Lonely people share too much on Facebook

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/lonely-people-post-personal-details-on-facebook-2014-05-21

Too much sharing and ‘liking’ on the social network could reveal emotional stress

Posting constant status updates on Facebook FB +0.07%   may be annoying for others, but a new study finds that oversharing on the world’s most popular social network is also a sign of loneliness.

More than 79% of the users who describe themselves as “lonely” disclosed personal information, such as their favorite books and movies, compared with less than 65% of other users, according to a new study published by researchers at Charles Sturt University in New South Wales, Australia, which will appear in the July issue of the journal, “Computers in Human Behaviour.” The study analyzed Facebook postings of more than 600 women — half of them described themselves as “lonely.”

What’s more, nearly 98% of the lonely users shared their relationship status publicly on Facebook instead of restricting it to just friends, and they even publicly shared their home address online, according to the study’s authors, associate professor Yeslam Al-Saggaf and lecture Sharon Neilson from CSU’s School of Computing and Mathematics. People who don’t explicitly state that they’re lonely on Facebook (though some might be) tend to share more about subjects like religion and politics, the study found.

“It makes sense that the people who felt lonely would disclose this type of information,” Al-Saggaf says. “They want to make it easier for others to initiate contact with them, which may help them overcome their feelings of loneliness.” But over-dependence on social networks as a social outlet can also lead to what some doctors call “ Facebook Depression ,” according to a 2010 report, “The Impact of Social Media on Children, Adolescents and Family,” by the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Rich DeNagel, 45, a former high school teacher who’s currently on disability, says he went off Facebook for several months because it made him feel depressed. “For the most part I feel Facebook is a lonely experience. You don’t often see people putting out that they’re going through a hard time,” he says. “There’s a lot of social pressure to show that everything’s great. It’s a never-ending quest to be interesting and intellectual and unique, and strive to prove something to the world. You can’t just be yourself.

Al-Saggaf and Neilson’s study isn’t the first to link over-sharing on Facebook and emotional distress. In 2012, Larry Rosen, professor of psychology atCalifornia State University and author of “iDisorder: Understanding Our Obsession with Technology and Overcoming Its Hold on Us,” analyzed 800 Facebook members and tested them for a range of psychological disorders, and found those who most often “like” other people’s activities on Facebook are more likely to show symptoms of “mania” and “compulsivity.”

On a happier note, having more Facebook friends may also be a predictor of fewer symptoms of mild and major depression, indicating that people who are popular online are well-adjusted in real life too, research by Rosen found last year . But it cuts both ways: Social media can be a way of gaining virtual empathy — “but also make you feel that everyone else’s life is better than yours as though you have to show your best self and gain admiration through ‘likes’ and postings,” Rosen says.

While Facebook behavior might be a sign of loneliness or even exacerbate those feelings, it’s unlikely to cause it. Christopher Shea, 48, who is studying for a Masters degree in social work at New York University, is a big Facebook fan. “I get a charge out of the likes I receive on my posts,” he says. “I suppose it’s tied into self-esteem and feeling noticed. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was even a slight dopamine response when those ‘likes’ start pouring in.” But it may also be good for those who are shy: “It’s a safe space in which to engage.”

Younger Facebook users typically have a larger number of friends than older users. Some 27% of Facebook users aged 18 to 29 have more than 500 friends in their network, while 72% of users age 65 and over have 100 friends or fewer, recent research by Pew Research Center found. Among adult Facebook users, the average number of friends is 338, and the median number of friends is 200. Put another way, half of all Facebook users have more than 200 friends, and half have fewer than 200.

DeNagel, who has a higher than average 500 friends on Facebook, says the social network is useful for keeping in touch with people with whom he might otherwise have lost touch, but he still treads carefully with his online footprint. “It makes me feel more lonely,” he says. “I don’t want to take a selfie every day and change my picture or tell everyone what my inner thoughts are because maybe I’m a bit more private. But I’m sure there is a group for people who are lonely and depressed, if I went to look for it.”

Click to Play

Facebook Home Losing Popularity Very Quickly

http://thedroidguy.com/2013/05/facebook-home-losing-popularity-very-quickly/

John Crozier | May 11, 2013

Facebook invested a lot of time and effort into their version of a mobile operating system, well a the GUI for your smartphone. The CEO of Facebook Mark Zuckerberg said that Facebook Home is the next version of Facebook, but the figures are in and it hasn’t made a massive impression on the market. The analytics data shows that Facebook Home has been steadily dropping, this comes as a shock since Facebook has an active user base of one billion.

