Negative Effects of Social Media on Subjective Well-Being

Running head: PSYCHOLOGY
Negative effects social media use has on subjective well-being
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PSYCHOLOGY1
Abstract
Facebook is related to the high level of subjective well- being and it is seen among the user that
have accessed Facebook for the purpose of maintaining the existing relationship. While at the
same time usage of Facebook is associated with the subjective well- being in a negative way
when the users accessed Facebook in order to create a new relationship. social networking sites
allow a range of activities and the activities are highly differentiated into different categories like
passive and active usage. Active usage refers to the ones that facilitate the direct exchange with
the others and includes the one to one exchange and the non- targeted exchanges. Passive usage
of social media refers to the monitoring of the lives of the people and engaging with direct
exchanges with other people.

PSYCHOLOGY2
Literature Review
Social media can be described as a place where people interact in a rapidly changing
world. It can be called as a defining feature that has the internet-based applications and it allows
the exchange and creation of the user-generated content. Examples of such instances include the
content of a blog post, YouTube videos, Facebook videos and the Wikipedia entries. Therefore,
it can be said that social media is a wide word that includes a wide variety of communication
channels. A large number of the widespread social media sites are the sites that enable the users
to connect with the other user by the creation of the personal communication profiles and it also
provides the option to have access to the messages and their profiles (Gerson, Plagnol and Corr
2016). The major instances of the prevalent social network sites are the LinkedIn, Instagram,
Twitter and Facebook. It is vital to mention that social media sites differ with respect to the
purpose they serve. For example, Facebook and LinkedIn are both made for leisure activities and
for professional purposes respectively. The dominant mode of communication has been the
Instagram and the Twitter that is entirely centred around the image-based and the text-based
messages respectively. Here, it is important to mention that people spent a lot of time on these
platforms. While it is a highlighting fact that the Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook has
mentioned that world spends an average of 50 minutes over the social media sites like Instagram
and Facebook on each day (Verduyn et al. 2017).
The main question that arises here after coming to know that huge quantity of time
invested on social media: what is the negative impact that the social media have on the subjective
well- being? The subjective benefits include a range of consequential benefits along with
longevity and enhanced health conditions. Multiple cross-sectional studies have highlighted that
there exists a positive association between the subjective well- being and the social media usage