I once heard a news report saying Facebook can make you more depressed. The reason is other people’s lives look perfect while your life seems to be falling apart. Is this report onto something?
In one week, a team of researchers led by psychologists Adam Kramer, studied Facebook accounts of over 600,000 people. They saw people who saw more negative posts tended to be more negative and those with positive posts tended to be more positive people. They studied these people for over a week. My question is: Is this ethical? I’m hoping they at least got the approval of the 600,000 people, or at least, these people knew they were being subjected to such an experiment. But you never know.
I’m wondering why Dr. Kramer and his team did this. I seriously doubt it was for the health and welfare of the Facebook users. I can see them using the information that was gathered for maybe marketing and promotional purposes. Oh, I almost forgot, the US government sponsor this study. Now I’m really skeptical.? Don’t get me wrong: I like Facebook. I’m thankful for the reconciliation that it’s gotten me with hundreds of people over the years. And in my three plus years of using this social medium, it has never made me depressed. But what’s the real purpose of this study?