Facebook can cause frustration: Study

Social networking site Facebook can make you feel envious of your “successful” friends, leading to frustration and dissatisfaction, a new German study has found.

Researchers led by Dr Hanna Krasnova of the Humboldt-Universitat zu Berlin surveyed Facebook members regarding their feelings after using the platform.

More than one-third of respondents reported predominantly negative feelings, such as frustration. The researchers identified that envying their “Facebook friends” is the major reason for this result.

Krasnova, explained that, “Although respondents were reluctant to admit feeling envious while on Facebook, they often presumed that envy can be the cause behind the frustration of ‘others’ on this platform – a clear indication that envy is a salient phenomenon in the Facebook context”.

“Indeed, access to copious positive news and the profiles of seemingly successful ‘friends’ fosters social comparison that can readily provoke envy. By and large, on-line social networks allow users unprecedented access to information on relevant others — insights that would be much more difficult to obtain offline,” Krasnova said in a statement.

Those who do not engage in any active, interpersonal communications on social networks and primarily utilise them as sources of information, eg reading friends’ postings, checking news feeds, or browsing through photos, are particularly subject to these painful experiences.

The study also found that about one-fifth of all recent on-line/offline events that had provoked envy among the respondents took place within a Facebook context. This reveals a colossal role of this platform in users’ emotional life.

Paradoxically, envy can frequently lead to users embellishing their Facebook profiles, which, in turn, provokes envy among other users, a phenomenon that the researchers have termed “envy spiral”.

The researchers were also able to establish a negative link between the envy that arises while on Facebook and users’ general life satisfaction. Indeed, passive use of Facebook heightens invidious emotions that, in turn, adversely affect users’ satisfaction with their lives.

“Considering the fact that Facebook use is a worldwide phenomenon and envy is a universal feeling, a lot of people are subject to these painful consequences,” study co-author Helena Wenninger of the TU-Darmstadt said.

Related articles

• How Facebook and Twitter can boost your ego and make you more impulsive in just five minutes (ktrmurali.wordpress.com)

How Facebook and Twitter can boost your ego and make you more impulsive in just five minutes

• Policy-makers need to consider the impacts, warn researchers
• Inability to concentrate found to be one of the effects
• Browsing social networks for just five minutes can cause loss of control

Facebook and other social network sites can cause users to lose control and may lead to violence, obesity and debt.

Browsing for just five minutes on social networks can boost user’s self-belief so much that they become more impulsive.

Effects can include an increase in binge-eating, loss of concentration and lack of application, a study showed.

 

Browsing Facebook for just five minutes can increase impulsive behaviour, the study found.

Researchers are also concerned that the loss of control prompted by using Facebook could lead to social problems such as aggression and violence.

‘Given that self-control is important for maintaining social order and personal well-being, this subtle effect could have widespread impact,’ the study from the US warned.

‘This is particularly true for adolescents and young adults who are the heaviest users of social networks and have grown up using social networks as a normal part of their daily lives.’

Dr Andrew Stephen, of the University of Pittsburgh, and Dr Keith Wilcox of Columbia University in New York, carried out the study with more than 1,000 Facebook users and said it was the first time it has been demonstrated that facebook and other social networking sites lead to loss of control.

They urged policy-makers to investigate social network use to better understand how people behave after using Facebook and other sites.

‘We have demonstrated that using today’s most popular social network, Facebook, may have a detrimental effect on people’s self-control,’ said Dr Stephen.

Research identified an increase in binge-eating as one of the effects of using social network sites.

The researchers found that the key to behavioral changes after using social networking sites is the way they boost a user’s feeling of self-worth.

For people who send and receive posts from a number of friends with whom they have ‘strong ties’ even using a site for a short period of time was observed to increase self-esteem.

This is thought to happen because the social conventions that prevent boasting in face to face meetings are weakened when posting online, the researchers argued.

Users are also likely to focus on presenting positive images of themselves which are reinforced by supportive responses.

Having had their self-esteem boosted, the study showed, the self-control of users was weakened and resulted in different types of behaviour.

Volunteers taking part in one test were instructed to either spend a few minutes browsing social network sites or to look through CNN.com and TMZ.com.

