The present research aims to provide insight into social compensatory friending on social network sites
by investigating the effects of self-esteem and self-consciousness on number of friends in the context of
Facebook use. It was hypothesized that Facebook users low in self-esteem, when compared with highself-
esteem individuals, would engage in friending more actively and thereby accumulate a large number
of friends as a way to compensate for the deficiency in self-esteem. We also hypothesized that the relationship
between self-esteem and number of Facebook friends would vary depending on the levels of
public self-consciousness. Data were collected from a college student sample in the United States
(N = 234) based on an online cross-sectional survey. The results supported the hypothesis on social compensatory
friending, demonstrating a negative association between self-esteem and number of Facebook
friends. Furthermore, the data yielded support for the hypothesized moderating role of public self-consciousness
in social compensatory friending: the negative association between self-esteem and number
of Facebook friends was significant only for Facebook users who are high in public self-consciousness but
not for those who are low in public self-consciousness. Implications for understanding social network site
users’ friending behavior in light of social compensation motives are discussed.