Home Losing the Lime Light 

Home has had one million downloads since it’s release, the numbers of Home users should increase as a direct coincidence of AT&T lowering the price of the HTC First to $0.99 with a two year contract. The low Home figures could be due to the fact that only a limited amount of devices support the software: HTC One X, HTC One X+, Samsung Galaxy S3 and the Samsung Galaxy Note 2 along with the already mentioned HTC first.

Since the initial rise and then subsequent fall of the app it has not returned to the top 100 downloaded apps in any of the countries it has been released in yet, it seems that the buzz and the shine of the new software has worn off. This data just goes to show that even though we do like Facebook it doesn’t necessarily mean that we want it to be with us every time we unlock our phones.

Facebook has noticed that the software isn’t doing as well as they had hoped it would, when the company was discussing the amount of downloads Home had gotten they forgot to mention that this was not active downloads. Yes they tried to hide the fact that even though people were interested in the service at first their interests have faded and they have since reverted back to the stock software.

Facebook = lower self-control + more scrutiny + more stress

http://www.digitaltrends.com/social-media/studies-on-how-social-media-affects-us/


DECEMBER 21, 2012BY FRANCIS BEA

Facebook is more than just quirky status updates and pictures of your dog — shocking, we know. Check out everything the higher minds have had to say lately about the social network and all the frightening things it’s doing to our brains. 

More social network usage leads to lower self-control

We might not realize it, but social network users are more inclined to lose self-control, according to a study by researchers from Columbia Business School and the Joseph M. Katz Graduate School of Business at University of Pittsburgh. In a paper titled, “Are Close Friends the Enemy? Online Social Networks, Self-Esteem, and Self-Control,” researchers argue that social networks will boost a user’s self-esteem simply by how we choose to portray ourselves online.

Social network users tend to be selective about what’s published, and more often than not it’s the positive parts of their lives that become glamorized. You won’t see too many status updates about how few friends we have or how little we get paid. But the effects of this can be detrimental: To maintain this feeling of self-worth, social network users tend to lower their self-control, from which the study draws a parallel between higher social network usage with a “higher body-mass index, increased binge eating, a lower credit score, and higher levels of credit card debt for individuals with strong ties to their social network.” Phew. Those are some heavy repercussions for exaggerating how much you had on your vacation.

HR is judging your job candidacy via social media

It should come as no surprise that you’re going to be scrutinized by current and potential employers starting for your social media presence. 

Reported by BusinessNewsDaily, AVG Technologies released a study that might be alarming for those of you looking for jobs. If you’re trying to secure that critical interview, it might be in your best interest to shield your social presence from the public’s eye. This includes Facebook, Twitter, Google, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Flickr. Here are some facts from the study that you should know about:

• As many as 90 percent of human resource professionals, AVG found, will search for unprotected accounts to judge their merits based on what they find.
• If a candidate looks like they’re drunk your chances of getting an interview drops by 84 percent (shocking!).
• If there’s any nudity on your profile, 90 percent of human resources professionals agree that there’s no way that candidate will get an interview (again… shocking!).
• Derogatory, negative, and racist comments found online will diminish your chances of securing that interview.
• 50 percent of human resources professional admitted that they’ve disqualified a candidate due to their social media profiles.

Facebook causes stress

If you’re trying to manage the many facets of your personality and life on Facebook to fit in with certain social circles, you might be among the people that are susceptible to anxiety from using the social network. Researchers from the University of Edinburgh published a study that that draws parallels between managing a Facebook profile with stress. What they found was that users on average were a part of seven different social circles. Regulating these multiple relationships is increasingly becoming a cause for stress now that Facebook is evolving into a network for keeping in touch with not only friends but relatives, co-workers, and even bosses.

“People will try and manage themselves and regulate how they appear on the site, so they will try and avoid saying things they think, as they are worried how it will appear. I have seen how people will delete photos and even regulate their offline behaviour for their online presence. If people are at parties and they see a camera they then think my boss, or my girlfriend might see this. So they might be smoking or drinking and when a camera comes around they will change their actions so people don’t see it on Facebook,” Ben Marder, who wrote the report, told The Telegraph.

This Is How Facebook Tried to Make Money Off You

http://mashable.com/2012/12/21/facebook-makes-money-off-you/

12/21/12

For better or worse, this will go down as the year that Facebook really put a dollar sign in front of its users.

Facebook has been under immense pressure from investors to come up with ways to monetize, which has led to a fundamental shift in how it operates. When the company first filed to go public in February, CEO Mark Zuckerberg stated very clearly that profit is not his or the company's first priority. "Simply put: we don’t build services to make money; we make money to build better services," he wrote in the public filing. Eight months and plenty of bad stock trading days later, Zuckerberg revealed in an earnings call that every team at Facebook is now responsible for coming up with a revenue strategy for their product.

