem takes a hit as it seems that everyone is better than them.

"It is important that this impression that everyone else is better off can be an absolute fallacy," said Dr Phillip Ozimek, lead author of the study.

"In fact, very few people post on social media about negative experiences. However, the fact that we are flooded with these positive experiences on the Internet give us a completely different impression," he added.

The study published in the journal 'Behaviour and Information Technology' carried out one experimental and two questionnaire studies to know whether using social networks can trigger depressive tendencies.

In the first study, they had two groups of test subjects spend five minutes writing information about the first five people they saw either on their Facebook wall or on the staff website.

A third group skipped this task. All three groups then completed a questionnaire that provided information about their self-esteem.

"It was shown that being confronted by social information on the Internet - which is selective and only positive and favourable, whether on Facebook and on employee websites - leads to lower self-esteem," reported Ozimek.

As low self-esteem is closely related to depressive symptoms, researchers consider even this short-term effect to be a potential source of danger.

Researchers investigated long-term prospects using questionnaire studies. They interviewed over 800 people about their use of Facebook, their tendency to compare themselves with others, their self-esteem and the occurrence of depressive symptoms.

They found that there is a positive correlation between passive Facebook use, in particular, and depressive symptoms when subjects have an increased need to make social comparisons of their abilities.

"So, when I have a strong need to compare and keep seeing in my newsfeed that other people are having great holidays, making great deals, and buying great, expensive things while everything I see out of my office window is grey and overcast, it lowers my self-esteem," said Ozimek. "And if I experience this day after day, over and over again, this can promote greater depressive tendencies over the long term."

In a third study, the researchers used questionnaires to find out whether their findings could also be transferred to other networks. As professional networks work somewhat differently.

"Although people's profiles on there have still been candy-coated, they keep themselves grounded in order to appear as genuine, yet positive, as possible," explained Ozimek. The results of the evaluation were very similar to those of the Facebook study.

"Overall, we were able to show that it is not the use of social networks that generally and directly leads to or is related to depression, but that certain preconditions and a particular type of use increase the risk of depressive tendencies," said Ozimek.

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