Scientists have confirmed that Facebook can make you feel socially isolated and miserable.
A study has found that the more adults logged onto the social networking site, the less happy they were.
Participants who had more face-to-face contact with their friends or more phone conversations tended to have a better mood.
The findings suggest that the act of checking Facebook itself was leading people to feel less happy.
"On the surface, Facebook provides an invaluable resource for fulfilling the basic human need for social connection," said Ethan Kross, a social psychologist who led the work at the University of Michigan.
"But rather than enhance well-being, we found that Facebook use predicts the opposite result – it undermines it."
The study asked 82 young adults who had Facebook accounts and smartphones to reply to a series of text messages sent to them at random times each day for two weeks.
They were asked how they felt, if they felt lonely, or felt worried and if they had used Facebook since they were last contacted or if they had interacted with people in any other way.
A similar study undertaken in Germany in January reached a similar conclusion. Of 600 people who took part in the studies, 30% cited envy as the main source of their Facebook unhappiness while 36% said there were ‘sometimes’ or ‘very often’ frustrated after visiting the social networking site.
