Social Media - Page 4 of 5

How People Use Social Media to Manage Their Emotions

People usually search out positive posts on social media — but not always.

People usually search out positive posts on social media — but not always.

People who are in a bad mood spend more time searching social media for others who are doing worse than they are, a new study finds.

This goes against the usual trend that people look mainly for posts that are generally positive and uplifting.

This is because how we compare ourselves to others has a powerful effect on how we feel — but it depends on our motivation.

Upward comparisons to those who are doing better than us can be beneficial when people are in a good mood, but they can be depressing when we are already feeling down.

Benjamin Johnson, who co-authored the study, said:

“People have the ability to manage how they use social media.

Generally, most of us look for the positive on social media sites.

But if you’re feeling vulnerable, you’ll look for people on Facebook who are having a bad day or who aren’t as good at presenting themselves positively, just to make yourself feel better.”

The conclusions are based on a study which put 168 people into either a good or bad mood by telling them they’d done well — or poorly — on a test (Johnson & Knobloch-Westerwick, 2014)

Afterwards they were asked to review a new social networking site, that the researchers called SocialLink.

There were eight profiles on the site, some made to look more attractive and successful than others.

Here is what participants saw:

The faces were pixelated out so that participants wouldn’t be influenced by people’s actual appearance, but had to go on the ‘heart’ and ‘dollar sign’ ratings below them.

The profiles themselves were generic, with little to distinguish between them.

The results showed that, in general, people looked more at the profiles of people who had been rated more successful and attractive.

But, those who were in a negative mood spent more time looking at the profiles of those rated less successful and less attractive.

The study’s co-author, Silvia Knobloch-Westerwick, said:

“If you need a self-esteem boost, you’re going to look at people worse off than you.

You’re probably not going to be looking at the people who just got a great new job or just got married.

One of the great appeals of social network sites is that they allow people to manage their moods by choosing who they want to compare themselves to.”

Image credit: CollegeDegrees360 & Johnson & Knobloch-Westerwick.

Facebook Reveals Secret Experiment To Control Your Emotions

Study in which Facebook manipulated the news feeds of almost 700,000 users for psychological research sparks controversy.

A new study of ‘emotional contagion‘ which manipulated the Facebook news feeds of 689,003 users for a week in 2012 has been widely criticised over ethical and privacy concerns.

Facebook users who ‘took part’ in the experiment did not give their consent, either before or after their news feeds were manipulated.

In fact, you may have taken part without knowing anything about it.

News feed manipulation

Working with researchers at Cornell University and the University of California, San Francisco, Facebook subtly adjusted the types of stories that appeared in user’s news feeds for that week (Kramer et al., 2014).

Some people saw stories that were slightly more emotionally negative, while others saw more content that was slightly more emotionally positive.

People were then tracked to see what kind of status updates they posted subsequently.

One of the study’s authors, Jeff Hancock, explained the results:

“People who had positive content experimentally reduced on their Facebook news feed, for one week, used more negative words in their status updates.

When news feed negativity was reduced, the opposite pattern occurred: Significantly more positive words were used in peoples’ status updates.”

In other words: positive and negative emotions are contagious online.

The study echoes that conducted recently by Coviello et al. (2014), which found that positive emotions are more contagious than negative.

The previous study, though, while it was conducted on Facebook in a somewhat similar way, did not manipulate users’ news feeds, rather it used random weather variations to make a natural experiment:

“…they needed something random which would affect people’s emotions as a group and could be tracked in their status updates — this would create a kind of experiment.

They hit upon the idea of using rain, which reliably made people’s status updates slightly more negative.” (Happiness is Contagious and Powerful on Social Media)

Was it right?

There are all sorts of conversations going on about whether or not this experiment was sound.

Media outlets have been scrambling around to see what various rules have to say about this.

Was the study’s ethical procedure correctly reviewed? Did Facebook break its terms of service?

