Too much social media happiness depressing
UNSETTLING experiences on social media may leave you feeling more than just anti-social – they might raise your risk for depression, new research suggests.
Curiously, the reverse doesn’t seem to be true. The survey of nearly 1 200 university students indicated that a positive online exchange only marginally reduced the risk of depression.
“We were not surprised that having negative experiences was related to depression,” said study lead author Dr Brian Primack, who directs the University of Pittsburgh’s Center for Research on Media, Technology, and Health.
“This is something that we hear from people a lot in their subjective experience.
“However, we were surprised with how there was a very weak relationship – or even none at all in some models – between having positive experiences and having less depression,” he added.
“We expected positive experiences to be more powerful.”
Still, Primack said the notion that negativity packs a stronger punch was not an exclusively online phenomenon.
“There is a theory called ‘negativity bias’, which suggests that negative things we encounter in the world are often more powerful than positive ones,” he said.
“For example, you might be taking four different classes in university, and you might have done very well in three of them. But it is that fourth class that you did very poorly in that takes up nearly all of your mental energy.”
But, he continued, there’s an argument for why the online world might particularly lend itself to negativity bias.
This is because the online world tends to be completely oversaturated with false positivity. People get jaded with all of the ‘likes’ and all of the enthusiastic happy birthday wishes. But, when there is an angry or negative comment, it tends to stick out like a sore thumb and to feel particularly bad.”. – The New York Times