What Should Tweens Know About Social Media?

Ten Things Tweens Should Know About Social Media

1. The internet is not private.                                                                                               Nothing you share online is private, EVER. Sharing social media may feel private some of the time; but, you should always know that once you share information online, in any format, you lose some control over this information. This lack of privacy is especially true for social media. You may think you are only sharing the information with selected group of a few friends; however, you can never know what happens to something after you put it out there. Use that information to inform your choices.

2. Social media moves like wild fire, and is very hard to put out.
Part of the joy of the internet is that you can reach a whole lot of people very, very quickly. This means you can use the internet to do so many amazing things; on the other hand, it also means that negative things can get out of control very extremely quickly. Once any of this information is out there, it is very very difficult to get rid of it. Think about what you are sharing online, and if you are not prepared to have it shouted from the roof tops and shared with the world, keep it to yourself.

3. Be safe, even if it seems uncool.
Know what safe internet use is, and adhere to those guidelines – never share your full name, your location, or the name of your school…EVER, even if that makes you seem uncool.

4. There are good and bad people everywhere, even on the internet.
Of course, not everyone on the internet is evil; but, social media can make it easier for people to be mean, inappropriate, and use bullying tactics. Although it doesn’t mean that everyone online is out to get you, it is important for you to be aware, and cautious, when you need to, just like you are in real life.

5. Think about what a friend actually is. 
These days, we are asked to ‘friend’ people online whom we’ve never met, and will probably never meet. Understand that being ‘friends’ on social media is not the same as being friends in real life. What you share with online friends, and what you expect from them, is not the same as the relationship you have with friends in real life.

6. The power of a ‘like.’
With the tap of a finger, or the click of a button, that little ‘like’, ‘friend’, or comment can make us feel awesome, or awful. Don’t give social media power over your self-esteem.

7. It is easy to hide behind a screen.
It’s easy to feel detached from reality, or to hide behind the screen of a computer or device, and to make poor choices about how we interact with people online; but, always remember there are real people behind each avatar. Be the sort of person online that you want to be in real life. Any time you see others behaving badly or bullying, call them on it, and ask for help from an adult.  Report any online bullying you see on social media to the site.

8. Don’t fall into the comparison trap
Don’t fall into the trap of comparing your real life with someone else’s online life. It’s very easy for people to make their lives seem way more awesome online than they really are.

9. Your parents can supervise you.
When you were learning to walk, your parents held your hand.  When you were learning to read, they pointed to the words, listened to your read outloud, and helped you sound out difficult words. Your parents can also help you learn how to navigate social media. That means that they can talk to you about it, sit beside you and show you, and look over your shoulder while you use social media. It also means that your parents can make rules for your social media usage, know your passwords, and check on what is going on in your social media life. Let your parents help you by taking an active role in helping you learn how to use social media until they feel like you can manage it on your own.

10. Switching off is your most powerful tool.
If you see something that makes you feel uncomfortable, or if social media is making you upset or down on yourself, switch off and walk away.

Parents: Do your kids use social media?

Is there anything you would add to this list? Anything you think they need to know to be safe and happy online?

It’s not always easy negotiating everything our kids are going through as a parent, espcially things that most of us never had to deal with as children; and, your thoughts and ideas are valuable!

Kristine M. Kilgour, M.Ed., LPSC                                                                                             School Counselor, Mediator, & Consultant                                                                         rfhscounselor@gmail.com

Do Your Social Media Sites Need A Little Damage Control Before You Send Your College Application?

Most of us treat our Facebook and Twitter accounts purely as social outlets. We update statuses and photos casually; and, we don’t expect our friends or followers to scrutinize what we share. In fact, unless we post something truly heinous or incriminating, we don’t worry that our profiles could seriously limit our educational or professional prospects.

As it turns out, however, those of us seeking to enter college and/or the job market should be somewhat worried. Checking up on and applicants’ social media profiles is becoming routine for many employers and admissions offices around the country. Recruiters are now saying that social media profiles help them gain a more comprehensive picture of a candidate than a resume and cover letter alone can provide. By looking at a candidate's social media profiles, recruiters can evaluate how you, as the candidate, present yourself, what your interests are, and your habits over time.  Depending upon what they find, an applicant’s web presence can make or break an offer. This is especially true for students or recent graduates who don’t have much in the way of job history to recommend them.

There’s nothing wrong with using social platforms for fun...that’s what they’re there for. So, don’t run off and remove every photo from your Tumblr account, as no employer expects or wants that. But a little awareness on your part will definitely go a long way.