But let’s just forget the rules for a moment and use our brains:

Was this study likely to do anyone any harm? Highly unlikely. Psychologists measure the influence of manipulations using an ‘effect size’. In this study it was d = 0.001. Trust me, this is beyond miniscule.
Should users have been told they’d taken part in an experiment afterwards? Yes, it would have been a nice courtesy — and most people would probably have been fine with it.

Big data

The reason people are jumping on the story is because of concerns about what other people are doing with our data, especially big corporations and governments.

Take Facebook itself: many people don’t realise that Facebook is already manipulating your news feed.

The average Facebook news feed has 1,500 items vying for a spot in front of your eyeballs.

Facebook doesn’t show you everything, so it has to decide what stays and what goes.

To do this they use an algorithm which is manipulating your news feed in ways that are much less transparent than this experiment.

Professor Susan Fiske of Princeton University, who edited the article for the academic journal it was published in (PNAS), told The Atlantic:

“I was concerned until I queried the authors and they said their local institutional review board had approved it—and apparently on the grounds that Facebook apparently manipulates people’s News Feeds all the time… I understand why people have concerns. I think their beef is with Facebook, really, not the research.”

But should our justifiable concerns about being spied on, manipulated and exploited stop researchers conducting a harmless and valuable psychology experiment?

Final word goes to the study’s lead author, Adam Kramer, a Data Scientist at Facebook, who was moved to apologise:

“The reason we did this research is because we care about the emotional impact of Facebook and the people that use our product.

We felt that it was important to investigate the common worry that seeing friends post positive content leads to people feeling negative or left out.

At the same time, we were concerned that exposure to friends’ negativity might lead people to avoid visiting Facebook.

We didn’t clearly state our motivations in the paper.”

Image credit: Dimitris Kalogeropoylos

What the Internet is Doing to Young Minds

87% of US teachers think the internet is creating a distracted generation. Is it really true?

There’s no evidence that typical levels of internet use harms adolescent brains, according to a new review of 134 studies.

On the contrary, the report, to be published in the journal Trends in Cognitive Science, finds some positives associated with normal internet use (Mills, 2014).

Many of the scare stories about the effects of the internet on the brain are based on studies of those using it excessively, which only affects around 5% of adolescents.

The perception that internet use is eroding young people’s attention spans certainly exists:

“Of the 2462 American middle- and high-school teachers surveyed by the Pew Research Center, 87% felt that widespread Internet use was creating an ‘easily distracted generation with short attention spans’ and 88% felt that ‘today’s students have fundamentally different cognitive skills because of the digital technologies they have grown up with’.” (Mills, 2014)

There is, however, no consistent, hard evidence of any damaging effects of the internet on the cognitive powers of young people, or other aspects of their development.

In fact, this review points to some of the benefits of using the internet. For example, studies have found:

Higher internet use amongst 14-24 year-olds has been linked to greater participation in real-world activities like clubs and sports.
Communicating with friends through the internet has been shown to improve the social connectedness of adolescents.
Being part of a highly connected network can help people solve problems.

As for ‘internet addiction’, here’s what I have to say about that: Does Internet Use Lead to Addiction, Loneliness, Depression…and Syphilis?

Mills concludes her article:

“In the 25 years since the World Wide Web was invented, our way of interacting with each other and our collective history has changed.

Successfully navigating this new world is likely to require new skills, which will be reflected in our neural architecture on some level.

However, there is currently no evidence to suggest that Internet use has or has not had a profound effect on brain development.”

The real answer to what the internet is doing to our brains is: it depends on what we’re doing with the internet.

Here’s how I put it in a recent article, which focused on Facebook:

“Consider Facebook for a moment.

There are all kinds of things you can do: stalk old partners, play games, find fascinating content, keep in touch with old friends or look at random pictures of other people’s drunken nights out (not all of these are recommendations).

People’s creativity in using online services streaks way ahead of our knowledge of what it means and how it affects us.

In fact, we’re only just starting to see studies that make more fine-grained distinctions about what people are actually doing online and how that may, or may not, be good for them.”

