Use Facebook to feel better
According to a new study, people who are particularly troubled by the life goals they have achieved—or, rather, those they have not achieved—feel a stronger need to log in to Facebook. In such cases, the social media platform is used to improve their emotional state.
The results of a study conducted by Phillip Ozimek from the Department of Social Work at Münster University of Applied Sciences point to this connection. Together with Hans-Werner Bierhoff and Katharina Hamm, both from Ruhr University Bochum, the junior professor of social and media psychology surveyed a total of 355 Facebook users about their usage behavior using an online questionnaire.
"Our results show that people with difficulties in emotion regulation in particular tend to use Facebook more intensively," explains the researcher. "Those who are not so good at controlling their own emotions use social platforms as a tool to make them feel better in the short term, so to speak."
Another influencing factor is social comparison orientation: "People whose self-esteem depends heavily on comparison with others use Facebook and the like more often," says Ozimek. "This is because social platforms offer countless opportunities to present themselves and compare themselves with others." An overview of the entire study is currently available in the online journal Current Psychology published article, available at Fhms.eu/Article-Ozimek.
Ozimek's research focuses on social media and he had already investigated why people actually use them in his dissertation. "They are mainly used for self-regulation," is his most important finding. Under certain circumstances, however, social networks can also intensify negative feelings such as depression, especially when used passively. Ozimek has summarized his central assumptions in his Social Online Self-Regulation Theory. In the future, the doctor of psychology is planning further research projects on the use and impact of social platforms. He is currently conducting a study on "Social media use and personality" in cooperation with the Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy Unit at Ruhr University, for which he still needs test subjects.