In the past year, we've seen Facebook try out a range of tactics to make money from its users, whether it's inserting more advertising into the News Feed or the recently announced option that lets people you don't know message your inbox for $1. Some of these efforts, like the messaging option, have been met with heavy criticism from users while others have largely been accepted as par for the course.

What matters now to Facebook from an investor standpoint is how much it can increase the money it makes from each user. Facebook generated about $1.25 per user on average in the third quarter, up from about $1.19 in the same quarter last year.

To put that another way, right now you're worth about $5 a year to Facebook and the company would really like to see that number go up.

For that reason, don't hold your breath for Facebook to stop trying out new ways to make money off you in the new year. Brian Wieser, senior research analyst at Pivotal Research Group, says that some features introduced this year like Sponsored Stories for mobile will likely stick around, while the company continues to test out others to see what works and what doesn't.

"I think you should expect just an ongoing testing and learning from an ad sales perspective about what balances near-term revenue growth with durability," Wieser said. With that in mind, here's a look back at all the ways Facebook tried to make money from you this year, as well as a glimpse at what they might do next year.

Facebook 'cloaking' flaw allows unexpected snooping

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/03/20/facebook_deactivated_friend_zero_day/ 

Facebook 'cloaking' flaw allows unexpected snooping

• 
• 
 
• 
 
• 
 

Eggheads label flaw a 'zero-day privacy loophole'

By Simon Sharwood, APAC Editor • Get more from this author

Posted in Security, 20th March 2012 03:59 GMT

University College London research student Shah Mahmood and Chair of Information Communication Technology Yvo Desmedt have told a conference of what they call a “zero day privacy loophole” in Facebook.
Details of the loophole, which the pair name “Deactivated Friend Attack” was presented at the IEEE International Workshop on Security and Social Networking SESOC 2012 in Lugano, Switzerland on March 19th.

The pair say the attack works like this:

“Our deactivated friend attack occurs when an attacker adds their victim on Facebook and then deactivates her own account. As deactivation is temporary in Facebook, the attacker can reactivate her account as she pleases and repeat the process of activating and deactivating for unlimited number of times. While a friend is deactivated on Facebook, she becomes invisible. She could not be unfriended (removed from friend’s list) or added to any specific list.”

Complicating mattters is the fact that, the pair say, Facebook users aren't told when friends de-activate or re-activate accounts.
That means trouble if the account is re-activated, as the newly-re-activated friend regains access to anything their connections have posted. Once they've rummaged around, they can de-activate the account again and their friends will almost certainly not know what has happened or that they've shared information.
The pair label this behaviour “cloaking” and cannot resist explaining it with a Star Trekmetaphor, writing “Badass Blink or Jem’Hadar has to uncloak (be visible), even if only for a moment, to open fire.”
The extended abstract of the talk asserts cloaking is a problem because many Facebook users aren't very discriminating about whom they befriend on the service. Some could therefore Friend members whose only intention is to “cloak” their accounts and then “... activate her account at the moment least likely to be detected and crawl her victims profile for information, keeping an updated record."
That's bad because, the pair say, "Various groups of information aggregators including marketers, background checking agencies, governments, hackers, spammers, stalkers and criminals would find this attractive as a permanent back door to the private information of a Facebook user.”
The user would never know of that information-gathering effort, unless they happened to be paying attention to the temporarily uncloaked account.
To prove the approach works, the pair say the conducted a lengthy experiment in which a dummy account acquired many friends and conducted frequent cloaking and uncloaking without attracting much attention.
The fix, the pair say, is for Facebook to notify users of de-activations and re-activations, so that odd behaviour can be spotted. Flagging of accounts that cloak is another option, as is removing re-activation features altogether.

Number of Facebook Friends Linked to Narcissism

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-501465_162-57401116-501465/number-of-facebook-friends-linked-to-narcissism-says-study/

(CBS News) A recent study finds a new link between one's abundance of Facebook friends and narcissism.

The study titled "Narcissism on Facebook: Self-promotional and anti-social behavior" by Christopher J. Carpenter was published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences. The purpose of the research was to identify "socially disruptive" personality types on Facebook.

Carpenter surveyed 294 people, ages 18 to 65, who were given a series of questionnaires regarding their use of Facebook.

