How does facebook make you feel?

Given the choice, would you prefer to feel good or feel bad? The answer is not as obvious as you might think.

If someone said to me "Here's an activity that will make you feel worse about yourself", I don't think I'd take them up on the offer. Yet that's kind of what we do most days. Perhaps because we don't realise it.

How do we know?

One of Google's many great toys is predictive search function. You start typing something and instantly get suggestions. If I start typing my name, it suggests David Bowie, David Tennant, David Beckham and David Attenborough.

Here's what happens if I type "facebook makes me feel"

and "instagram makes me feel"

I find the differences interesting. It seems that facebook is the best if you want to feel like a failure or left out, while Instagram works better if you want to feel fat, inadequate or insecure. If you want to be feel depressed, lonely, or like a loser, then either platform can do that. :(

What does science say?

Although we often trust Google, there is also real research behind it. Psychology researchers compared people's hours on social media with their levels of happiness. There's a reasonably strong correlation between more happiness and fewer hours on social media. Actually it's twice as strong as the correlation between income and happiness. So it seems that reducing social media time is a surer path to happiness than a pay rise.

But is it chicken or egg? Could it be that sadder people just happen to spend lots of time on facebook and happier people have other things to do? They tested that too by measuring people before and after seeing social media content. People had lower self-esteem afterwards and thought less of themselves compared to other people.

But I can't go off Facebook

Yes it does seem like going off social media is the digital equivalent of living off-grid in a hut.

Some people do it. They're very intentional about keeping in phone contact with people close to them and use email for everything digital. Sure there's some stuff they'll miss out on, and they're OK with that.

If you are one of these people (or even if you're not) you can hit subscribe at the top of the page to get But Wait There's Less articles by email.

Facebook lite

One of the happiness-sucking traps is the facebook newsfeed. Mentally we compare other people's highlights to our everyday life. Obviously this is a self-esteem killer.

One way I avoid the newsfeed is to make facebook.com/notifications my bookmark. Instead of newsfeed being my default, I get a short list of notifications from people and pages that are important to me. Obviously you have to go through in advance and select which friends and pages you want to receive notifications about. For pages, like the But Wait There's Less facebook page, you'll find the notifications option in the Following dropdown menu.

Put the chocolate out of reach

OK, not the actual chocolate. But the theory is the same. If we make access harder, the chances are that we'll use it less. For social media this might mean deleting the apps off our phone. Or if that's too extreme, it might be putting them inside a folder, inside another folder, inside another folder...

If there's a genuine reason to use them we'll go to the effort of finding it. But if it's a meaningless or mindless browse, the extra effort might stop us from carelessly eroding our happiness for no reason.

What works for you

Have you got other tips for minimising your time on social media? Pop a note in the comments about how you avoid social media eating up too much of your time and happiness.

PS. If you're interesting in learning more about well-being and what really makes us happy why not try Yale's free online course.