Facebook is making us miserable

Daniel Gulati:

Since our Facebook profiles are self-curated, users have a strong bias toward sharing positive milestones and avoid mentioning the more humdrum, negative parts of their lives. Accomplishments like, “Hey, I just got promoted!” or “Take a look at my new sports car,” trump sharing the intricacies of our daily commute or a life-shattering divorce. This creates an online culture of competition and comparison.

[…]

Not surprisingly, Facebook’s “horizontal” strategy encourages users to log in more frequently from different devices. My interviewees regularly accessed Facebook from the office, at home through their iPads, and while out shopping on their smartphones. This means that hundreds of millions of people are less “present” where they are. […]

The issue with this constant “tabbing” between real-life tasks and Facebook is what economists and psychologists call “switching costs,” the loss in productivity associated with changing from one task to another. Famed author Dr. Srikumar Rao attributes mindfulness over multitasking as one of his ten steps to happiness at work. He argues that constant distractions lead to late and poor-quality output, negatively impacting our sense of self-worth.

[…]

Each time a Facebook interaction replaces a richer form of communication - such as an in-person meeting, a long phone call, or even a date at a restaurant - people miss opportunities to interact more deeply than Facebook could ever accommodate. As Facebook continues to add new features to help us connect more efficiently online, the battle to maintain off-line relationships will become even more difficult, which will impact their overall quality, especially in the long-run. Facebook is negatively affecting what psychology Professor Jeffrey Parker refers to as “the closeness properties of friendship.”

If you’re looking for more reasons to delete your Facebook account, this is a fantastic article.

EDIT: Adesideratum said, “I’m being distracted from the work I really really need to be doing by an article titled ‘Multitasking: Switching Costs.’ Seriously?”