[(JD)]

I personally never did join FB and had no desire to...sounds like it was a good decision for yet again, I hear something negative about being at FB.

study also found that those with low self-esteem frequently post updates that work against them. They tend to criticize their friends with negative details of their lives, making them less likeable as "friends."

Alex Jordan at Stanford University conducted a study, published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, of 80 Facebook users, focusing on the number of positive and negative experience their peers were experiencing. He found they consistently over-estimated the fun their friends were having and underestimated their negative or unhappy experiences. He concluded that Facebook may be worsening the tendency to thin everyone else is enjoying themselves more than you are. "By showcasing the most witty, joyful, bullet-pointed versions of people's lives, and inviting constant comparisons in which we tend to see ourselves as the losers, Facebook appears to exploit an Achilles' hell of human nature. And women may be especially vulnerable to keeping up with what they imagine is the happiness of the Joneses," Jordon contends.

Read article here

[Perna]

Surprise, surprise; people with low self esteem do things that cause them low self esteem. Facebook is not the culprit, Facebook is just a social tool, like coming to this site. We know of people who come here and seem to have meltdowns rather than find help? There's something for everyone online, including something to make their problems worse depending on them. It's not what's "out there" that works against us but what's inside?

[A Red Panda]

I find facebook can both help and hurt my self-esteem and perception of myself.

One on hand, when I see the happy families that my old classmates have been having it makes me feel lonely and inferior.

On the other hand, I post up loads of travel photos and I get a lot of comments on them from a lot of people.

I just take it for what it is, and assume that other people post as little of their negative experiences as I do!

[LifeIsCruel]

I got off of Facebook!!

I was there to reconnect with friends--which I did...but then, I would daily post inspirational stuff...which hardly no one appreciated!

Plus---so MANY post their DRAMA over it!!! Personal stuff! I got tired of that BS!

[Lonelyheart22]

I have a Facebook account, rarely post anything on it, my Internet "home" is Tumblr.
It can be depressing, indeed, but what Facebook is showing me is nothing I didn't know already, it just provides more tangible insight into the lives of these people I know, like former school/high school colleagues. Most of them have good jobs, some moved to another country(which was one of my biggest dreams growing up and still is), have relationships. Sometimes it does bother me because I have none of that but with or without Facebook, I would have still been aware of them doing those stuff.

I use FB all the time to keep up with friends and family. I think how FB works for a person depends greatly on who you choose to interact with. If you limit your interactions to people you really know and know are not going to drag you down, then it won't drag you down. But too many people friend total strangers, get caught up in political arguments, etc. instead of taking care of themselves. That isn't a FB problem. That is a problem of having no boundaries or sense of self to start with. I have no problem unfriending someone if I realize their posts bother me, but honestly I've only had to do that less than a handful of times because I use discretion about who I choose to interact with in the first place.

[Strive4health]

Originally Posted by 1914sierra

I use FB all the time to keep up with friends and family. I think how FB works for a person depends greatly on who you choose to interact with. If you limit your interactions to people you really know and know are not going to drag you down, then it won't drag you down. But too many people friend total strangers, get caught up in political arguments, etc. instead of taking care of themselves. That isn't a FB problem. That is a problem of having no boundaries or sense of self to start with. I have no problem unfriending someone if I realize their posts bother me, but honestly I've only had to do that less than a handful of times because I use discretion about who I choose to interact with in the first place.

Originally Posted by LifeIsCruel

I got off of Facebook!!

I was there to reconnect with friends--which I did...but then, I would daily post inspirational stuff...which hardly no one appreciated!

Plus---so MANY post their DRAMA over it!!! Personal stuff! I got tired of that BS!

I can see the validity of both of these views.

Like LifeIsCruel, I got off facebook for a few reasons. The main reason was because of how I saw people treating me...it was like I didn't exist. All they were interested in was seeing if I updated my picture or posted anything personal, and while I updated pictures here and there I was careful to not post very personal things. I didn't feel like having 150 people, many of whom I did not personally speak with on a regular basis, have access to my personal life. A lot of those people were very hypocritical about who was important to them, posting complaints about how people say they are so busy and don't make time for others yet didn't do the same.

What turned me off was witnessing the ugly side of human nature...how people are actually more intolerant than they appear. Everyone should be allowed to think differently without repercussions, yet the opposite happened. People were defriending others for having a difference of opinion and expressing it. Sometimes I wanted to say, so what if someone doesn't agree with your political views or a social issue going on right now? At the end of the day, none of that crap matters because there are so many more important things to worry about it life.

I am outdated I suppose, but if people truly care about keeping in touch they can call me, email or actually see me when possible. People used facebook as a way to pad their own ego and as a source of boosting their social status. I cared for neither and am glad I got off. Not surprising, after I got off I reached out to people letting them know my contact info and not a single person has followed up with me. Goes to show how significant I was in the first place.

