Social networking is a funny old thing. Pretty much everyone complains about it and it is those people who continue to use it.
People hate being tagged in unflattering photos, hate being blanked by friends who may not even have realised they’ve been sent a chat message and, of course, noticing that you have one less ‘friend’ than you had earlier. Who would possibly want to unfriend me?!
The new study from researchers at the University of Michigan, detailing how Facebook can make people feel isolated and miserable, was not exactly a shock.
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.
I can’t say that Facebook has ever made me feel lonely or worried. In any case, it was my birthday yesterday so I got about 100 of those ‘happy birthday’ messages.
So, if you do ever feel lonely, just change your date of birth on your account every day and you’ll never been lonely again.