Finally, it’s worth remembering that — as Mills says — finding little evidence is different from finding that there is no effect; rather it means that more research needs to be carried out into typical levels of internet use.

Image credit: Spaceman photography

“Is the Internet Good/Bad For You?” and Other Dumb Questions

Are we beginning to ask the right questions about the psychological effects of the Internet?

Over the last few years we’ve been bombarded by articles and books about Facebook, social media and the Internet in general. The slant of these tends to go one of three ways (and for each one ‘Facebook’ is interchangeable with ‘Twitter’, ‘the Internet’ or whatever):

Facebook is great! We’re all connected to each other so it’s easier to get a new job, find old friends, create amazing stuff together and live happily ever after.
Facebook is horrible! It’s filled with stalking; it generates jealously, loneliness and destroys our real relationships with each other.
Facebook’s effects are mixed: some research says it’s good for you, some says it’s bad for you.

Unfortunately all these approaches are based on a bad assumption; even the third one (although it gets closest to the truth). The problem is that they’re all a bit like asking: is life good for you? The question is crass.

The effects of Facebook, the same as for all social media, the Internet in general, and even life itself will depend on exactly what you do with it.

Consider Facebook for a moment. There are all kinds of things you can do: stalk old partners, play games, find fascinating content, keep in touch with old friends or look at random pictures of other people’s drunken nights out (not all of these are recommendations).

People’s creativity in using online services streaks way ahead of our knowledge of what it means and how it affects us. In fact we’re only just starting to see studies that make more fine-grained distinctions about what people are actually doing online and how that may, or may not, be good for them.

A recent example made a telling distinction between active and passive Facebook use (Burke et al., 2010). Passive Facebook use includes scrolling through other people’s photos and reading their updates while active use includes updating your status and writing private messages. Perhaps you’ll be unsurprised to learn that the active kind is the good one for increasing social bonding.

Although this is a relatively crude distinction, at least it’s starting to look at how people are using social media like Facebook, not just how much.

In a similar vein, there’s a new study looking at Facebook use and loneliness. It examines the old question about whether being online makes us lonely which, I’ve discussed along with other bugbears here.

Instead of doing a survey, though, they carried out an experiment (Deters & Mehl, 2012). They wanted to know if Facebook status updating could cause you to feel less lonely. Long story (as it must be nowadays) short; in the group they studied, it did.

When participants made more Facebook updates, they felt less lonely and this was caused by feeling more connected to their friends on a daily basis. Surprisingly it didn’t depend on whether their friends replied or not, or how they replied, just reaching out had the effect of reducing loneliness.

Now this won’t be the end of the argument about whether Facebook or the Internet in general is good for us, but it’s a great start and at least it asks the right questions. It looks experimentally at a specific aspect of Facebook usage, status updating, to look at the effects on loneliness.

If anything, the study reiterates something we know from our everyday, offline lives. If you see a friend in the street it’s better to say hi and ask how they are than passively observe them from a distance. But it’s good to know that this simple intuition is confirmed in an online environment.

More broadly, it’s the type of study that’s looking a bit deeper into what social media and the Internet are doing to us by breaking the question down. It’s an encouraging sign.

We may not yet be able to say that much about what aspects of Internet use are psychologically good or bad for us, but at least we’re starting to ask the right questions.

Image credit: Viktor Hertz

Twitter: 7 Highly Effective Habits

New research on half-a-million tweets over 15 months reveals the factors which increase follower-count.

If you want more Twitter followers, new research provides some easy pointers to the right type of tweeting.

This is the first study to examine what factors are associated with an increased follower-count on Twitter over an extended period of time. Hutto et al. (2013) studied 507 Twitter users over 15 months and half-a-million tweets (PDF).

Some of these are just handy reminders of good Twitter practice, but you may find the odd surprise—see what you think.

1. Avoid negative sentiments

If you’re quite a negative Tweeter, then it could be time to change, if you care about getting more followers. In general people are attracted to those who put out broadly positive tweets.

