Association of Facebook Use With Compromised Well-Being: A Longitudinal Study.

Association of Facebook Use With Compromised Well-Being: A Longitudinal Study.
Am J Epidemiol. 2017 Jan 16;:
Authors: Shakya HB, Christakis NA
Abstract
Face-to-face social interactions enhance well-being. With the ubiquity of social media, important questions have arisen about the impact of online social interactions. In the present study, we assessed the associations of both online and offline social networks with several subjective measures of well-being. We used 3 waves (2013, 2014, and 2015) of data from 5,208 subjects in the nationally representative Gallup Panel Social Network Study survey, including social network measures, in combination with objective measures of Facebook use. We investigated the associations of Facebook activity and real-world social network activity with self-reported physical health, self-reported mental health, self-reported life satisfaction, and body mass index. Our results showed that overall, the use of Facebook was negatively associated with well-being. For example, a 1-standard-deviation increase in "likes clicked" (clicking "like" on someone else's content), "links clicked" (clicking a link to another site or article), or "status updates" (updating one's own Facebook status) was associated with a decrease of 5%-8% of a standard deviation in self-reported mental health. These associations were robust to multivariate cross-sectional analyses, as well as to 2-wave prospective analyses. The negative a...

Source: Am J Epidemiol - January 15, 2017 Category: Epidemiology Authors: Shakya HB, Christakis NA Tags: Am J Epidemiol Source Type: research