I haven't found FB to affect my self-esteem. I have a reasonably good knowledge of myself and people in general. I think that gives me a pretty good understanding of FB dynamics. FB is what you make it. Like 1914sierra I use FB to keep in touch with distant friends and family and to interact with them. I have a healthy skepticism of FB itself though.
I was just reading about a psychological experiment that FB conducted or allowed to be conducted on users back in 2012. The owners of FB say that consent to such research is in the TOS and conditions that users agree to when joining FB. I find that troubling.

[splitimage]

I like FB. I have friends I've made on-line or met at harp conferences who are all over the world, so it's a good way to keep in touch. Most of my friends post things that are funny, or interesting, or music related. I sometimes post about personal stuff, but mostly post about concerts and knitting.

splitimage

[offthegrid]

I had to take a step back from frequenting fb. I saw other people traveling getting careers going and starting families. Basking in everyone else's success at this point in my life just makes me shut down. I use Facebook as a photo album, a contact list and play games on it. I don't put personal information on it nor do I announce everything I'm doing.

[A Red Panda]

I tend to go through my friends' list every year or so and clear out a lot of people. I like to keep my account to as small a number as possible... so if after a year I realize that 1) I don't really communicate with the person 2) I don't particularly care for reading their posts and 3) they never comment on mine (thus would assume they don't particularly care) I'll then delete them.

Sometimes they readd me. Embarassing as I feel horrible, but I'll usually post up that I must have accidentally deleted them during my cull (which, has actually happened!). I'll keep them on after then because they obviously do pay attention to whatever I'm up to.

Then again - I'm fairly particular with who I add. They are people whom I either know I really WANT to keep up with.... or people who I see a lot and feel guilty if I didn't accept them.

It's really just up to me to be responsible for my experience on facebook.

[hvert]

I have mixed feelings about Facebook. I created my account 7-8 years ago. I kept my circle very small until fairly recently. I also rarely used it, being wary of Facebook spying on me.

In the past year, I've used it more often. I've found that the friends I am closest to in real life are not the people I interact with the most on Facebook- quite a few of those friends don't even have accounts.

I have found that Facebook complicates things. I've been hurt when I've seen that friends have gotten together without inviting me. Other friends have gotten upset with me for similar reasons. It's also much harder to decline invites -- people can see how busy you really are.

I would love to take a break from Facebook (and the internet) for a week or two!

[Lefty_Mac]

i just purged all my brazilian friends off facebook, some of them which are well, 'friends' as i had to find out today, for over 25 years. i have ONE english kid who plays ina virtual band with, which helped me a lot, and mostly just post phyos and memorabilia of frank zappa ina nice group there. but i don't get personal with them. evrybody who i got personl with on fb just turned into a shitstorm. so i hid them all from my news feed at first as their happy lives make me feel like crap. and now, eventually it has come to this. as for the group, now i frequent about once in a week, perhaps, discuss about the music a bit, but keep fb shut - i use trillian to connect to the chat. and tonight's last hours have been so hard, and yet relieving, and yet angering, and i don't care if all my imnfo is there - people now can go to hell with their judgements. guess, i'll be there next week.

[A Red Panda]

Originally Posted by hvert

I have found that Facebook complicates things. I've been hurt when I've seen that friends have gotten together without inviting me. Other friends have gotten upset with me for similar reasons. It's also much harder to decline invites -- people can see how busy you really are.

At least for me, facebook is in absolutely no way an indication of how busy (or not busy) my life is! I don't post many things about what I'm up to in my personal life, although I will post pictures if I've thought to take any.

I'm sorry that your friends have been upset with you for doing things without them... but it's totally a normal and natural thing for people to do - no one hangs out with the same few people all the time for everything!

[hvert]

I don't post much about what I am doing, but my other friends do! My privacy settings are as locked down as they can be, but it doesn't stop other people from seeing what mutual friends post.

I post very little on FB, and as soon as I can figure out how to break my addiction to "Words With Friends", I shall most likely close my account altogether ...

[glok]

What is Facebook? A plastic surgeon's before and after photo album?

[vonmoxie]

I've seen studies stating that this is the case, that Facebook incurs negative social effects instead of positive, and absolutely agree. Perhaps though, now in the wake of regulators investigating a recent Facebook-sponsored and conducted study entitled "Experimental evidence of massive-scale emotional contagion through social networks", reported this month in Wired Magazine, we can take comfort of a sort in the fact that it appears to be no coincidence at all that emotions evoked by their evolving interface are distorted and uncomfortable:

The journal that published the controversial study in which Facebook manipulated the emotions of users by altering content in users’ News Feeds, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), has published an Editorial Expression of Concern regarding the study and "that the collection of the data by Facebook may have involved practices that were not fully consistent with the principles of obtaining informed consent and allowing participants to opt out.” The issuing of the statement follows regulators both in the US and the UK saying that they will investigate the matter further.

