Facebook is a tool for people to talk to each other socially, and at first blush it would appear to be a boon for people with low self-esteem. However, according to a study published in Psychological Science, people with low self-esteem often behave in a counterproductive fashion, telling all their friends about what’s going wrong in their lives and pushing them away.
“We had this idea that Facebook could be a really fantastic place for people to strengthen their relationships,” says Amanda Forest, a graduate student at the University of Waterloo, who co-wrote the new study with her adviser Joanne Wood.
The study found that those with low self-esteem are more likely to see Facebook as a safe place to talk with people, since they are generally uncomfortable with face-to-face contact. A neutral party (a coder) was asked to rate the last ten status updates of users and it was found that those with low self-esteem were more negative than people with high self-esteem and the coders liked them less.
Interestingly, the study said that those that with low self-esteem get more responses from their Facebook friends when they post highly positive updates compared to less positive ones; with high self-esteem users the trend was reversed.
The conclusion is that while people with low self-esteem feel safe making personal disclosures on Facebook, they may not be helping themselves. “If you’re talking to somebody in person and you say something, you might get some indication that they don’t like it, that they’re sick of hearing your negativity,” says Forest, noting that when people have a negative reaction to a post on Facebook, they often keep it to themselves. “On Facebook, you don’t see most of the reactions.”
Source: ScienceDaily.com