Participants were then asked to choose between a healthy snack or a chocolate chip cookie and it was found that those using social network sites were more likely to opt for the unhealthy option.

‘Social network use enhanced self-esteem, making them more likely to make an unhealthy food choice compared to those who did not browse Facebook,’ the academics reported in a paper – Are Close Friends the Enemy? Online Social Networks, Self-Esteem, and Self-Control – published online in the Journal of Consumer Research.

A similar test in which volunteers were asked to solve anagrams after going online showed that the Facebook users were more likely to lose concentration and give up on the puzzles.

Researchers also asked volunteers a series of questions to establish their Body Mass Index (BMI), how many credit cards they had and what their levels of debt were.

 ‘The results suggest that greater social network use is associated with a higher body-mass index, increased binge eating, a lower credit score, and higher levels of credit-card debt for individuals with strong ties to their social network,’ the researchers found.

‘This research advances our knowledge of social networks by demonstrating that social networks can have significant effects on consumer judgment and decision-making, even in tasks that are unrelated to social network use or more general social behavior.’

They added: ‘Our research demonstrates that social network use may also have a detrimental effect on well-being by leading certain people to exhibit lower self-control.

‘It would be worthwhile for researchers and policy makers to further explore social network use in order to better understand which consumers may be particularly vulnerable to suffering negative psychological or social consequences.’

Who is Orkut ?

A guy lost his girlfriend in a train accident….

but the gal’s name nowhere appeared in the dead list. This guy grew up n became IT technical architect in his late 20′s, achievement in itself!!

He hired developers from the whole globe and plan to make a software where he could search for his gf through the web..

Things went as planned…

n he found her, after losing millions of dollars and 3 long years!!

It was time to shut down the search operation, when the CEO of Google had a
word with this guy n took over this application,

This Software made a whopping 1 billion dollars profit in its first year,

which we today know as ORKUT.

The guy’s name is Orkut Büyükkökten Yes it’s named after him only. Today he is paid a hefty sum by Google for the things we do like scrapping. He is expected to b the richest person by 2009..

Orkut Büyükkökten today has 13 assistants to monitor his scrapbook & 8 to monitor his friends-list. He gets around 20,000 friend-requests a day & about 85,000 scraps!!!

Some other Cool Facts about this guy:

* He gets $12 from Google when every person registers to this website.

* He also gets $10 when you add somebody as a friend.

* He gets $8 when your friend’s friend adds you as a friend & gets $6 if
anybody adds you as friend in the resulting chain.

* He gets $5 when you scrap somebody & $4 when somebody scraps you.

* He also gets $200 for each photograph you upload on Orkut.

* He gets $2.5 when you add your friend in the crush-list or in the hot-list.

* He gets $2 when you become somebody’s fan.

* He gets $1.5 when somebody else becomes your fan.

* He even gets $1 every time you logout of Orkut.

* He gets $0.5 every time you just change your profile-photograph.

* He also gets $0.5 every time you read your friend’s scrap-book & $0.5 every time you view your friend’s friend-list.

Eight Hot Social Networks of Future

 

Facebook was the first one to set a benchmark in social networking by showing the world how a simple idea from three Harvard dropouts could change the way the people interact, meet, do business and even sleep. Sites like Pinterest and Foursquare also gained millions of customers following the same path with a slight change of social principles.

Some of the people still think Facebook is the last word in social networking. But check out these budding networks. Even though many of them apply the same social principles- incorporating location based services and binding the people on taste graphs- they help people to meet and socialize, not in digital life, but in real.

In the numerous new social networks, there are a few which stand out on the functionality and beauty by which they attract millions. Mashable had made a list of the best among them, which could be the social networks of the future.

Highlight

Highlight is now the hot topic in social world. The geo location based social app surfaces information about the people who is near you in real time. It runs GPS, 24/ 7 in the background to keep you always connected. With the app, you can simply know everything about the highlight users who are sitting in a football field, if you find some interesting profiles which meet your tastes, you can send them a direct message or “highlight” them so that they will be notified about the same. The privacy features also allows you to be invisible from the rest of users by simply “pausing.”  

