Your Facebook Friends Might Be Stressing You Out

image by laffy4k on Flickr

We think of the time we spend on social media sites like Facebook as being something relaxing -- a rare treat in a day full of work and stress. But what if Facebook itself is adding to our stress?

That's the subject of this article from the Atlantic, that cites an University of Edinburgh Business School study's surprising findings: the more friends you have on Facebook, the more stressed out you are about maintaining them.


The biggest reason from the stress, besides the pressure of keeping up with all those Farmville requests? The fear of accidentally offending someone on your friend list:

"Behaviors like swearing and drinking and smoking, the study suggests, are behaviors that you (might) do with friends -- but not (probably) with your boss. And, more subtly, language that you might use with your friends -- in-jokes, slang, references to Breaking Bad -- probably won't track when you're not with your friends. The awareness of that discrepancy -- Facebook's tendency to disseminate even highly targeted social interactions -- leads to stress."

This has always been a sticking-point for me regarding Facebook -- especially highlighted during our election season. I just don't believe you can toss all your family, extended family, friends, acquaintances, business associates, possible fans, etc. in one box and send out messages that are going to please, let alone make sense, to all of them.

I'm going to write a post in the future about how I've learned to segment and "target" my various social media audiences, to alleviate some of this exact "stress" -- and to make social media interaction a more enjoyable and useful experience for me and my friends (and family!).