Facebook Use Predicts Declines in Subjective Well-Being in Young Adults

By Ethan Kross, Philippe Verduyn, E. Demiralp, Jiyoung Park, David S Lee, Natalie J. Lin, Holly Shablack, John Jonides, Oscar Ybarra. PLoS ONE, 2013

1,482 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Over 500 million people interact daily with Facebook. Yet, whether Facebook use influences subjective well-being over time is unknown. We addressed this issue using experience-sampling, the most reliable method for measuring in-vivo behavior and psychological experience. We text-messaged people five times per day for two-weeks to examine how Facebook use influences the two components of subjective well-being: how people feel moment-to-moment and how satisfied they are with their lives. Our results indicate that Facebook use predicts negative shifts on both of these variables over time. The more people used Facebook at one time point, the worse they felt the next time we text-messaged them; the more they used Facebook over two-weeks, the more their life satisfaction levels declined over time. Interacting with other people “directly” did not predict these negative outcomes. They were also not moderated by the size of people's Facebook networks, their perceived supportiveness, motivation for using Facebook, gender, loneliness, self-esteem, or depression. On the surface, Facebook provides an invaluable resource for fulfilling the basic human need for social connection. Rather than enhancing well-being, however, these findings suggest that Facebook may undermine it.

Subfields: Applied Psychology, Experimental and Cognitive Psychology, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/82e804cf2b65c774dd758e1ea2afad7e9ddd0df0

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Citations in the corpus

Facebook Addiction and Subjective Well-Being: a Study of the Mediating Role of Shyness and Loneliness (2019, background): “Recent studies showed thatFAissignificantlyandpositivelyassociatedwith loneliness (e.g., Błachnio et al. 2016; Kross et al. 2013).”
Depression among Users of Social Networking Sites (SNSs): The Role of SNS Addiction and Increased Usage (2017, positive): “[33] found Facebook use predicts declines in two aspects of wellbeing: how people feel moment-to-moment and how satisfied people are with their lives.”
The role of family support in work-family balance and subjective well-being of SME owners (2020, background): “Another has been to define SWB as a statelike (for example, Conway, Clinton, Sturges, & Budjanovcanin, 2015; Kross et al., 2013) versus a trait-like construct (for example, Srivastava, Locke, & Bartol, 2001).”
The Social Media Party: Fear of Missing Out (FoMO), Social Media Intensity, Connection, and Well-Being (2020, neutral): “© 2019 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC Kross et al., 2013; Tromholt, 2016; Twenge, Joiner, Rogers, & Martin, 2018; Woods & Scott, 2016).”
Too Many ‘Friends,’ Too Few ‘Likes’? Evolutionary Psychology and ‘Facebook Depression’ (2015, background): “This is a problem that also extends to numerous studies of SNS use and well-being (see Selfhout et al., 2009; Pantic et al., 2012; Jelenchick, Eickhoff, & Moreno, 2013; Kross et al., 2013).”
Social comparison, social media, and self-esteem. (2014, background): “…symptoms (Feinstein et al., 2013) and evaluate their current self as being more discrepant from their ideal self (Haferkamp & Kramer, 2011), and also that people who spend more time on Facebook tend to have lower wellbeing (Kalpidou et al., 2011; Mehdizadeh, 2010; see also Kross et al., 2013).”
Experimentally manipulating social media abstinence: results of a four-week diary study (2019, background): “Among studies using experience sampling methods, retrospective Facebook use is associated with greater loneliness and diminished wellbeing in the moment (Kross et al., 2013).”
The Welfare Effects of Social Media (2019, background): “…and social media 1See, for example, Abeele et al. (2018), Burke and Kraut (2016), Ellison, Steinfield and Lampe (2007), Frison and Eggermont (2015), Kross et al. (2013), Satici and Uysal (2015), has expanded.2 Alter (2018) and Newport (2019), along with other academics and prominent Silicon Valley…”
The Facebook Experiment: Quitting Facebook Leads to Higher Levels of Well-Being (2016, positive): “Previous studies have found correlational evidence that Facebook use has several negative effects on people’s well-being in terms of depressive symptoms(5,6) and decreased life satisfaction.(3,7) In addition, there is experimental evidence confirming that Facebook has negative effects on well-being:”
Negative consequences from heavy social networking in adolescents: The mediating role of fear of missing out. (2017, background): “…evidence that overuse or maladaptive use of ICT can have negative effects on thewell-being and psychological functioning of children, adolescents, and young adults (Brooks, 2015; Fox &Moreland, 2015; Kross et al., 2013; Rosen, Whaling, Rab, Carrier, & Cheever, 2013; Sampasa-Kanyinga & Lewis, 2015).”
Sharing the small moments: ephemeral social interaction on Snapchat (2016, background): “Kross et al. (2013) found that spending more time on Facebook during one time period was associated with declines in emotional valence in the following time period.”
Unsolved Problems in ML Safety (2021, background): “Measurements such as clicks and watch time may be easily measurable, but they often leave out and work against important human values such as wellbeing [105, 52, 170, 171].”
Internet Use and Subjective Well-Being in China (2016, background): “Third, by examining not only Internet use in practice but also attitudes toward Internet use, we provide valuable insights into the little-known mechanisms that drive the Internet use-SWB relation (Kross et al. 2013; Valkenburg and Peter 2007).”
Unifying the detrimental and beneficial effects of social network site use on self-esteem: a systematic literature review (2019, background): “Second, we contribute to the growing body of research which studies the implications of information technology use for individuals’ well-being (e.g., Burke & Kraut, 2016; Krasnova, Widjaja, Buxmann, Wenninger, & Benbasat, 2015; Kross et al., 2013).”