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Social comparison and envy on social media: A critical review
- amin 5y agoSince "Facebook bad" is on the front-page of HN every day, I thought some might be interested in a nuanced and contrary view: "Reviews and meta-analyses on social media social comparisons, envy, and well-being present a complex set of findings. Earlier research finds social comparison and envy to be common and linked to lower well-being. Yet, increasingly, newer studies contradict this conclusion, finding positive links to well-being as well as heterogeneous, person-specific, conditional, and reverse or reciprocal effects. For instance, two experiments and three surveys observe benign envy to be more common than malicious envy. They also find inspiration, a positive motivational outcome of assimilative upward comparison, to be frequently associated with social media. The positive side was also apparent during the COVID-19 pandemic. Overall and consistent with some earlier research, recent studies indicate that positive reactions to passive social media are plausible and not uncommon. Given contradictory findings and limitations, we cannot conclude that social media are indeed "worse" we simply do not know yet."
- pmdulaney 5y agoI am surprised that the word "envy" hasn't yet been banished from the academic vocabulary.