Passive Facebook usage undermines affective well-being: Experimental and longitudinal evidence
Summary (2 min read)
Introduction
- The authors examined this issue in 2 studies using experimental and field methods.
- The authors addressed this question by examining whether the way people use Facebook, in particular whether they do so actively or passively, explains how this technology impacts subjective wellbeing.
- Theoretically, continually exposing oneself to positive information about others should elicit envy, an emotion linked to lower well-being (Salovey & Rodin, 1984; Smith & Kim, 2007).
Method
- Eighty-nine people (Mage 20.23, SDage 2.10; 61 females; 53% European American, 34% Asian, 8% African American, and 5% other) were recruited for a study about Facebook through flyers posted around Ann Arbor, Michigan.
- Prior to the start of the study, the authors operationalized active and passive Facebook usage for participants in the same way it was defined in Study 1.
- Seventy-seven of the 80 participants that their analyses focused on returned to the laboratory following Phase 2 to complete another set of questionnaires, which included the Satisfaction With Life Scale (M 5.06, SD 1.13, .85; Diener et al., 1985).
- In the present study this covariance was not significantly different from zero (covar .00, p .97) and will therefore not be discussed further.
Results
- As Figure 2 illustrates, people interacted “directly” with other people more frequently than any other type of social interaction, ts(8332)s 12.85, ps .001.
- Passive Facebook usage also remained a significant predictor of changes in affective well-being when controlling for the other social interaction variables the authors assessed: non-Facebook online social network usage, active Facebook use and direct social interaction.
- As Table 5 illustrates, the only additional variable that was significantly related to changes in affective well-being over time in this analysis was direct social interaction.
- Network usage to predict any of the results (ps .12).
General Discussion
- This research adds to work indicating that interacting with Facebook has negative implications for subjective well-being (Krasnova et al., 2013; Kross et al., 2013).
- This suggests that people spend most of their time on Facebook engaging in a behavior that undermines their affective well-being.
- Because of this, the authors treated status updates as a binary predictor.
- Correlations above the dashed diagonal line represent withinperson correlations obtained from multi-level analyses.
- It is possible that people’s motivation to “stay in touch” outweigh concerns they have over how interacting with this technology influences their feelings.
Caveats
- Three caveats are in order before concluding.
- Together, these two sets of findings suggest that passive Facebook usage has a delayed, not immediate, effect on how people feel.
- Finally, participants in the current studies were young adults.
Concluding Comment
- Her response, “I’m a marketer, and sometimes I almost can’t take it out of my personal life.
- I’ve had friends call me and say, ‘Your life looks so amazing.’.
- Though the authors all “present” ourselves in daily life 8.
- These findings, in conjunction with the absence of an immediate effect of manipulating Facebook usage on affect in Study 1, suggest that although some delay is necessary for passive Facebook usage to influence affect, the exact duration of this delay is less important.
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Citations
31 citations
Cites background or methods from "Passive Facebook usage undermines a..."
...Following prior experiencesampling research (Felsman, Verduyn, Ayduk, & Kross, 2017; Verduyn et al., 2015) we excluded data from 17 participants who responded to 60% of the texts on a priori grounds....
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...Thus, by modeling both relationships we aimed to explore both possibilities (for a similar approach, see Brans, Koval, Verduyn, Lim, & Kuppens, 2013; Kross et al., 2013; Verduyn et al., 2015)....
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...Results from two of these data sets have been previously published, although neither of them focuses on the questions of the current manuscript (Kross et al., 2013; Verduyn et al., 2015)....
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...Following prior experiencesampling research (Felsman, Verduyn, Ayduk, & Kross, 2017; Verduyn et al., 2015) we excluded data from 17 participants who responded to 60% of the texts on a priori grounds.2 The Facebook walls of 103 participants did not contain a single post during the study period....
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31 citations
Cites background from "Passive Facebook usage undermines a..."
...It may be that individuals in our sample are more prone to ruminative response styles and more likely to engage in social comparisons through social media, thereby perceiving a negative impact of social media on their mental health [30-31]....
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...Most patients reported checking their phone at least once per hour but posting rarely, potentially suggesting that our sample may primarily use social media passively and perhaps experience it as a platform for social comparison rather than for social connection or support [30,31]....
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31 citations
Cites background or methods or result from "Passive Facebook usage undermines a..."
...For example, in some studies, participants were overtly restricted in the ways they could behave, for instance, by prohibiting participants to share posts on Facebook (Tobin et al., 2015; for other examples of restriction, see Deters & Mehl, 2013; Yuen et al., 2019; Verduyn et al., 2015)....
