Facebook’s Biggest By-Product – Envy

Bangalore: With the abundance of information on the social media, we can find out where the hottest girl in the college spends her weekends and who the coolest hunk in the campus is dating. But a recent study conducted in Germany shows that such information comes at a price. When we see pictures of people who are beyond our friend circle, partying in a beach or dancing at a happening club in the city we often feel that their lives are much more entertaining or better than ours.

The study “Envy on Facebook: A Hidden Threat to Users’ Life Satisfaction?” by Humboldt-University Berlin, Germany, shows that such an open forum with access to a whole plethora of information leads to “social comparison and envy on an unprecedented scale.” Most of us would notice our friends who are very active on the social media forum saying, ‘I got 100 likes on my status today and people posted such nice comments.’ While you smile and say to yourself, ‘I’ve got a big hammer at home I’d like to smash your head with, I got only two likes and my sister is the only one who commented on my profile picture!’

We are getting lost in this field filled with likes, shares, and comments. The most popular guy in college is no longer in the college basketball team, he is the one with the best pictures on Facebook, no matter how bad he is in sports or academics. Most of us put so much of our time in updating and maintaining our social profile for a handful of people that we neglect the other portion of our life – reality. Ever heard your friend saying, ‘I’m feeling damn good today, the cute girl from my class liked my picture,’ or ‘such a horrible day man, got only five comments today and that ugly ramu got 50 likes!’ our lives are governed by the satisfaction we receive from the positive reaction of our peers on social media platform and the comparisons we make in order to feel worthy.