Forecast

Here is a service which is definitely for the future. Since all the networks around you keeps a log of your past and present, forecast asks what you plan to do in the future. The developers hope that Forecasting your acting class or yoga section tomorrow night will encourage and inspire other friends to join the fun. Simply, it’s a fun and simple way for friends to share where they’re going.

Fancy

Fancy lets you “fancy” anything in the world. It then files your “fancy’d” products into a sorted digital wish list. The eye catching site is very similar to Pinterest except the fact that you can actually buy the products on Fancy.

Localmind

Localmind is for the local, spontaneous social users. It gathers all the information from the nearby users about events, restaurant specials, offers and attractions happening now. It gathers the location specific information from Facebook and foursquare check-ins. It will also award you with points for providing fruitful information and location advice to others.

Glancee

Glancee helps users to make meaningful connections to new people. It explores the profiles of the people around you to discover the hidden connections including common friends, mutual interests and notify you so that you can meet up and create beautiful connections. It quietly works in the background saving all the information in the app diary regarding your encounters and events.

Sonar

Sonar works in coordination with your Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare accounts. Once after surveying the accounts, Sonar determines your most appropriate connections and it will help you to learn more about the people in vicinity and assist you in activities including networking and online dating.

Path

Path is a smart online journal which helps you share life with your dear ones. You can post everything from your photos, the music you listen to, where you are, who you are with and when you wake and sleep. You can also post these path updates to social networks like Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr.

Gogoboat

Gogoboat is like the travel guide Pinterest. You can get tips from the travelers, see where your friends have travelled, and share your own travel stories and photos to help others.

 

9 Most Bizarre Facebook Related Crimes

The woman who was arrested for ‘poking’ someone on Facebook

In yet another case of blurring between the lines of virtual and reality, a woman broke the law for poking via Facebook! Shannon Jackson of Tennessee broke the law when she poked a contact on her Facebook list, by violating a restraining order.

The order specifically prohibits either telephoning, contacting, or otherwise communicating with the petitioner. Violation of a restraining order in Tennessee is a class A misdemeanor, punishable up to 11 months and 29 days in jail, as well as a fine up to $2500.

The man who got arrested for pretending to be a Moroccan prince on Facebook

In the U.S., pretending to be a celebrity online is something of a trend. There’s a whole slew of fake celebrity blogs out there. Search Facebook or MySpace and you’ll find dozens of pages supposedly opened by Tom Cruise or Katie Holmes — all fake.

The Moroccan government, though, apparently isn’t quite hip with this trend, and in 2008 arrested a man for creating a Facebook profile under the guise of the brother of King Mohammed VI.

The man, 26-year-old Fouad Mourtada, was arrested and charged with “villainous practices,” a very dire and vague sounding offense. At this point, it’s unknown just what he said on the fake profile and whether his intents were malicious or satirical, but it’s safe to say that whatever he was doing with the fake Facebook identity wasn’t terribly amusing to the Moroccan government.

The emergency worker who got 4 years in jail for posting crime scene photos on Facebook

Mark Musarella, an emergency worker who posted photos on Facebook of a beaten and strangled woman called Caroline Wimme, was sentenced to 200 hours of community service after pleading guilty to misdemeanor official misconduct and disorderly conduct. The 48-year-old retired New York Police Department detective also lost his emergency medical technician license.

Now, the parents are suing Facebook for allowing the pictures to be shown.

 

The woman who was convicted for decapitating a mouse and posting the footage on Facebook

A young Queensland woman has escaped jail time over an animal cruelty case, in which she filmed herself hacking off a mouse’s head before posting the footage on Facebook. Naomi Anderson, 23, pleaded guilty to one charge of animal cruelty in the Caboolture Magistrates Court, north of Brisbane, in July 2011. The Caboolture woman had used a steak knife to cut off the mouse’s head, filming the episode and later uploading it onto Facebook using an alias. The mouse took 40 seconds to die.

Anderson received an 18-month good behaviour bond and was ordered to serve 180 hours community service.