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...…sampling methodology (ESM) (n = 5) (Csikszentmihalyi & Larson, 1987) in which participants’ social media use and well-being were assessed through self-report multiple times a day over an extended number of days (Kross et al., 2013; Steers et al., 2014; Verduyn et al., 2015; Wenninger et al., 2014)....
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...Only 6.4% of the studies (n = 6 out of 94) used some form of objective assessment of social media use, based, for example, on Facebook’s activity logs (e.g., Burke et al., 2010) or other types of recordings of people’s activity on social media (e.g., Verduyn et al., 2015)....
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...No wonder, then, that there is a growing number of studies that implement ESM to gather data about people’s well-being on the same device that is their portal to the digital social world (e.g., Steers et al., 2014; Verduyn et al., 2015; Wenninger et al., 2014)....
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31 citations
31 citations
References
35,176 citations
33,615 citations
"Passive Facebook usage undermines a..." refers background in this paper
...Th is ar tic le is in te nd ed so le ly fo rt he pe rs on al us e of th e in di vi du al us er an d is no tt o be di ss em in at ed br oa dl y. (Goffman, 1959), the current findings suggest that how people do so on Facebook creates an environment that is difficult to passively navigate without…...
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...(Goffman, 1959), the current findings suggest that how people do so on Facebook creates an environment that is difficult to passively navigate without negatively influencing how we feel....
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21,449 citations
"Passive Facebook usage undermines a..." refers background or methods in this paper
...Participants completed a set of questionnaires, which included the Satisfaction With Life Scale (M !...
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....85; Diener et al., 1985), the Beck Depression Inventory (M !...
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....85; Diener et al., 1985)....
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...Seventy-seven of the 80 participants that our analyses focused on returned to the laboratory following Phase 2 to complete another set of questionnaires, which included the Satisfaction With Life Scale (M ! 5.06, SD ! 1.13, " ! .85; Diener et al., 1985)....
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...We performed lagged analyses on participants’ responses to these questions and their answers to the Satisfaction With Life Scale (Diener et al., 1985), which they completed before and after the experience-sampling phase of the study, to examine whether type of Facebook usage predicts changes in affective and cognitive well-being over time....
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20,751 citations
10,186 citations
"Passive Facebook usage undermines a..." refers background in this paper
...One explanation for this null finding is that participants may not have been aware of whether they compared their life to others (Brickman & Bulman, 1977; Gilbert, Giesler, & Morris, 1995; Goethals, 1986; Nisbett & Wilson, 1977; Wood, 1996)....
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Frequently Asked Questions (9)
Q1. What are the contributions mentioned in the paper "Passive facebook usage undermines affective well-being: experimental and longitudinal evidence" ?
The authors examined this issue in 2 studies using experimental and field methods.
Q2. What future works have the authors mentioned in the paper "Passive facebook usage undermines affective well-being: experimental and longitudinal evidence" ?
A key challenge for future research is to identify when ( and why ) interacting with this technology leads to positive versus negative socioemotional outcomes. Together, these results suggest that passive Facebook usage predicts substantive declines in subjective well-being in both the lab and in daily life. First, a growing literature suggests that Facebook ( and social network sites more generally ) have addictive properties ( Ryan, Chester, Reece, & Xenos, 2014 ).
Q3. How many observations were used for the nonlagged analysis?
For the nonlagged analysis 2,084 observations were used whereas for the lagged analysis only 1,609 observations were entered into the analysis (because between-day lags were excluded).
Q4. What was the effect of the last text message on the participants’ well-being?
When noncompliant cases were observed, the authors used participants’ responses to the last text message they answered to maximize power when examining the lagged effect of type of Facebook usage on well-being.
Q5. What other social interaction variables were not significantly related to affective well-being?
Passive Facebook usage also remained a significant predictor of changes in affective well-being when controlling for the other social interaction variables the authors assessed: non-Facebook online social network usage, active Facebook use and direct social interaction.
Q6. What is the key challenge for future research?
A key challenge for future research is to identify when (and why) interacting with this technology leads to positive versus negative socioemotional outcomes.
Q7. How many participants were aware of the study hypotheses?
Eight participants (three in the active condition, five in the passive condition) were aware of the study hypotheses and were thus excluded from all analyses on a priori grounds leaving 67 participants (34 in the active and 33 in the passive condition).
Q8. What did the authors find out about the effect of type of Facebook on people’s happiness?
In Study 1, the authors did not observe an effect of type of Facebook usage on people’s tendency to view their life as worse off than others, which the authors thought would exacerbate envy and lead to emotional declines.
Q9. What is the effect of a delay on affect?
These findings, in conjunction with the absence of an immediate effect of manipulating Facebook usage on affect in Study 1, suggest that although some delay is necessary for passive Facebook usage to influence affect, the exact duration of this delay is less important.