A recent study joins the not-insignificant pile of research devoted to proving that Facebook makes you fat/dumb/lazy/crazy. But is the math any good?
Source: shutterstock.com
If December hasn't been your most disciplined month to date — I, for instance, have purchased more tree ornaments than is reasonable, and this morning I watched either nine or fourteen YouTube videos of K-pop group Big Bang — and you need a new culprit, you might consider blaming Facebook. Just don't be surprised if nobody buys it.
Professors and researchers Keith Wilcox and Andrew T. Stephen recently published an article entitled "Are Close Friends the Enemy? Online Social Networks, Self-Esteem, and Self-Control" in the Journal of Consumer Research, proposing that active Facebook use tailored toward enhancing one's self-image with close friends contributes to increased self-worth, which, in turn (somewhat confusingly), leads to loss of self-control.
In other words: When you log onto Facebook and, while there, consider what your closest Facebook buddies think of you, that social media experience heightens your self-worth. Which — allegedly — contributes to a declining self-control.
Their hypothesis was as follows: "We propose that while social network use does make people feel better about themselves, these increased feelings of self-worth can have a detrimental effect on behavior." If it sounds like a weird study, that's because it is.
The researchers allege their study finds that "greater social network use is associated with a higher body mass index, increased binge eating, a lower credit score, and higher levels of credit card debt for individuals with strong ties to their social network." So should you quit Facebook?
Via: jcr-admin.org
Not really.
Here is how this rather dubious study was run: Participants were asked either to focus on "strong ties" (by listing their five closest friends and to what extent those friends' opinions mattered to them) or on "weak ties" (by listing their five most distant Facebook friends and their corresponding opinions' worth). Half of each group was assigned to either the control group or the experiment group.
The study's experimental group was instructed to log onto Facebook for just five minutes (!) and assess their self-worth in a quiz immediately following. The control group merely wrote about browsing Facebook for five minutes (they did not actually go on Facebook). The results showed that the participants focused on strong ties who actually went on Facebook rated their self-worth more highly that those who only wrote about being on Facebook. (There was no difference for those focused on weak ties). But because there was no measure taken of participants' self-worth prior to the experiment, it seems like a fairly major leap to assume the quiz measured an enhanced self-worth that could be attributed to Facebook use itself.