The two preteen girls who were accused of cyberstalking after hacking into a classmate’s Facebook page

Two preteen US girls accused of hacking into a classmate’s Facebook page and posting sexually explicit photos and messages have been charged with cyberstalking and first-degree computer trespassing. The girls, ages 11 and 12, have been under investigation since the alleged victim’s family contacted Issaquah police. The two defendants used the victim’s password information to post sexually explicit content on her Facebook page. They also posted messages that indicated the victim was willing to perform sex acts on people.

The defendants instant-messaged some boys to arrange dates where sex acts were to be performed by the victim, according to the charges. Jon Knight, the stepfather of the 12-year-old victim, said his family is relieved that the case has resulted in criminal charges. He said that he wasn’t taken seriously when he reported the incident to Issaquah police and to staff at Issaquah Middle School.

The couple who was arrested for eating rare iguana on Facebook

This story concerns an American couple’s meal of an endangered iguana that landed them in Bahamian jail. They were caught after the country’s officials saw pictures of the feast on Facebook. The couple — Vanessa Starr Palm, 23, from Illinois and Alexander Daniel Rust, 24, from Indiana — posted incriminating snapshots that included “the suspects catching an iguana, parts of an iguana on a grill, two men eating the iguana pieces, and a man and a woman cleaning what appears to be undersized conch,” according to police. It’s unclear exactly how it got to the police, but apparently many people reported it.

Palm and Rust have been charged with violating an animal protection act and were released on $500 bail each. They’ll be back in court next Tuesday. As if that wasn’t enough, a Bahamian official said the pair “could also be charged under U.S. law which makes it illegal to commit an offence in a country that has a relationship with the U.S.” Good.

The iguanas are protected under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Florida.

The PA teen who admitted to trying to hire a hitman on Facebook

Chester County teenager faces 11 to 22 years in prison after agreeing to a plea agreement on charges he used Facebook to try to hire a hit man to kill a woman who had accused him of rape. Nineteen-year-old West Chester, Pa., resident Corey Christian Adams accepted the plea agreement on charges of rape, criminal solicitation of murder and other counts.

In July 2010, a 20-year-old woman who had accused Adams of raping her after a party called police to point out a posting on his Facebook page offering $500 for “a girls head.” In a later posting, police say Adams said “he needed this girl knocked off right now.” Neither Adams nor his attorney commented outside court.

The man who got jailtime for Facebook friend request

When you have a restraining order out against you, you need to be careful when playing around on social networks. A 37-year-old British man had been given a no-contact order after harassing his wife with text messages and phone calls. When he joined Facebook, he checked the box that would invite his entire address book to join as well. In Silicon Valley, that’s just an annoying social faux pas. But for him, it was a violation of his no-contact rule. He received ten days in jail, but served only seven after his lawyer petitioned the court that he had been “confused” by Facebook’s sign-in procedures. Good thing he didn’t poke her.

The teen who was busted after posting about toilet crime on Facebook

Consider this 16-year-old’s chances of avoiding Internet infamy flushed down the drain: After playing a prank that resulted in $247,000 worth of repairs and a five-month closure of a public library because of flooded toilets, he wrote about it on Facebook, which led to a public admission of guilt in court. This crime happened in Portsmouth, UK, where the teen boy confessed to using toilet tissue to fill the plugholes in the third-floor men’s toilets of the Portsmouth Central Library and turning on the taps, resulting in an epic flood.

The teenager had apparently tried to protest his innocence at first. But he changed his plea when presented with proof of his vandalism: A transcript of the Facebook comments he made with one of his mates in which he copped to the deed.

While he had told the cops he had done nothing, he had answered a question on Facebook as to whether he might be guilty. His reply: “Kind of, yeah. I’ve kept it to myself. A few mates know.” 

Related articles

• 9 Most Bizarre Facebook Related Crimes (huffingtonpost.com)
• Italian Crime Boss Arrested After Girlfriend Posts Pictures On Facebook (businessinsider.com)
• Facebook mouse murder lands woman in court (news.theage.com.au)
• 9 Strange Facebook-Related Crimes (neatorama.com)
• Government to launch inquiry into ‘outdated’ cyberstalking laws (independent.co.uk)