Bad day? Tinkering with your Facebook profile can make you feel better about yourself, a new study suggests.
(Side note: Sharing our stories boosts our ego, so click the LIKE button above, share this story with your friends, and we all win!)
Researchers used Facebook to test two dueling psychological theories. The first says that more self-awareness can make people more conscious of their own shortcomings, causing self-esteem take a nosedive. The second purports that looking at an edited version of your best self—like what you’d put in a wedding album or your Match.com profile—make your self-esteem soar.
The researchers looked at which category Facebook fit into by sending college students into a computer lab. Some of the students were told to look at their Facebook profiles, others sat in front of computers with off-screen mirrors (to create self-awareness), and a final group simply stared at the screen.
The students who browsed their own profiles reported the highest self-esteem. But students who disregarded instructions and peeked at other stuff on Facebook—presumably other people’s pages—didn’t get quite the same boost as those who stuck to viewing their own.
“Your profile is really your idealized self,” explains co-author Amy L. Gonzales, Ph.D., of the University of Pennsylvania. Not surprisingly, focusing on your good qualities gives you an ego boost.
Gonzales adds, “But if other people are also presenting their idealized selves, then those profiles could make you feel worse about yourself.” In fact, other research shows that looking at other people’s posts can bum you out