According to Konnikova, another study at Humboldt-University in Berlin, Germany has suggested that envy, too, increases with Facebook use.
“The more time people spent browsing the site, as opposed to actively creating content and engaging with it, the more envious they felt,” Konnikova wrote. “The effect, suggested Hanna Krasnova and her colleagues, was a result of the well-known social psychology phenomena of social comparison.”
Ross said that self-image issues for teens and college students are often brought about or heightened through viewing others’ Facebook pages. She cited the work of Sherry Turkle, Abby Rockefeller Mauzé Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology at MIT, who wrote the book, “Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other.”
“As Dr. Turkle points out in some of her work, people manipulate their images on social media to project whatever they wish to, so that the image that is being ‘connected’ to by others may not represent the authentic person behind the image,” Ross said. “If others ‘like’ this false image, it does not necessarily feel like a real connection and leaves people worried that if they were known more fully, they would not be liked or accepted.”