According to new research, using Facebook makes people feel less happy and less satisfied with their lives. The research involved recruiting 82 Facebook users and tracking their emotions over time using questionnaires that the participants, prompted by text messages, filled in five times a day.
Analysis of these questionnaires revealed that the more a person uses Facebook between questionnaires, the worse he or she reported feeling the next time. Furthermore, volunteers who used Facebook frequently reported a general rise in discontentment. All of this was regardless of how many “friends” they had. (Report in The Week).
Research prior to that mentioned above showed that the average human being cannot manage more than 75-80 friends and acquaintances (the two are frequently construed to be the same thing – they are not). This is why the average size of congregation of Churches in the days before mega-cities used to be around 80 people (village size). To try to keep up with multiple “friends” on Facebook is probably frustrating and counter- productive because no one has the time to put into these “relationships” enough energy and time to make of them true friendships, in the old fashioned meaning of the word.
To Epicurus friendship was one of the most important things you have to nurture. But he developed friendships over months and years in his Garden. It takes time, face to face, reading the signs and the atmosphere, picking up the hints, showing real interest, concern and care. No wonder there is discontentment – Facebook offers connection, photos and events, but small human content.
It is the mission of big companies and the rich elite to keep us busy and distracted with dumb TV shows, personalities, over-paid sportsmen and especially time wasting things connected with computers. That way they hope that we don’t notice the sucking noise as they take ever more money out of our pockets, reducing our income and making ever more jobs redundant. This has taken the place of religion in the Western world when it comes to elite control mechanisms. The biggest waste of time are the social media sites. and the computer games. Facebook is a giant waste of time. So is Twitter, which is really a giant self- promotion tool for those with too much time on their hands.