Dear Mark Zuckerberg,

Did you know that your innovative, life-changing creation “Facebook” has been making people less happy and has contributed to low self esteem?

Sincerely,
A”friend”

Facebook is all about creating a façade. Why else would people post pictures, statuses, relationship information, hobbies, interests, and even political standpoints? It is because Facebook is all about showing others that you have a “life” and look fun, adventurous and ultimately interesting, as superficial as that sounds.

With this central idea at hand, I was glancing at the Yahoo News top headlines the other day and stopped the little fast forward button when I saw the subscript “Can Facebook make us less happy?” Interested in the title, I, an avid user of Facebook, skimmed the text, seeing what the author had to say. The article’s main point: people who spend more time on Facebook are less happy than those who spend less time on Facebook. I couldn’t agree more; in fact, I could personally relate.

Logically, this idea is understandable. Facebook’s news feed allows users to see their friends most recent updates, such as statuses, photos and relationship statuses. As Montesquieu once said "If we only wanted to be happy it would be easy; but we want to be happier than other people, which is almost always difficult, since we think them happier than they are.” When surveying classmates on how Facebook could make one unhappy, one person said “I feel like Facebook encourages constant comparison to others lives…which encourages self-deprecation and feelings of exclusion”. Almost everything shared on Facebook is positive such as pictures and videos from parties, and other social events. Rarely do people post negative things showing failure because they want to keep up the image they have projected, creating a constant comparison between everyone’s social lives.

I’ll admit it: I’m a sad victim of the Facebook culture. Most, if not all, of my pictures show me smiling and looking like I always have a good time. Am I always happy? Absolutely not! Like everyone else, I have my ups and downs and the happy pictures are just a positive front I show the virtual world. For example, two years ago I was sadly disappointed when my date for Junior Prom who I thought was cool, funny and outgoing was actually shy, awkward and couldn’t seem to dance. In short, it was a bad night. However, I remember posting numerous happy photos with captions like “I couldn’t have asked for a better date! <3” to show that I had fun. Later, a friend mentioned that she saw my photos on Facebook and told me I looked pretty and seemed to have a good time. She revealed she was jealous after logging into Facebook and seeing so many pictures of people having fun with their dates. Through Facebook, I was able to pretend that I had “fun”, and anyone who saw my pictures on their newsfeed might have compared their night and have wondered “Why couldn’t I have fun like that?”

Besides the fact that pictures on Facebook might be deceivingly happy, statuses on Facebook could also lower a person’s morale. Sometimes we see things that we are better off not seeing. For instance, when college acceptances and rejections came around last spring, everyone was nervous and anxious to see the results. My first choice was Princeton and I was waitlisted, which was sad for me because I invested a lot of time in their application and researching the school. That day I logged on Facebook and saw a lot of my friend’s statuses such as “PRINCETON CLASS OF 2015 HERE I COME!” and “Got into PRINCETON! Go tigers!! :)” Of course I was happy for my friends that were accepted. However, seeing the statuses was like a virtual slap in the face telling me that I wasn’t good enough and that my peers ultimately were. After that, I decided to stay off Facebook for two weeks.

In addition to seeing statuses that you might not want to see, many users have to deal with seeing unwanted posts from ex-girlfriends/boyfriends and former friends. My ex-boyfriend Chris barely ever surprised me with gifts when we were together. For some reason the lovey-dovey stuff he does for his current girlfriend always shows up on my newsfeed. Does it bother me? Of course! Do I really want to know that he bought his girlfriend roses and chocolates for Valentines Day while I was single? Not really. To be honest, seeing these posts just make me jealous and make me wonder why that couldn’t be me. Ultimately, seeing cute, relationship posts only makes me compare myself to others and question my personality and appearance.

Sometimes things seem so much better than they actually are. All of the smiling pictures on Facebook may make it seem like everyone else is having a good time, but that is as fake as airbrushed and Photoshopped pictures in magazines. So what was that Yahoo article’s solution to unhappy users on Facebook? “If you are looking for a way to cheer yourself up, the researchers say you may do well to log off. Call your best friend instead.”

Works cited:
Facebook: Friends’ happy pictures make you sad? (2012, January). Retrieved February 6,2012, from http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/technology/2012/01/feeling-sad-facebook-could-be-the-cause/