\u201cWe had this idea that Facebook could be a really fantastic place for people to strengthen their relationships,\u201d says Amanda Forest, a graduate student at the University of Waterloo. She cowrote the new study with her advisor, Joanne Wood. The two are generally interested in self-esteem, and how self-esteem affects the kinds of emotions people express. People with low self-esteem are often uncomfortable sharing face-to-face, but Facebook makes it possible to share remotely.<\/p>\n In one study, Forest and Wood asked students how they feel about Facebook. People with low self-esteem were more likely to think that Facebook provided an opportunity to connect with other people, and to perceive it as a safe place that reduces the risk of awkward social situations.<\/p>\n The researchers also investigated what students actually wrote on Facebook. They asked the students for their last 10 status updates, sentences like, \u201c[Name] is lucky to have such terrific friends and is looking forward to a great day tomorrow!\u201d and \u201c[Name] is upset b\/c her phone got stolen :@.\u201d These are visible to their Facebook friends, the people in their network.<\/p>\n Each set of status updates was rated for how positive or negative it was. For each set of statements, a coder \u2013 an undergraduate Facebook user \u2013 rated how much they liked the person who wrote them.<\/p>\n People with low self-esteem were more negative than people with high self-esteem \u2013 and the coders liked them less<\/strong>. The coders were strangers, but that\u2019s realistic, Forest says. In earlier research, Wood and Forest found that nearly half of Facebook friends are actually strangers or acquaintances, not close friends.<\/p>\n Forest and Wood also found that people with low self-esteem get more responses from their real Facebook friends when they post highly positive updates, compared to less positive ones. People with high self-esteem, on the other hand, get more responses when they post negative items, perhaps because these are rarer for them.<\/p>\n So people with low self-esteem may feel safe making personal disclosures on Facebook \u2013 but they may not be helping themselves<\/strong>. \u201cIf you\u2019re talking to somebody in person and you say something, you might get some indication that they don\u2019t like it, that they\u2019re sick of hearing your negativity,\u201d Forest says. But when people have a negative reaction to a post on Facebook, they seem to keep it to themselves. \u201cOn Facebook, you don\u2019t see most of the reactions.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" From the Association for Psychological Science press release: In theory, the social networking website Facebook could be great for people with low self-esteem. Sharing is important for improving friendships. But… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5,7],"tags":[165,44,12,167,98,166,186],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1001"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1001"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1001\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1003,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1001\/revisions\/1003"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1001"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1001"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1001"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/images\/blogpics\/WorkplaceStress.jpg\" "\\"depressed")
In theory, the social networking website Facebook could be great for people with low self-esteem. Sharing is important for improving friendships. But in practice, people with low self-esteem seem to behave counterproductively, bombarding their friends with negative tidbits about their lives and making themselves less likeable<\/strong>, according to a new study which will be published in Psychological Science<\/em>, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.<\/p>\n