They were also asked questions to assess Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI). More specifically, two NPI subscales - Grandiose Exhibitionism (GE) and Entitlement/Exploitativeness (EE), as defined by a 2010 study called "What Does the Narcissistic Personality Inventory Really Measure?" published in the journal Assessment.

The study theorizes that people with high levels of GE tend to have a high friend count on Facebook because their drive for attention motivates them to seek a wider audience.

The same group is more likely to accept friend requests from strangers, post frequent status updates, upload photos and change their profile picture as a means to gain attention. Meanwhile, those with high levels of EE were predicted to feel entitled to attention without effort or reciprocity.

A sample of questions asked in the study:

"How often do you post status updates to Facebook?"
"How often do you update your profile information on Facebook?"
"How often do you accept a friend request from a total stranger on Facebook (assuming they do not appear to be a fake profile)?"

For the most part, the research supported the hypothesis that people with more Facebook friends tended to have narcissists tendencies.

One caveat of the study is that it's not fully representative. Nearly three fourths of the participants were college students.

The March 2012 issue of Personality and Individual Differences can be ordered online.

Facebook 'Unfriending' Leads To Double Homicide

http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/12/facebook-unfriending-leads-to-double-homicide/

2/12/2012


Horrific: After Billie Jean Hayworth defriended a 30-year-old woman, Jenelle Potter, on Facebook, Potter’s father went to Hayworth’s house and murdered her and her fiance, sparing their baby, who was found unharmed in his mother’s arms. Hayworth, 23, and Billy Payne, 36, were both shot, and Payne’s throat was slashed.

One of the investigators says that there had “been bad blood” between the two families for some time, with confrontations in real life, including an altercation at a grocery store, but what triggered the murders was the act of severing ties on Facebook.

I cannot fathom homicidal rage over a Facebook blocking, but it’s not the first time that a Facebook defriending has inspired criminal retaliation. Last year, an Illinois woman set fire to a couple’s house after being defriended.

Facebook crystallizes the dynamics of our friendships and social interactions — bringing them a clarity that can be measured by clicks, visits, and comments. Having our social interactions brought into that level of focus means that a relationship that might have once ebbed over time naturally through avoidance and ignored phone calls can instead be cut off in a dramatic and confrontational way. Perhaps laying bare the end of a relationship in such a deliberate way means an intensified emotional reaction for those involved, or a sense of finality that one wouldn’t usually get. (When I blocked an ex-boyfriend on Facebook years ago, he was angrier about that than at any other point in our breaking up.)

For it to escalate to this level of retaliation, though, is horribly tragic. I suppose the lesson here, if there is one, is not to defriend/block anyone on Facebook who strikes you as potentially homicidal. (Or better yet, don’t friend them in the first place.)

Facebook Owns You

The Onion Weighs in on Facebook

Facebook addicts should get out and socialise more

http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2012/1/22/nation/10312466&sec=nation

January 22, 2012

WITH every new level of technology comes a corresponding wave of casualties.

From theft victims careless with their bank ATM cards to gullible folk cheated in online scams, the story is familiar enough.

So today we see the rise of Facebook addicts. The fact that this involves victims without criminal perpetrators does not make it any less serious.

Facebook addiction has been known to affect the psychological and physical health of its victims.

It also affects the personal relationships that victims had, or might have had, with others around them.

It is therefore a personal, domestic and social problem. The affliction is universally acknowledged by health professionals who have dubbed it Facebook Addiction Disorder (FAD).

It is compulsive, invasive of one's personal life, distorts priorities, damages one's capacity to relate to others around them and disorientates one to reality.

There are withdrawal symptoms, pangs of “cold turkey” and it is all downright senseless and wasteful.

How can it then be addressed effectively?

Relying on addicts to stop their addiction is not going to work. Neither will legislation, since Facebook can all too easily be accessed through computers or smartphones.

With children and young adults, FAD is particularly pernicious because it eats away at their health in their formative years.

Yet, it is with young addicts that the problem is perhaps easier to avoid with prudent parental intervention.

Adults as parents or guardians therefore have a responsibility to ensure that those under their care do not fall victim to FAD. And as adults anyway, with or without others under their care, they need to set an example by not falling victim themselves.

If push comes to shove, there is always the off switch.

For Malaysians to “have the most Facebook friends in the world” may at first sound gratifying, but in reality it is a condition ridden with problems and liabilities.

The best friends tend to be those you encounter in the flesh. A “friend” in cyberspace may be very unreal, whether as a notional friend of a friend, a fictional character, or even a predator.

If Malaysians have the most virtual friends in the world, it may well be that we have the least real friends in the world. And that would be another tragedy in itself.