The use of social media is infuriating us. The news was consistently terrible, but we didn’t necessarily react negatively to it. We didn’t have any of that crap in our pockets. We skipped through all that garbage on the screen. Our group visited the park. As a group, we read. To see a film starring Jodie Foster, we headed to the theatre.
Our latest analysis of over 11 billion references suggests that your feelings are justified. The public’s mood has been steadily declining since 2013, when it was at an all-time high.
You can read the whole thing down here, but here are some of the most important takeaways:
The last five years have seen a dramatic increase in unpleasant discourse on social media.
Positive and negative feedback are about equal in number. But up until lately, they were far more optimistic.
In the United States and the United Kingdom, negative posts are far more common than good ones.
Online, Canadians and Indians are more upbeat than downbeat.
Still more people use words like “love,” “happy,” and “good” than they use words like “hate,” “sad,” and “bad.”
Not that it comes as much of a surprise, but exaggeration may be effective in online communication.
The Big Think claims that social media sites actively seek for and promote “moral content.” A user’s posts are more interesting to other people when they contain more expressions of emotion.
It’s easy to get carried away while posting on social media since positive feedback in the form of likes and comments makes us feel good.
- Although we did see a generally negative tendency, we also discovered that the internet is home to many positive voices and insightful perspectives.
- And most importantly, we identified almost equal numbers of positive and negative posts across all, with the majority of the latter appearing very recently.
- The situation is not yet hopeless.
- Are you prepared to delve into the figures? This is what we discovered.
To wit: We Obtained Eleven Billion Mentions. This is What We Discovered.
- In 2017, there were more than 1.96 billion active social media users throughout the world. More than 80% of people in the United States use at least one social networking site.
- People use social media sites to get their information, have fun, and make friends. Or it might be used for venting, sparking fights, and spreading misinformation.
- They’re definitely on Facebook or Twitter, though.
- Mention is a service that monitors social media for company mentions and rival mentions. Therefore, we have amassed a massive repository of social media mentions.
- Some really neat analytic tools reveal the general tone of social media messages, too. So, I used these programmes on the entire database.
- We were curious as to whether or not the gloomy reputation of social media was justified.
In the opinion of those who know?
“In general, people report feeling worse after spending a great deal of time passively consuming information, such as reading but not interacting with other people.” I.e., Facebook
A poll found that those whose link clicking was four times the norm or whose post like was twice the norm had poorer mental health than the norm. Cali/New Haven
Social media definitely has many positive effects on our lives, therefore it would be incorrect to suggest that they are exclusively negative. – BBC
Only four percent of young people said that using social media has made them less confident. – CNN
Conclusion
Even Facebook agrees that spending too much time on social media might make you feel down and lonely. This may have less to do with the actual words or feelings communicated online than it does with the way people talk to and about each other.
Observing the success of others might spark feelings of jealousy or the fear of missing out. “when not triggering feelings of envy,” however, “[social media] could be a good resource and have positive effects on well-being.” (Psychological Science)
It’s possible that there are many more content individuals in the world than we give them credit for, despite the fact that social media might feel like the worst party ever.