Us this article as your guide to taking control of your online reputation before applying for college and/or entering the job market!

Why It Matters: Who’s Looking?

Kaplan Test Prep surveys 500 academic institutions each year; and, their most recent report should give you pause before you upload photos from last night’s party, pleas to your ex-girlfriend to give you one more change, or any dirty laundry. 

Here are some highlights from admissions officers:

• 27% use Google+ to learn more about prospective students
• 26% use Facebook to learn more about prospective students
• 35% found information on Google+ or Facebook that negatively impacted prospective students’ applications

The percentages listed above are rising each year, especially as academic institutions strive to connect with students through viral social media marketing campaigns. It is likely that admissions officers are scrolling through your post history; so, make sure you are putting your best foot forward with your social media presence.

Employers place an even greater emphasis on social media reputation. Cross-Tab, a marketing research firm, reveals a few eye-opening trends regarding your newsfeed and your hireability. 

Here’s what the data shows:

• 70% of recruiters denied employment candidates due to information found online
• 75% of companies have hiring policies that encourage recruiters to examine an applicant’s online reputation
• 84% of recruiters think that online reputations will impact future hiring procedures all or most of the time during the next five years

Unfortunately, very few applicants take their social media seriously enough. In fact, only 7% of applicants in the U.S. think that their online reputations factor into their rejections at all. Don’t make the mistake of putting inappropriate content out there for HR professionals, recruiters, and university admissions departments to see.

The following sections will guide you through the process of managing your digital reputation in a positive way. These tips will help you maximize the odds of getting into the college or career of your choice.

Basics of Reputation Management

Let’s break the task down into manageable chunks, addressing each step of reputation control while leaving no stone unturned. Finally, you’ll learn how to customize privacy settings so that you don’t have to worry about college and workplace recruiters stumbling across the wrong information.

EVALUATE YOUR REPUTATION

Put yourself in the shoes of a recruiter. Consider what you’ll discover about applicants through everyday search engines, background checkers, family history websites, social networks, and cached data. Digital interactions often leave behind footprints. What will your footprint look like ? 

Here are your tools:

Search Engines

• Where to check: Google.com, Bing.com, Yahoo.com, and search.aol.com
• How to check: Start out by searching for your first and last name, which is likely to pull up content regarding other people who share your name. Examine the first few pages of the search engine findings, then try different combinations, including “name and city.” Search for any usernames or nicknames recruiters and schools might have access to, such as your email username. If you are worried about posts from a particular website or time frame, you can use Google’s advanced search operators to narrow down the hunt. To find information that is more specific, put quotation marks around your name.
• What to look for: Inappropriate information on your social media accounts, dating site accounts, retail wish lists, message board posts, blog articles, comments, mentions, and other web service accounts.

Social Media Accounts

Facebook

• Where to check: Facebook search, friends’ walls, “Photos I have liked,” About page, Photos, and Apps
• How to check: Start by viewing your own profile and examining what is immediately visible. If this is all clear, dig into your “likes,” app usage, and groups by exploring the sidebar tabs on the Home page.
• What to look for: Inappropriate photos that feature you, uploaded to either your page or your friends’ pages. Tagged posts or comments that reflect poorly on your attitudes toward work or school. Even clicking the “like” button on a post can associate you with the content through someone’s newsfeeds, so carefully monitor what you endorse with the “like” button.

Twitter

• Where to check: Your Tweets, profile description, followed accounts, interactions, and mentions.
• How to check: Click on “Me” to review your profile and examine followed accounts. Select “Tweets” to examine your history. Click on “Notifications” to view interactions and instances you were mentioned.
• What to look for: Inappropriate tweet content, followed accounts, interactions, and mentions.

Tumblr

• Where to check: Posts, Tumblr search, liked posts, and followed accounts.
• How to check: All of these options can be found on your Tumblr dashboard.
• What to look for: Inappropriate posts, liked posts, tags, or followed accounts.

Pinterest

• Where to look: Profile description, followed accounts, pins, boards, and likes.
• How to look: Log into your account and click on “Your Profile and Pins” to see what information is visible to the public. Click on the respective tabs for boards, pins, and likes on this page.
• What to look for: Unprofessional pins, comments, and likes.

Background Check

• Where to look: Local court records, public records, or criminal reports.
• How to look: Visit your city or county’s court website.
• What to look for: Public records of law violations, jail time, arrest warrants, overdue fines, and other criminal records.

