There is no way around it: Facebook, Blogs, Twitter, Instagram even, are the new, and let’s not forget, free, outlet to modern autobiographies. One can virtually follow six hundred life stories (more or less depending on the amount of Facebook ‘friends’ you have) via the internet, at the click of a few well-placed buttons.

But can anything really be that easy? After our class discussions about the internet, and Facebook in general, my suspicions about the un-likable negative qualities of Facebook were confirmed.  However, I became curious about the proposal that there would be difference in experience of “passive” internet browsers versus “active” internet browsers. It was suggested by a few in class that of course, those who peruse the internet with no specific aim in mind, the “passive” users, are more likely to have a negative experience. They will have more pop-ups, receive more general information, and perhaps be more susceptible to coercion by the money-makers behind the screens. At first, I will admit I was skeptical to this idea; I believed that those “active” users who considered themselves exempt were a little too optimistic. But, after some active perusing myself, I have been proven, for the most part, incorrect.

According to the New Yorker, study results on Facebook have baffled researchers for some time. While results in one particular study said that Facebook indeed made participants unhappy, and almost equal amount of results came in saying that Facebook made participants happier. How could this opposing information have existed within the same study? Digging deeper, researchers found that those who passively scrolled through the information on Facebook, without liking, writing on friend’s walls, etc. were more likely to experience negative emotions by “lowering their feelings of connection and increasing their sense of loneliness”. However, those who were actively using Facebook, by adding to their  life narrative, or to others, experienced an increase in positive emotions. So why is it that we more often hear of the negative effects of Facebook? As other studies have explicitly stated, majority of users are passive users. Their non-engagment is cause for these negative effects. This idea was also reiterated on World Crunch: “people who communicate relatively infrequently but read the posts of friends and scroll through their pictures tend to be less satisfied with their own life”. 

Perhaps then the message is this: if we’re going to be consumers, why not actively consume and contribute to our happiness, rather than pretend we’re not consuming and add to our sense of alienation?