6 Scientific Reasons Social Networks Are Bad for Society

PDF: "Narcissism and Social Networking Web Sites"

Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 34 (10), 2008, p 1303-1314

Narcissism is excessive self-love, inflated self-importance and unjustified feelings of entitlement. Along with electrons, it is the primary active ingredient in the Internet. Three years ago, psychologists decided to publish a research paper on its prevalence on social networking sites, presumably because they didn't think anyone would read the entire set of encyclopedias they could have filled, and simply publishing the words "Everything on all of them" felt too glib.

Researchers had 156 students fill out a survey called the Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI) that forces subjects to choose between options like, "My body is nothing special" versus "I like to look at my body," and "I can learn from other people" versus "I can solve most global problems by spitting on them." Researchers then monitored the student's Facebook activity for what they called objective and subjective factors, and compared that with how they scored on the NPI. The scientists' goal was to see if they could isolate social networking behaviors that were more narcissistic, and to boil down complex human emotions into numbers, because that's like oxygen to them.

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An 8.7 on the It-normalized Birthday Trauma scale according to Science.

The scientists

also got strangers to rate these profiles online, and an above-average 100 of the students were female so the scientists clearly know how to get strangers to look at things online. The nine scales used included Attractiveness, Sexiness, Provocativeness and Fun. There's a chance these "scientists" were Internet-porn's R&D division.

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Quantum communications will revolutionize streaming of our GILF threesomes!

For users of social networking, the results were not encouraging. Narcissism ratings were higher in every single category, including how narcissistic people assume you are just for having an account. Posting large amounts of information on your profile page was both perceived as narcissistic by others, and more common among narcissists. According to the study, a typical interaction on a social networking site is like a whirlwind of self-obsessed assholery: You think you're just filling out a profile, but others (correctly) assume you're an asshole for expecting strangers to care about your forty favorite movies despite doing the exact same thing themselves. So everyone is thinking,

Look at this douchebag talking about things that aren't me.

Meanwhile, people viewing your profile encourage your narcissism. For instance, another big indicator was "provocative pictures," aka "You're not fooling anyone by casually posting pictures like that." Strangers realize you desperately want people to stare at you (while staring at you).

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Omigawd, nearly forgot to set the webcam before "accidentally" leaning forward too far!

The only negative correlation was "entertaining quotes," implying that people who post funny material online are the opposite of narcissistic. Which might mean "hate themselves." Short form: If you don't think you're inherently worth looking at, you try to be funny instead. You now understand stand-up comedy.

"The relationship between number of friends and interpersonal impressions on Facebook"

Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 13 (2008) 531-549

If someone tells you they have 4,000 friends, chances are they're including you as one of them despite having just made sure it's not the case. When you hit four digits, you have a worse definition of friends than Boo Radley, and he still spent time interacting with his friends. Michigan State University researchers studied the relationship between number of friends and actual popularity, and found that the fourth digit of friends means you're likely getting the two longest digits on the hand from a good portion of them. We not only know you don't have three thousand friends, which is stupid, but we automatically know you don't even have three or you wouldn't have time to sit clicking "Add Friend" every night.

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God, I wish my son would go out and take drugs. Maybe get some girls pregnant.

One-hundred and fifty-three students filled out surveys and rated fake Facebook profiles on social and physical attractiveness. These fake profiles were identical except for the number of friends listed. The scientists noticed a hill-shaped relationship between friends and attractiveness: Having more friends means you're more attractive, up to what they mysteriously failed to call the "Bullshit Threshold." At a certain point (around a thousand friends) you start looking as bad as people with only few, and even more desperate.

This is what it looks like when a scientist calls you NEEEERRRRRRD!

The scientists also analyzed the participating students. One claimed to have over 2,700 friends, and the scientists added a footnote with all the statistics re-calculated without that person. Even in a study about how many friends imaginary accounts could pretend to have, the researchers looked at this asshole and said, "They're so stupid it's throwing off our math."

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They also confirmed Tila Tequila as the most unpopular person on the planet.

"Negatively valenced messages about certain moral behaviors increased male profile owners' perceived physical attractiveness, although they caused females to be viewed as less attractive."

Translation: guys are studs, girls are sluts, what else is new? But the scientists were worried that Facebook is resurrecting more ancient sexism than a group of cheerleaders having a sleepover in Castle Dracula. With more people interacting online every day, externality of gonads is once again becoming a disproportionately advantageous factor. Especially considering how it's a weak point in any style of combat.

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My 20 percent higher wages!

One of their hypotheses was that "people who are more emotionally stable will use social media less frequently" and they confirmed the shit out of it. The more unstable men spent longer hours online, meaning activity on social networks is artificially made up of more emotional instability than HAL 9000.

Unlike some of the other studies on this list, the results couldn't be blamed on college aged kids, or the next generation being driven mad by the latest dance craze. This was a widespread sampling across all ages, tax brackets and sexualities. They're all around you RIGHT NOW. Taking life satisfaction into account meant it wasn't just the losers who are unstable -- even the rich, successful and popular people who spend a lot of time on Facebook are still more likely to be unstable.

The bloggers were also less satisfied with the number of on and offline friends they had. Notice how that's not quality of friends - that was fine -- but sheer number. Wanting quantity over quality in friendships shows that you don't understand that word. It's like complaining about not having enough genitals -- you should really focus on working with what you have instead of adding more for the sake of it. Being able to look at your own friends and say, "There aren't enough of you" takes a very specific type of shallowness, and it's one that apparently makes you want to blog on MySpace.

The study noted those intending to blog who hadn't started yet, which presumably lead to a lengthy scientific ethics debate about the ethics of euthanasia.

That scale you use for shyness is crap I'LL REVISE IT!"), psychologists studied the Web use of 100 first-year college students. They found that shyness correlated with time spent online and positive attitudes towards social networking, but negatively correlated with number of Facebook friends. In other words: The shy spend more time online instead of partying, have less online friends than the people partying and think the cause of their continued shyness is great. It's the saddest online relationship since that guy took his Real Doll on vacation, and at least he's getting out of the house and a bit laid.

via metro.co.uk

A bit.

Graduating classes from here on out will be full of people who learned how to socialize online and will act the same way in real life. H.P. Lovecraft doesn't have words for how scary that is. On Facebook, "friends with benefits" means someone who clicks on carrots for your Farmville, which is as far as two people can get from getting it on. If they neutered each other, there would be more genital touching. Zuckerberg clearly created Facebook to get revenge on college by making sure no one had sex again. Either that, or he's making sure no nerds who come after him know enough about "friends" to invent a better service.

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But if society can be defeated by that it deserves everything it gets.

Either way, Skynet won't have to invent roving killbots to finish off the species. They just have to wait and we'll forget how to breed. Or read potential mate's profiles and decide we don't want to.

Luke McKinney also tumbles, knows which games don't mess around, and has a website.

For more social networking self-defense, check out 6 Things Social Networking Sites Need To Stop Doing and 5 Ways To Stop Trolls From Killing The Internet.