"Social media leaves you feeling worthless: Study"

All those networks can’t be good for your self esteem: AFP

A new study conducted by the University of Salford in the UK has concluded that though social media helps us connect, interact and share things with one another more easily, it also leaves us feeling low and worthless.

Why? The little green monster of course. Apparently many of the people polled for the study had said that they felt bad about themselves when they saw how much other people in their social networks have achieved.

Its highly possible that all of us have felt this way at some point. Some of us wish that we also had the money and time to go lion spotting in South Africa like some people in our networks.

Single people sigh with jealousy when they see the ‘happy family’ photos their married friends post. Married people look at the ‘I am single and see how much fun I’m having’ pictures of their friends and think longingly of times long gone.

Basically social media is like the dreaded high school reunion, except that instead of being an isolated event that occurs every few years, its in your face all the time. And in many ways, its worse.

Instead of having to only listen to the tales of action packed adventure and dizzying success that your insufferable classmate insists on narrating every few years, you now have to see pictures every time he/she does something ‘special’.

And because social media and the Internet has made all of us slightly voyeuristic, its not like we can NOT look. And blocking people for no discernible reason apart from the fact that they are annoyingly successful is a big social media no-no.

And this is where the metaphor of the Internet being a giant ‘village’ holds true. All of us live in it, and though there are neighbors we wish we could avoid, sometimes the village is just way too small.