It seems that negative or sarcastic tweets are not endearing. In this study, being consistently negative was one of the strongest predictors of low follower growth. The average ratio was two positive tweets to one negative, so you’d be looking to beat this to help draw in other users.

2. Inform, don’t meform

This one is so important for gaining new followers. A previous study has shown that there are broadly two types of Twitter users (Naaman, 2010):

Informers: 20% share information and reply to other users.
Meformers: 80% mostly send out information about themselves.

This study found that it’s the informers who get more followers, while the meformers lose out.

Being informative was one of the strongest predictors of gaining new followers in this study: this included passing on links and retweeting. In fact being an informer rather than a meformer was associated with 30 times more growth in followers!

3. Boost social proof/trust

Not only should you produce informative tweets, but they should be the kind that are retweet-worthy. Being retweeted is a sign to others that you are worth following. Unfortunately there weren’t any further clues in this research on what makes a tweet retweet-worthy.

However one easy way you can boost social trust is by completing your user profile. Those who gave a web address, a location and a long description were more likely to attract followers in this sample. This has also been found amongst Facebook users, where more complete profiles attract more friends.

4. Stay on topic

Many Twitter users tweet about all kinds of subjects, perhaps thinking that a broader focus will attract more users. Celebrities, in particular, can afford to talk about what they like because it’s them we are interested in. But if you’re not a celebrity, then a scatter-gun approach to tweeting may not be so effective.

In general, people want to find others who share their interests and are like them. This is just as true on Twitter as it is in face-to-face relationships. This study found that people who remained more ‘on-topic’ tended to attract more followers.

Why? Well, it may be a signal-to-noise-type thing. If you stay on-topic, your interests are clearer and it’s easier to make the choice to follow you.

5. Write well and avoid hashtag abuse

Everyone who cares about good writing will be glad to see this one come up. Apparently people really do seek out well-written content, even if it’s only 140 characters or less.

The usual approach online, beyond correct spelling, is to pitch your writing at a reasonably intelligent 12-year-old. But in this study some moderate complexity was associated with increased followers, so don’t be afraid of the odd long word.

While we’re talking about writing well, another Twitter faux pas is the overuse of hashtags. In this sample it was associated with a reduced number of followers. People seem to hate the #random #use #of #hashtags.

6. Be bursty

There’s nothing wrong with having a burst of Twitter activity, say 10 messages in an hour. Twitter users who were bursty from time-to-time tended to attract more followers.

7. Switch from broadcast to direct tweets

Do you direct your tweets to particular people or are they just general broadcasts to the world?

It’s usually a balance between the two and in this study the average split was about 45% broadcast to 55% targeted.

In this sample, though, it paid in terms of more followers to increase the proportion of directed tweets and decrease the broadcasts. Naturally people usually like it when you talk to them directly.

***

• Do remember that this study is correlational so we can’t tell that these factors are causing the increased follower counts, but because the data were collected over 15 months, it is a good indication of what works.

• For more in-depth research on Twitter, check out: Twitter: 10 Psychological Insights. And for companion Facebook info, see Facebook: 7 Highly Effective Habits.

• And (here comes the inevitable!) you can follow me @PsyBlog.

Image credit: mkhmarketing

Can You Be Addicted to Facebook or is it Just a Bad Habit?

Six questions that indicate when a Facebook habit (or any other habit) is getting out of control.

From my new book:

“We don’t know her name, but her problem illustrates a new fear. According to a short case report in an academic journal, a 24-year-old woman presented herself to a psychiatric clinic in Athens, Greece. She had joined Facebook eight months previously, and since then, her life had taken a nosedive. She told doctors she had 400 online friends and spend five hours a day on her Facebook page. She recently lost her job as a waitress because she kept sneaking out to visit a nearby Internet cafe. She wasn’t sleeping properly and was feeling anxious. As though to underline the problem, during the clinical interview she took out her mobile phone and tried to check her Facebook page.”

