While on lunch today I was reading an interesting article on Yahoo about Facebook. According to an article by Andy Blatchford of The Canadian Press, a new study of Canadian University students suggests that Facebook is a magnet for narcissists and people with low self-esteem.
The article states that people who have a low self-esteem or who are narcissistic spend more time on the popular social networking site than those people who have adequate levels of self-worth. Apparently, the surveys were conducted two years ago, and the findings were published last month in the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking. An interesting comparison was also made between male and female Facebook users and how they promote themselves differently.
With Facebook having an estimated 500 million users, 16 million of those being Canadians I find the results of this study very interesting. The article ends with this question: “Is it that narcissists are more likely to use Facebook, or people who use Facebook are more likely to become narcissists?”
I’m curious – what are your thoughts? Here is the link to view the article:
While on lunch today I was reading an interesting article on Yahoo about Facebook. According to an article by Andy Blatchford of The Canadian Press, a new study of Canadian University students suggests that Facebook is a magnet for narcissists and people with low self-esteem. The article goes on to state that people who are low on self esteem or who are narcissistic spend more time on the popular social networking site than those people who have adequate levels of self worth. Apparently, the surveys were conducted two years ago, and the findings were published last month in the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking. An interesting comparison was also made between male and female Facebook users and how they promote themselves differently. With Facebook having an estimated 500 million users, 16 million of those being Candians I find the results of this study very interesting. The article ends with this question: “Is it that narcissists are more likely to use Facebook, or people who use Facebook are more likely to become narcissists?” I’m curious – what are your thoughts? Here is the link to view the article:
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/capress/100907/national/facebook_narcissists_insecure
I don’t know that it’s linked with narcissism, the idea of a social network is that everybody is on it.
What I have seen, and this was backed up by a number of studies and surveys – people are less likely to lie about themselves on Facebook than if you meet them face-to-face.
You can lie to your school friends and work colleagues, you can lie to your family or even your significant other – but if you got all of those people in the same room together you’d have a really hard time lying to all of them at once.
Obviously lying is aided by a lack of integrity or continuity in your life – if Facebook is what binds all of your social circles together than you can’t hide from any of them.
How people present themselves is closest to who they really are, and if that’s different than the image they project to you, it’s more likely that Facebook is right.
Tom, I am inclined to agree with your view as opposed to the article for sure. I guess it depends on what type of morality you have how you present yourself? Not sure. Some would argue that online presentation of oneself is easy to “fake” because there is no accountability in the real world? This article has me thinking…