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Is Facebook making us lonely?

Eric Barker
April 17, 2012

In the latest issue of The Atlantic Stephen Marche has a long, excellent article on the subject.

I found these bits most interesting:

Moira Burke, until recently a graduate student at the Human-Computer Institute at Carnegie Mellon, used to run a longitudinal study of 1,200 Facebook users. That study, which is ongoing, is one of the first to step outside the realm of self-selected college students and examine the effects of Facebook on a broader population, over time. She concludes that the effect of Facebook depends on what you bring to it. Just as your mother said: you get out only what you put in. If you use Facebook to communicate directly with other individualsâby using the âlikeâ button, commenting on friendsâ posts, and so onâit can increase your social capital. Personalized messages, or what Burke calls âcomposed communication,â are more satisfying than âone-click communicationââthe lazy click of a like. âPeople who received composed communication became less lonely, while people who received one-click communication experienced no change in loneliness,â Burke tells me. So, you should inform your friend in writing how charming her son looks with Harry Potter cake smeared all over his face, and how interesting her sepia-toned photograph of that tree-framed bit of skyline is, and how cool it is that sheâs at whatever concert she happens to be at. Thatâs what we all want to hear. Even better than sending a private Facebook message is the semi-public conversation, the kind of back-and-forth in which you half ignore the other people who may be listening in. âPeople whose friends write to them semi-publicly on Facebook experience decreases in loneliness,â Burke says.

On the other hand, non-personalized use of Facebookâscanning your friendsâ status updates and updating the world on your own activities via your wall, or what Burke calls âpassive consumptionâ and âbroadcastingââcorrelates to feelings of disconnectedness. Itâs a lonely business, wandering the labyrinths of our friendsâ and pseudo-friendsâ projected identities, trying to figure out what part of ourselves we ought to project, who will listen, and what they will hear. According to Burke, passive consumption of Facebook also correlates to a marginal increase in depression. âIf two women each talk to their friends the same amount of time, but one of them spends more time reading about friends on Facebook as well, the one reading tends to grow slightly more depressed,â Burke says…

And:

In one experiment, Cacioppo looked for a connection between the loneliness of subjects and the relative frequency of their interactions via Facebook, chat rooms, online games, dating sites, and face-to-face contact. The results were unequivocal. âThe greater the proportion of face-to-face interactions, the less lonely you are,â he says. âThe greater the proportion of online interactions, the lonelier you are.â Surely, I suggest to Cacioppo, this means that Facebook and the like inevitably make people lonelier. He disagrees. Facebook is merely a tool, he says, and like any tool, its effectiveness will depend on its user. âIf you use Facebook to increase face-to-face contact,â he says, âit increases social capital.â So if social media let you organize a game of football among your friends, thatâs healthy. If you turn to social media instead of playing football, however, thatâs unhealthy.

TheRedArchive is an archive of Red Pill content, including various subreddits and blogs. This post has been archived from the blog bakadesuyo.

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Post Information
Title Is Facebook making us lonely?
Author Eric Barker
Date April 17, 2012 6:47 PM UTC (11 years ago)
Blog bakadesuyo
Archive Link https://theredarchive.com/blog/bakadesuyo/is-facebook-making-us-lonely.14372
https://theredarchive.com/blog/14372
Original Link https://www.bakadesuyo.com/2012/04/is-facebook-making-us-lonely/
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