It seems we live in an age of paranoia about what the Internet is doing to our minds. Inspired by this, some psychologists are now creating scales designed to measure whether the Facebook habit is getting out of control.

One of these asks you to answer the following questions on a scale running through very rarely, rarely, sometimes, often, up to very often (Andreassen, 2012). Note that you should decide how often these have happened during the last year:

Spent a lot of time thinking about Facebook or planned use of Facebook?
Used Facebook in order to forget about personal problems?
Felt an urge to use Facebook more and more?
Become restless or troubled if you have been prohibited from using Facebook?
Used Facebook so much that it has had a negative impact on your job/studies?
Tried to cut down on the use of Facebook without success?

According to the author, if the answers are either ‘often’ or ‘very often’ to at least four of these six questions, then the Facebook habit may well be getting out of control.

This is described as a ‘Facebook Addiction Scale’, but can you really be addicted to Facebook? It’s debatable and I’ve discussed this before (see: Does Internet Use Lead to Addiction, Loneliness, Depression…and Syphilis?). Technically, probably not because Facebook gathers together all kinds of activities, like gaming and social networking, and these need to be tested individually (Griffiths, 2012).

That said, some aspects of Facebook use (likely the social networking) do certainly come to rule some people’s behaviour, such that it starts to interfere with their everyday lives.

Bad habit or addiction?

Although I’m a little skeptical about the scale, you can use it to check up on whether any of your habits, not just Facebook, are getting out of control. Try replacing ‘Facebook’ in the questions with any other routine. This is a good informal way of working out if a target routine behaviour might be slipping over into the danger zone.

There is certainly a lot of crossover between bad habits and addiction. For comparison, here is what we classically think of as an addiction:

They dominate thoughts and behaviour,
They change the way we feel,
You need more of them to get the same initial effect,
You suffer withdrawal when they are reduced or removed,
They conflict with our everyday responsibilities, whether at work or socially.
After abstinence, the pattern of behaviour reasserts itself.

When you look at this you can see why the confusion about whether some behaviours are addictions has arisen. Suddenly even very benign behaviours like reading, watching TV or, indeed Facebook use, can start to look like addictions.

It’s important to remember that we’re talking about a sliding scale here. It’s only at the top end, when these behaviour are seriously interfering people’s lives that habits become pathological.

Image credit: nate bolt

The Online Society: 50 Internet Psychology Studies

50 psychology studies reveal how people are using email, Facebook, Twitter, online dating and more.

Twitter is an unsocial network. 59% of people check email from the bathroom. Online daters do lie, but only a little.

These are just a few of the psychological insights revealed in more than 50 internet psychology studies. Read on for more on how people’s behaviour has adapted (or not) to the demands of the online society.

Twitter: 10 Psychological Insights: psychological research on Twitter reveals who tweets, how much, what they talk about and why.
Email’s Dark Side: 10 Psychology Studies: like the telephone or the TV, email is a technology so embedded in our lives, we think nothing of it.
Six Causes of Online Disinhibition: The online disinhibition effect has cost people their jobs, their income and their relationships, yet many are still oblivious to it.
Facebook: 7 Highly Effective Habits: Quick 7-point primer on the psychology of Facebook.
Online Dating: 10 Psychological Insights: Psychological research reveals who uses internet dating and why, which strategies work, and uncovers the truth about lying online.
Does Internet Use Lead to Addiction, Loneliness, Depression…and Syphilis? Is the internet bad for us? Psychological research on the link between internet use and addiction, loneliness and depression.
Online Snooping: Is Your Partner Secretly Watching You? In 44% of married couples, at least one partner is secretly checking up on the other’s online activities.
Twitter: 7 Highly Effective Habits: New research on half-a-million tweets over 15 months reveals the factors which increase follower-count.
“Is the Internet Good/Bad For You?” and Other Dumb Questions: Are we beginning to ask the right questions about the psychological effects of the Internet?

Image credit: Darren Hester