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kazzie [soylentnews.org] writes:

Excessive Facebook browsing at Christmas, and seeing "perfect" family photos posted by others, is more likely to make you miserable. The BBC [bbc.co.uk] reports on a paper recently published by a graduate at the University of Copenhagen. (Full paper free to read until January 18 2017 [liebertpub.com].)

They warn of 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 [theguardian.com] studies have been published [newyorker.com] in the past [medicaldaily.com]. (No reports yet from the Maximegalon Institute of Slowly and Painlully Working Out the Surprisingly Obvious.)

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