Facebook- A Devil Manipulates Our Mood
“I’m so upset, no one ‘likes’ my posts on FB!!!” This was what my best friend sent me yesterday. At that moment, I was thinking ‘does it really matter that much?’ Apparently, the answer is YES. Some people can feel depressed because of a comment or numbers of likes, and some people can feel jealous because of a post. I have often heard some of my friends say they are envious about someone’s body shape, or the life they see online. I have often heard them say things like, “Why can’t I look like this person “Why I can’t become that kind of person?” or “Why I can’t maintain this kind of life?” Finally, they will start blaming themselves or start envying on social media platforms. However, take a step backward, have you ever considered that your depression may be linked to Facebook? But, why?
“Even with Facebook’s recent scandals, it still has a couple of billion of users who spend around an hour on the website per day,”. According to the latest study conducted by the Influencer Marketing Hub (2019), “Facebook is still the largest social media platform in the world and there are around 2.32 billion monthly active users in 2018.” There is no doubt that Facebook is a user-friendly social media site. “In this year, Facebook has also created new features, such as ‘Messenger Day’ and ‘Facebook Live’”. On a positive note, the improvements of Facebook’s platform obviously present benefit for the users. In contrast, Facebook can also manipulate users’ moods, and make them feel depressed, when they begin to compare their own lives to others.
SOCIAL COMPARISON
Online social comparisons are certainly one cause of Facebook users feeling depressed. “The usage of Facebook has caused a tendency, to decrease the life satisfaction through social comparison.” “Facebook allows for two different forms of usage, which are active Facebook use (AFU) and passive Facebook use (PFU). While AFU includes users communicating with other users, for instance, by posting about their daily lives and commenting on other people’s posts on the platform, PFU is characterised by only browsing the news feed section, following the communication and comments of online friends, and observing the others”. The following passive behaviours give Facebook an opportunity to shape what the users can see, also create a tendency of the world, and even how we see the world through manipulating the information we browse on the platform. As Facebook provides a platform for the users to share their daily lives on their Facebook pages and interact with their friend online, “Facebook offers the users easy and transparent means to compare and ‘benchmark” themselves against their peers, and drawing them into the social comparison”. Eventually, “this platform has become a tool for the users to self-evaluate and self-improve”. Apparently, the more ‘likes’ and ‘friends’ you have, the more popular you are, and this also explains why there are so many key opinion leaders on Facebook in recent years.
However, “social comparison is not a good thing on Facebook”. Since frequent personal comparisons are regularly occurring on Facebook, it may also become a medium for the users to define the standards in various areas, such as beauty, wealth and fame during the social comparison with the peers. After they figure out that they cannot achieve the standard, they may feel depressed.
ENVY
Envy is another reason causing people to feel depressed which also caused by social comparison. But, this emotion has both negative and positive sides. On the positive side, envy can motivate people to work much harder than before and be more willing to learn new stuff to impress their peers. This is what we call ‘benign envy’. In contrast, “malicious envy” can cause to desire to harm the envied object and breeds hostility.” In fact, the reason why people feel envious of others is a lack of self-esteem, and I think Facebook is one of the main causes for the diffidence. As I mentioned before, there are a lot of key opinion leaders (KOL) and celebrities on the site. he users enjoy viewing their posts and emulating their behaviours and lifestyles. However, when they realised that they cannot share their lifestyles with the celebrities they are following, they may start to envy those celebrities and influencers, and they may also start to question“why those people can have a better life than me?” or “Why they are famous?” These thoughts can lead the users to consider themselves as losers, and if these thoughts keep up over a long period of time, users may feel depressed and damage their self-esteem.
Facebook Depression, this term is originated in a report by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP). It is not a new issue in society, but most of the people are tended to consider the benefit of using Facebook, rather than its potential threat. However, it is never too late to start to become aware of this problem. “No one ‘like’ my posts on Facebook”, it sounds embarrassed and upset. If you really feel depressed about that, try to take a deep breath, and stop using Facebook for a while. You will definitely find that this is entirely not a big deal!
