If you enjoy using social media sites then is it something that you think is a good thing for your life or not? There have been a number of interesting studies on the effects of social media recently. However, the latest one suggests that using these sites might make us trust others less.
The research was carried out by Francesco Sarracino from STATEC – which is the government statistics agency from Luxembourg – together with Fabio Sabitini from Sapienza University in Rome. Their work was based on asking questions of 50,000 users of Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites.
They wanted to know how happy the users were with their lives, how much they trust others and how frequently they meet up with friends, as well as what they usually do when online. So what results were uncovered when the answers came back?
A Big Difference Found
It turns out that those surveyed who meet with their friends personally were more likely to be trusting of others and more satisfied with their lives. Of course, this means that the people who spent a lot of time on social media networks run the risk of going the opposite way and being less happy and less trusting.
Among the factors for this that were discovered by the researchers is the discrimination and hate speech to be found on social media. The effect of using social network is said to be “significantly negative”, according to the study.
Do you think that social media use has a positive or negative effect on your life and outlook?
