College students who posted more status updates on the social networking site than they normally did felt less lonely over the course of aweek, even if no one "Liked" or commented on their posts, researchers found. "We got the idea to conduct this study during a coffee-break sharing random stories about what friends had posted on Facebook," psychology researcher Fenne Deters, of the Universitat Berlin, said.
"Wondering why posting status updates is so popular, we thought that it would be thrilling to study this new form of communication empirically," Deters said.
Deters and her colleague recruited about 100 undergraduates (all of them Facebook users) at the University of Arizona. Compared with the group of students who didn't adjust their social media habits, those who went on a status-writing blitz felt less lonely over the week, the team found. "Their happiness and depression levels went unchanged, suggesting that the effect is specific to experienced loneliness," the researchers wrote.
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