Feeling Low? Then Login to Facebook to Feel Better: Study

Logging on to Facebook and Twitter helps change your mood, finds a study.

People suffering from boredom, depression or just feeling blue turn to comfort food or an activity for distraction and to cheer up.  This is also called as sublimation where one's unacceptable impulses, emotions and thoughts are channelled into something productive. According to Freudian theory, this is one of the 15 mature defence mechanisms. A new research by psychologists at the Ohio State University suggests people turn to social media when they feel low to improve their state of mind.

Their trial involved 168 college students who were asked to take up facial emotion recognition test to induce both good and bad moods. All participants were told they performed poorly or excellently in the tests irrespective of how well they scored. Following this experiment, the subjects gave their reviews on their scoring in a social networking site called SocialLink. The website contained eight profiles of individuals who were made to appear attractive and successful and vice versa. But their images were mostly blurred and had dollar and heart signs indicating career success and level of 'hotness'.

It was observed majority of the participants clicked on the profiles of those who appeared attractive and good looking than profiles of seemingly unsuccessful and less attractive individuals. But subjects who were put off due to bad ratings in the facial emotion recognition test spent more time browsing profiles of less successful and unattractive people. These finding indicate that when people are in a bad mood, they tend to search for someone who is worse off to feel god about themselves and boost their self-esteem.

"When people are in a negative mood, they start to show more interest in the less attractive, less successful people on their social media sites," said Silvia Knobloch-Westerwick, co-author of the study and professor of communication at Ohio State University, reports the Psych Central.

"Generally, most of us look for the positive on social media sites. But if you're feeling vulnerable, you'll look for people on Facebook who are having a bad day or who aren't as good at presenting themselves positively, just to make yourself feel better," adds Benjamin Johnson, co-author and researcher from the Ohio State University.

"One of the great appeals of social network sites is that they allow people to manage their moods by choosing who they want to compare themselves to," Johnson said.

More information is available online in the journal Computers in Human Behavior.