Number of Facebook Friends Linked To Anxiety

Hugh Pickens writes writes "WebProNews reports that according to a new survey, the more Facebook friends you have, the more likely you are to feel stressed out by the site. 'The results threw up a number of paradoxes,' says Dr Kathy Charles, who led the study. 'For instance, although there is great pressure to be on Facebook there is also considerable ambivalence amongst users about its benefits.' Causes of stress included deleting unwanted contacts, the pressure to be entertaining, and having to use appropriate etiquette for different types of friends. 'Like gambling, Facebook keeps users in a neurotic limbo, not knowing whether they should hang on in there just in case they miss out on something good.'"

Re:Scientific Research Run Amok...

[Etcetera]

I generally support just about any kind of scientific work, but I really don't see the value in studying how people use facebook. We all know it is for the most part a tremendous waste of time; I'm not sure what we have to gain by looking into how people use it.

I don't know if I'd say that. I have a lot of FB friends, about 80-90% of whom I've met in person at one point or another (I travel a lot and meet a lot of people, plus former classmates and colleagues, and people I'm attempting to connect with for the first time that I *should* know... Alumni from a group that I'm the Alumni outreach coordinator for).

Facebook in particular, and social networking in general, is the most efficient way known to man to maintain contact and a semblance of a relationship to a large number of people at once in a back-and-forth, interactive manner.

It's a time-waster if you sit there and just play social network games on it (Skinner Boxes). For the most part, I don't. I'm keeping up with the feed, commenting, liking, sharing, and re-posting. (It also helps that I have a job where I can keep a FB window open all day in-between other activities.

Maybe I just have more interesting friends than you? Or would otherwise work harder at keeping up with them? Don't know... But FB isn't a "tremendous waste of time" for me.

Correlation not causation

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The study does not establish causation, it finds a correlation. Without a control group it is not possible to make the conclusions stated in the article. The hypothesis is stated as a conclusion. Interesting, but flawed.