Numerous studies have discovered that passively reading social media posts and not expressing your reaction to them, can lead to depression. When a user quietly reads a Facebook post, they end up feeling bad about themselves.
According to Huffington Post, a 2015 University of Michigan study discovered that students who read Facebook posts for 10 minutes were in a worse mood than those who posted the messages or commented on their friend’s posts.
Expert researchers have come up with a theory that claims that users who only passively read social media posts, usually end up comparing their lives with others. Moreover, lack of connection on social media just means they are missing out on human interaction. However, for a healthier state of mind, users must express their reactions to different posts. Surprisingly, even Facebook agrees. In an official company blog post, company’s Director of Research, David Ginsberg along with the Facebook social psychologist, Moira Burke said, “In general, when people spend a lot of time passively consuming information – reading, but not interacting with people – they report feeling worse afterward.”
The researchers further went on to claim that interacting with people – “especially sharing messages, posts, and comments with close friends and reminiscing about past interactions – is linked to improvements in well-being.” The research is bad news for Facebook.
The social media giant, however, wishes to use this as a method of encouraging users to be more active on the platform. There is other research that does not agree with what Facebook has to say. A study by Oxford claims that face-to-face interactions contributed to a sense of well-being over connections made through computers.