More Facebook sharing linked with higher self-esteem
As they scroll through Facebook tonight, college students will be learning more about their friends than they might've expected, according to researchers at Pennsylvania State University.
Professor S. Shyam Sundar, co-director of Penn State's Media Effects Research Laboratory, determined that the information college students post on Facebook gives insight into their level of self esteem and feeling of self-worth.
After studying the Facebook habits of 225 South Korean university students, Sundar and his team concluded that people with low self esteem are most concerned with what others write about them on Facebook. People with high self-esteem spend more time cultivating their profiles and managing what information they present.
The study shows that they spend about the same amount of time on Facebook, but use their time in different ways. People with low self-esteem are more likely to monitor their Facebook walls, so that they can delete anything that they think portrays them in a bad light. People with high self esteem log on to post about themselves and add work and family information to their profiles.
Presented at the INTERACT 2013 conference in Cape Town, South Africa, the new study contradicts earlier studies that show that Facebook addicts are likely to have low self-esteem in general.
In 2012, researchers from the University of Gothenburg in Sweden surveyed 1,011 people with an average age of 32.6 years.
"Results showed that Facebook usage had a significant negative relationship with self-esteem," researchers said in the report. "In other words, the results indicated that users who spend more time on Facebook have lower self-esteem."
Other studies have linked Facebook usage with stress, depression, sadness and narcissism.
In 2011, researchers from Cornell University and Stanford University came down on opposite sides of the debate over Facebook's effect on self-esteem. Jeffrey Hancock of Cornell found that time on Facebook boosts self-esteem, while Alex Jordan of Stanford reported that Facebook negatively impacts feelings of self-worth.
As Facebook goes in and out of vogue, many self-proclaimed confident people have been known to say they don't need an account, they don't care about posting or don't care what others post about them. We've all heard a friend -- or a dozen friends -- talk about deactivating, because they just don't want people knowing so much about them, or they just don't care.
This latest PSU study does little to close the debate over whether Facebook boosts and debases self-esteem. It does not address people who have deactivated, or those who never created an account in the first place. It narrowly looks at college-aged students who use the site for social purposes and consider it part of everyday life.
By only looking at active Facebook users from one demographic, it is hard to say that the study can be applied to population as a whole. But when it comes to college students on the social network, the study concludes that the more they post, the more confidence they likely possess.
