Facebook and Subjective Well-Being

The more people used Facebook at one time point, the worse they felt the next time we text-messaged them; the more they used Facebook over two-weeks, the more their life satisfaction levels declined over time. Interacting with other people “directly” did not predict these negative outcomes.

From a paper by Kross et al. A discussion of the research in The Economist is here.  

Facebook paper of the day

Connection strategies: social capital implications of Facebook-enabled communication practices

This study assesses whether Facebook users have different ‘connection strategies,’ a term which describes a suite of Facebook-related relational communication activities, and explores the relationship between these connection strategies and social capital. Survey data (N = 450) from a random sample of undergraduate students reveal that only social information-seeking behaviors contribute to perceptions of social capital; connection strategies that focus on strangers or close friends do not. We also find that reporting more ‘actual’ friends on the site is predictive of social capital, but only to a point.We believe the explanation for these findings may be that the identity information in Facebook serves as a social lubricant, encouraging individuals to convert latent to weak ties and enabling them to broadcast requests for support or information.