Studies Show That Lurking On Social Media Too Much Leads To Depression

Here comes another study that we can all relate to. As much as we all do not want to admit it, deep inside we know that most of us are guilty of this to a certain extent.

A study recently published by the journal Cyber-psychology, Behavior and Social Networking was conducted by researchers at the University of Copenhagen.

The study of more than 1000 participants, mostly women, concluded that regular use of social media such as Facebook can harm your emotional well-being and overall satisfaction with life.

Spending too long looking at other people’s social media story can create an “unrealistic social comparisons”, which induce a deterioration of mood and a sense of envy.

Instead of lurking on social media, researchers encourage people to actively engage in conversation and connect with other people. This seems to be much less gloomy than “passive” users who spend too long “lurking” on social networking websites without connecting with other people in reality.

And in another study, it was suggested that taking a short break from social media, a week for instance, could drastically improve one’s mental well-being. It has been proven that chronic social media user who took a break from social media report significantly higher levels of life satisfaction and a significantly improved emotional life.

It was also mentioned that it is not necessary to quit social media all together as it would have an undesirable impact on overall behaviour. Refraining from social media for a week would be sufficient. So there you have it, quitting social media for a week would have its benefits.

That’s if you can resist the temptation of looking at those jolly holiday pictures of your friends though…