According to a recent research, Facebook addicts are likely to develop depression and end up feeling lonely.The psychologists found that users who spend a lot of time consistently on Facebook have low satisfaction in life when it comes to basic psychological needs. Researchers say that the users feel a sense of ballooning loneliness.
The study was published in the journal Computers in Human Behavior, by Austrian psychologists Tobias Greitmeyer and Christina Sagioglou. ‘There is a link between a dampened mood and Facebook,’ informed Austrian psychologists Christina Sagioglou and Tobias Greitmeyer.
The joint paper by Greitmeyer and Sagioglou is based on responses from three different groups. The first group consisted of 123 German-speaking active Facebook users, while the second phase of the study took into account 263 volunteers through Amazon’s MTurk program. The researchers conducted further study on a third batch of participants included 101 active Facebook users. All the three groups admitted to feeling worse off and lonelier upon signing out of the social networking service, according to reports.
There has been past studies also highlighting Facebook addiction with self esteem. According to the study, people with high self-esteem add more information to their personal profiles on the social networking sites while people with lower self-esteem are more concerned with what others post about them on Facebook and continuously monitor their Facebook wall for updates and posts. Also Read: Waiting for message replies can cause anxiety: Report
Recently a Dutch creative agency launched a campaign called “99 Days of Freedom,” that wants participants to quit social network for more than three months. The company's directors suggests that instead of using Facebook, users can send time more productively in learning new skills, hang out with their friends or even volunteering.
Source: The HealthSite