The study in question was entitled "Experimental evidence of massive-scale emotional contagion through social networks" and involved manipulating feeds to have more negative or positive content in order to see how it effected user's posts. The authors write in the paper abstract: "We show, via a massive experiment on Facebook, that emotional states can be transferred to others via emotional contagion, leading people to experience the same emotions without their awareness."

I doubt very highly that this is the first such study Facebook has funded, judging by the extensive amount of fine tuning the social environment there has creepily sustained over time. It's always felt like an ever slippier slope of engineered manipulation to me, and I do happen to prefer my reality distortion-free, especially where the power of massive corporations with nearly unlimited funds and loyalties only to profit-seeking shareholders are concerned.

But that's just my opinion; I could be wrong.

[Strive4health]

My problem isn't with the actual product. At the end of the day, facebook is just another product developed by a bunch of software geeks (it's true) and they turned it into a huge business venture. That's not a problem.

The problem is how people choose to use it. That's why I believe it brings out the darker side of people. Suddenly the people you thought were good friends decide you are not worth more than just a "I wrote on your wall" for communication. Or they send you a message on fb and think that replaces a phone call or visiting each other. Maybe they are just more interested in your private business. Who knows. My issue is mostly with people on facebook. They see people are convenient or inconvenient, based on how you use facebook. After all, it's more convenient for them to see you write on your wall, your photo walls, update your status, pictures, etc. than to take the time out of their schedule to hang out for a couple hours. If you're not that convenient...well, sucks to be you.

(shrugs) I'm one of those people who sucks, but I'd rather suck for the better.

[Lefty_Mac]

10 days have passed after my last post in here. I started typing normally again (I just CAN'T resist the shift key). My news feed is practically empty save for a few things after I ranted there that a lot of the FOREIGN people I've ''befriended'' there don't give a ****, don't say hi, and don't respond when YOU say 'hi' and yet you'll submitted to see an imbecilic photo of a knee bruise some dude from Alamo shows whet even know who he is. A very perceptile man responded to me that I was forgetting to put them all in the acquantances list so I wouoldn't have to see that tomfoolery. And so I did it, and bam, I'm much happier with my news feed as people that I CARE about and those who CARE about me show up once ina while - and Zooey's updates. Good enough for me. I don't accept requests for evnts or apps so I'm cool. I customised my facebook, it's all black (Firefox rules) and white and blocks advertisements.

In other words, I use facebook now as merely a discussion group (WHEN I'm intersted to discuss...the chaff is still more than the wheat there) to follow Hellogiggles and Zooey's updates (oh what a PLEASURE when I saw her saying she doesn't want kids) and the chat I still take of it with my friend on Trillian. It's naught but an apparatus for attention *****s and media advertisement crammed down your throat. I pity those who find something actually useful in that thing.

[freefallin]

Facebook is terrible for my self-esteem. In particular, I have this one "friend" who intentionally brags to me about her money on there, like she has admitted that she likes when people her age are jealous of her, so she flaunts her money around. We're in a group together where I and a few other people I used to do freelance work with hang out, so it's more of a chat group than the regular newsfeed design of the rest of Facebook. Like I'll post saying I got a new wallet from Walmart for $5, and she'll be like, "omg I love my wallet so much! It's this one." then she posts a picture of her $300 Coach wallet. Or I'll post saying I just enjoyed a really good chicken sandwich, and she'll respond, "Sounds good! I think my boyfriend and I are going to this fancy restaurant in Miami for dinner."

I want to delete Facebook so bad for this reason, but I need it since I can't seem to find a job outside of the house. I need it to get updates on when new online freelance opportunities become available.

[Strive4health]

Facebook was bad for my self-esteem, too. Mostly because of the way people began to treat me. I was just another number on their list, so I got off facebook and go out of the house more. Haven't looked back.

I think what facebook taught me was to choose my friends wisely from now on. If they aren't someone who cares about socializing offline, why would I want to be their friend anyway?

[Potpotjon]

FB is for reconnecting to friends and family but its how a user use it because others abuse it and taking the opportunity to harm and fool others.

[Alone & confused]

Originally Posted by (JD)

I personally never did join FB and had no desire to...sounds like it was a good decision for yet again, I hear something negative about being at FB.

Read article here

Thank you JD! I COULDN'T AGREE MORE!! Instead of going out, socializing and actually INTERACTING with family/friends, all the people I know who have a fb spends more time sitting on the sidelines, staring at their screens and seeing what everyone else is doing! Social Media??? It's the most ANTI-social thing I've ever seen!! My children all have fb's. We can't even GET TOGETHER AS A FAMILY without EVERYONE staring at there phones! You can hardly get their attention to have a face to face conversation with them! I think it's the deterioration of social behavior. I HATE Facebook like GOD HATES SIN! I have even seen some Mothers so engrossed with fb that they neglected to have HUMAN CONTACT with their own children! It's a sad, sad world we live in today! God help us all!!!

[dwfieldjr]

Had a fb account for about a week then shut it down.