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kazzie writes:

Excessive Facebook browsing at Christmas, and seeing "perfect" family photos posted by others, is more likely to make you miserable, reports the BBC on a paper recently published by a graduate at the University of Copenhagen. The Facebook Experiment: Quitting Facebook Leads to Higher Levels of Well-Being.

Researchers warn of envy and a "deterioration of mood" from spending too long looking at other people's social media stories, induced by "unrealistic social comparisons".

Actively engaging in conversation and connecting with people on social media seems to be a much more positive experience, suggests the study, published in the journal Cyberpsychology, Behaviour and Social Networking.

This seems to be much less gloomy than "passive" users who spend too long "lurking" on social networking websites without getting involved.

The study also suggests benefits from stopping using social media altogether for a week.

You may not be surprised to learn that similar studies have been published in the past. (No reports yet from the Maximegalon Institute of Slowly and Painfully Working Out the Surprisingly Obvious.)

Original Submission