People Who Don¡¯t Fake Social Media Life Have Better Mental Health, Study Finds

Social media is a constant source of entertainment and amazement. Whether it is interesting videos that keep popping up or memes that make you LOL.

However, for many, social media has also become a strong platform for self-expression where they showcase their talent and share with the world whatever new they get in their lives.

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And while there are many who show their lives to the world exactly the way it is, some fake it, creating a presence that¡¯s not originally them. And researchers have now discovered that not being authentic can cause considerable harm to a user¡¯s mental health.

This is according to a study published in Nature Communications. Researchers at New York¡¯s Columbia Business School and Northwestern University¡¯s Kellogg School of Management in Chicago looked at 10,560 Facebook users who had participated in a life-satisfaction and personality assessment survey from the year 2007 to 2012.

Mental health and social media

Researchers then compared their Facebook profile with what their actual life is, and looked at the extent of differences between the two. They found that participants who showed their life as it was on their social media profiles had higher levels of life satisfaction when compared to those whose profiles were not resembling their real life.

Another part of the study asked 90 students to post something on Facebook authentically for one week, followed by a week of posting content the way they want to be portrayed. After this, they analysed their mental health. Researchers discovered that they felt much better while posting about their real-life as opposed to while faking it.

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Researchers concluded stating, ¡°Our results suggest that whether or not engaging with social media helps or hurts an individual¡¯s well-being might be partly driven by how they use those platforms to express themselves. While it may be tempting to craft a self-enhanced Facebook presence, authentic self-expression on social media can be psychologically beneficial.¡±

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