User:Zhixian ren/sandbox

=Cyberpsychology=

Facebook and Cyberpsychology
Facebook, being the leading online social media platform on a global scale nowadays, has countless influences on users' psychological status. Facebook follows the pattern of one-to-many communication, which differs from sending private messages, allows users to share information about their lives, including social activities and photographs. . While Facebook users enjoy the sense of connected, frequent use of Facebook are threatening users’ mental health. Low self-esteem, narcissism, depression, loneliness, and negative relationship are all possible consequences that caused by frequent use of Facebook. The briefed response through “like” and “dislike” button, exposing of personal life in public, and trying to maintain self-image are few reasons that can explain the psychological problem caused by using Facebook frequently.

Depression
Facebook is criticized for causing depression on users, especially on teenage users. A study hold by Michigan University proves that using Facebook frequently make people feel more depressed, and less confident. In this study, researchers observed 82 Facebook users during a two week period. .They found that the more time a person spends on Facebook, the more his or her feelings of well-being decrease and feelings of depression increase. UM social psychologist Ethan Kross who is the lead author of the study claims that the research is tracked moment-to-moment basis throughout the day how people's mood fluctuated depending on their Facebook usage, and no matter how they change the personality and behavior dimension such as frequency of Facebook use, the result keeps the same, which is the more someone uses Facebook, the worse mood he or she will get. .

Low Self-esteem
One of the reasons that may cause the depression is because Facebook user who checks friends' post frequently will find their life less satisfied. They tend to compare their life with their friends', and neglect the fact that their friends post best of their life and some are not even real. According to Alex Jordan who conducted a study at Stanford University, published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, of 80 Facebook users, focusing on the number of positive and negative experience their peers were experiencing. .Through his research, he found out that Facebook users tend to amplify the happiness of their friends and reduce the sadness of friends’ life. By comparing with friend’s post of happiest and most joyful life, Facebook users have the sense of loser and eventually develop to low self-esteem status.

Loneliness
It is relative easy for someone to find hundreds of friends on Facebook, which seems incredibly hard to achieve in real life. However, Instead of seeing friends face to face, chatting with Facebook online who may be totally stranger doesn’t help to build friendship, instead they feel even lonelier. Geraint Rees, and his colleagues at the University College of London examined the fMRI brain scans of 125 frequent Facebook users and found out that the average friends on Facebook is 300, yet having more friends online did not significantly make particular regions of the brain larger or more active. . The research proves from a scientific perspective that more friends on Facebook does not mean more positive relationship which will function certain parts of brain more actively. Friends on Facebook are not the source of life motivation, since the research points out that we the number of friends has no direct influence on brain. Facebook use the “like” and “dislike” button as means of interaction, however, this interaction is too brief and does not show concern about the one who post on his or her Facebook wall. The brief interaction is one of the reasons that develops the feeling of loneliness.

Negative Relationship
Using Facebook frequently can even increases divorce and break-up rate and also increase the emotional and physical cheating rate. Couples tend to increase jealousy when see partners comment on different gendered people’s wall. To deal with the uncertainty of the romantic relationship, partner surveillance on Facebook becomes more popular. However, the skeptical attitude between couples may cause the end of relationship.Russell B. Clayton,1 Alexander Nagurney and Jessica R. Smith hold a survey of 205 Facebook users aged 18–82 was conducted using a 16-question online survey to examine whether high levels of Facebook use predicted negative relationship outcomes. .The result of the study indicates that individuals who are currently in a relationship of 3 years or less are more likely to experience negative relationship outcomes, which means short period relationship and any other non-matured relationship may be easily destroyed by Facebook.