Facebook Users’ Engagement and Perceived Life Satisfaction

Abstract

This study extends existing research on Facebook's impact on users' life satisfaction. The results from two surveys of college students demonstrate a tension between Facebook use and users' perceived contentment with their lives. Existing literature indicates students use Facebook to enhance self-esteem, yet the results from this study connect increased Facebook use to lower self-reported levels of happiness. In particular, respondents' interactions with photos and videos increase users' dissatisfaction. This phenomenon may be due to the impact photos have on the ways users engage in social comparisons with Facebook "friends" and the self-construals they create based on these comparisons.

Understanding the role of social networking sites in the subjective well-being of users: a diary study

“…Typically expressed as the number of public posts (e.g., status updates, photos) a user has shared, the role of broadcasting in the SWB of adult population remains ambiguous (see Table 1; e.g., Yang & Brown, 2013;Ryan & Xenos, 2011), with some studies finding no link to users' happiness, depression (große Deters & Mehl, 2013), and life satisfaction (Krasnova et al, 2015). Similarly, reflected in the time users spend browsing their News Feed or public profiles of their SNS connections, the reported effects of browsing on users are unclear (Burke & Kraut, 2016;Lin & Utz, 2015;Matook et al, 2015;Verduyn, Lee, Park, Shablack, Orvell, Bayer, Ybarra, Jonides, & Kross, 2015;Vigil & Wu, 2015). While we expect an inferior role of these activities in promoting positive emotions, we account for the engagement in these activities in our study.…”

An Examination of the Association of Social Media Use with the Satisfaction with Daily Routines and Healthy Lifestyle Habits for Undergraduate and Graduate Students

“…Other studies, however, revealed that although individuals who spend more time on the Internet-and social media-appear to have greater social connections and happiness, their emotional and physical health may be adversely affected because of social comparisons, ultimately leading to negative selfconcepts. In addition, for college and university students, high use appears to affect physical health, family life, academic performance, quality of life, and mental health, therefore decreasing overall life satisfaction (Shahnaz & Karim, 2014;Vigil & Wu, 2015). MOHO emphasizes that to understand human occupation we must understand the physical and social environments in which it takes place (Kielhofner, 2008).…”

Contributions To Understanding Portuguese Facebook Consumers’ Behavior: Sociodemographics, Lifestyle And Life Satisfaction

“…More time allocated toward actively engaging with photostagging, uploading and looking at others' photos -was significantly negatively correlated with items such as "Life is generally fair," "My life is meaningful," "I have a good life," and "I am a happy person." However, uploading photos and tagging photos were positively correlated with respondents' professed happiness with their current life and life satisfaction was positively correlated with the number of all FB friends users have (Vigil & Wu, 2015).…”

“…In Vigil and Wu's (2015) study, the average respondent logged on 5-10 times per day, with sessions estimated to last between 5 and 10 minutes and they had 500+ Facebook friends. The authors were able to find many other correlations: (i) increased FB use was correlated to lower self-reported levels of happiness; (ii) respondents' interactions with photos and videos increased users' dissatisfaction.…”