Facebook users are now supposedly insecure? Hmm… let’s look at Twitter for a moment. This is funny to me because I’ve long said that Twitter is a huge ego trip.
There is a ton of love on Twitter, and it feels so good read all the sweet tweets people send me. Twitter is a major part of my life. I follow almost 30,000 people, and I love Twitter dearly, but I’m the first to admit it’s a massive ego trip.
According to this new study done at York University in Canada, “People who check Facebook may be lacking in self-esteem. Those who scored higher on the narcissism test checked their Facebook pages more often each day than those who did not.” I know a lot of people will get defensive about this because who wants to be known as an insecure person, right? I log into Facebook almost everyday, and I think I am a Twitter addict since I’ve sent over 37,000 tweets. This is my take on it all…
Even though the findings of this study are being plastered all over the Internet, let’s stop for a second and take a look at it. There are over 500 million Facebook users. This study only included 100 people. Also, everyone in the study was between the ages of 18 and 25. Who the hell isn’t insecure and narcissistic at that age?
I find the University’s comment that Facebook “allows them to thrive on shallow relationships while avoiding genuine warmth and empathy” to be offensive. To me, those are the words of someone who is clueless about social media. I share genuine warmth and empathy with my Facebook and Twitter friends. In other words, in my opinion, yeah, it’s an ego trip and it feels good, nothing more and nothing less. This study does not represent the majority of users on Facebook and doesn’t represent how real social media is to a lot of us!
You can read the details of this study on the University website here.
[via York University, dailymail, geek sugar] [Image Credit Dmitry Melnikov / Shutterstock]
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