Almost every person in the world with access to the Internet is likely to have a Facebook account. A portion of these profiles are Active Users, and some are not. Some are active users that don't interact actively but passively uses Facebook, just scrolling and reading social media posts. Facebook wallflowers are encouraged to interact more online rather than just scrolling and reading the newsfeed, and that is for their own sake. A recent study shows that spending a lot of time on Facebook without interacting might actually be bad for your mental health.
Facebook wallflowers
According to HuffPost, a 2015 study from the University of Michigan concluded that people who barely interact with social media friends and just read posts on Facebook were in a worse mood by the end of the day. On the other hand, those who posted messages or commented on friend's posts were fine. The reason is those who passively use Facebook are always comparing their own lives to other people based on social media posts.
Even Facebook research director David Ginsberg knows this. "In general, when people spend a lot of time passively consuming information — reading, but not interacting with people — they report feeling worse afterward,” Ginsberg said in his Facebook blog.
Overcoming this issue
A lot of negativity surrounds Facebook right now, including the spread of fake news and the increase of depression cases brought from using the social media platform.This is a big issue that Facebook and every social media platform are facing. Are Facebook and other social sites really bad for us? Are we really becoming "alone together" because of using these sites?
Is Facebook going down because of the issues it brings to the society?
To say that Facebook and other social media sites are ripping society apart is an overstatement. There are still benefits in using online platforms, and those benefits are attained via healthy interactions with people in the online community. Facebook has been encouraging users who are passive online to interact with people on the online platform not just for Facebook's sake but also for their own.
That is why the company launches new features that promote interaction now and then. Facebook's spam and fake news detection are also improving, deleting spammy posts in a matter of minutes. Online interaction is like interaction in real life; it will be healthier if we talk more with people we care the most.
