Facebook makes us sadder and less satisfied

Did you know that Facebook said on its home page there are at least 1,310,000,000 monthly active users in the world and that half of all Facebook users have more than 200 friends? Did you also know that an estimated 3 million messages are sent every 20 minutes on Facebook? Facebook is an online social networking site that enables people who are registered users to connect to the world by creating a personal profile, sending messages to places all over the world, update friends on what they are thinking or are up to, upload videos and pictures among many others. Facebook was formed in the year 2004 on February 4, by Mark Zuckerberg and his roommates, which has grown greatly since then. More and more people are joining Facebook to be able to connect with their friends and the rest of the world and there is a lot of communication taking place on Facebook. Usually, when one joins Facebook for the first time, he or she probably has a hard time knowing how it works. After logging in several times, he understands what to do and eventually get used to it. Spending many hours on Facebook however gets one addicted. Such a person cannot resist and will rather be on Facebook than go out to spend time with friends.

Even though people join Facebook to connect, chat and be happy, Facebook tends to make them unhappy. A psychologist, Ethan Kross from the University of Michigan, together with her colleagues believe that Facebook makes people sad and lonely. Also, a researcher, Robert Kraut from Carnegie Mellon University is also of the opinion that the more people use the internet the lonelier and depressed they feel. He also feels that the sense of being connected socially reduces the very first time someone gets to such social media. Other people feel that Facebook makes people feel alienated and also that the personality traits between people who use Facebook and those who do not do not vary much. Others believe that Facebook can cause relationship problems by causing a lot of jealousy between partners.

Facebook makes People unhappy

Even though Facebook is a social networking site that connects people making communication easy and fast, its effects are the opposite as it leaves people feeling unhappy. A renowned psychologist from the University of Michigan, Ethan Kross , together with her colleagues believes that Facebook makes people sad and lonely(Konnikova,1)Kross seeked to validate his position when he performed a study together with his colleagues that involved sending texts to 82 people from Ann Arbor with an aim of knowing how the 82 people felt, whether they felt lonely, their amount of using Facebook and how much they had face to face or direct interaction with other people since they received the text(Konnikova,1) The finding was that the more the people were on Facebook the sadder they become and the less satisfied they became(Konnikova,1)

Maria Konnikova, the author of the article wants the audience to see proof by using Ethan Kross’ study that shows that Facebook makes people unhappy to show that the argument is valid(Konnikova,1)

The use of Kross’ study works well for the argument and position as it strengths the argument by giving support information(Konnikova,1)

The reason that Maria Konnikova give that Facebook make people sad and lonely effectively supports the thesis that Facebook makes people unhappy as it supports the thesis using evidence(Konnikova,1)

Work Cited

Konnikova, Maria . How Facebook Makes Us Unhappy. September 10, 2013. Web. April 23 2014 < http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2013/09/the-real-reason-facebook-makes-us-unhappy.html>