Cached Data

• Where to look: Google cache, the Wayback Machine, and Coral Cache
• How to look: Locate a website in Google search listing and click on the URL drop-down button, and then select “Cached.” Type the URL to the website into the text fields on the Wayback Machine or Coral Cache.
• What to look for: Dated information that you don’t want prospective employers or college recruiters to see. Information you thought that you deleted from the Internet, like old content and interactions.

Recovering Your Online Reputation

Once you’ve identified problematic content that may be associated with your identity online, you’ll need to take steps to remove or hide any negative information. This, however, can be trickier than it sounds, especially if the content has been posted by another person, archived on a website, or stored in an account you can no longer access. Here are a few strategies that can help you work around common reputation roadblocks.

SOCIAL MEDIA PROBLEMS

• Other people’s content: If you’re tagged in another person’s photo, post, or comment, it might not be easy to remove your association with the content. Facebook has an entire video dedicated to removing tags and reporting inappropriate photos. Ultimately, you might need to contact the person who uploaded it originally and request that they remove it.
• Delayed deletion: Some content, such as tweets, don’t always disappear immediately after they are deleted. Twitter explains that posts occasionally remain in search records for a period of time after deletion. This can lead to awkward situations, especially if you want to remove questionable material right away. Before you post anything that is potentially embarrassing or inappropriate, make sure to consider this lag.

SEARCH PROBLEMS

• Distinguishing Yourself: If you have a common name, it can be difficult for you to set yourself apart from others who share your name. The tech news website, Lifehacker, encourages young professionals to purchase a custom domain that contains your first and last name. These URLs can help guide school admissions officers and recruiters directly to your web presence.
• Remove Search Listings: Google has a list of steps to take if you wish to remove personal information from search listings. The ideal method is to remove the content directly at its source, which might require that you contact a site’s webmaster.

WEBSITE PROBLEMS

• Forgetting Logins: You might come across inappropriate material on an old website profile, however you won’t be able to delete it if you can’t remember the username and password. First, attempt to reset your password. Next, contact a website administrator to see if they can remove the content for you.

PREVENTATIVE MEASURES

• Google Alerts: You can actually customize Google search settings so that you receive an email alert every time a search listing with your name is added. That way, you don’t have to search for yourself periodically to keep track of your reputation – Google does all the work for you. Just visit the Google Alerts website, type your name into the “Search Query” box, and customize the parameters. Select your email in the “Deliver to” box and click “Create alert.”

PRIVACY SETTINGS

• Facebook: Click on the “Privacy” icon from your home page. From here, you’ll be able to customize who can see your posts and limit how people search for your profile. Privacy settings can prevent recruiters or admissions officers from finding your profile at all, or it can only allow them to see certain posts. You can also elect to review all content you’re tagged in, so that guests at parties can’t post images of you chugging beers without permission.
• Twitter: It’s all or nothing with Twitter: you can either post “Protected” or public tweets. Protected tweets are only visible to approved followers.
• Blogs: Various blog platforms, including Tumblr, give users the option to make blog updates private or even password protect an entire blog. Make sure to explore these settings before your start publishing blog articles.

Reputation Management Throughout College

College students can best control their online reputations by remaining proactive about posts. Take care in making sure you’re absolutely certain that a post won’t damage your career or academic opportunities before you publish it. Having this mental filter can prevent social media emergencies when you must rush to remove content or contact website administrators. Be very deliberate with the information you post online, and make sure that it doesn’t tarnish other people’s reputations either!

FRESHMEN – SOPHOMORES

• Select new friends carefully, don’t add strangers.
• Avoid over-sharing information with the public; it could put you at risk.
• Monitor tagged photos for inappropriate content.
• Add classmates to maximize productive interactions.
• Avoid adding current instructors or school administrators since the content either of you post can lead to awkward academic situations. For example, if you skip class and accidentally post a photo from the beach.

UPPERCLASSMEN

• Remove or hide content that might affect your job search prospects.
• Develop professional social networking ties through websites like LinkedIn.
• Add connections that emerge from internships, fieldwork, and volunteer activities.
• Investigate companies where you wish to work and contact key figures to ask questions.
• Monitor social media job boards for upcoming employment opportunities.

Leveraging Your Reputation During the Job Hunt

So you’re ready to dive into the employment search – congratulations! According to statistics from Jobvite, an employee recruitment company, 77% of recruiters surveyed have actually hired candidates through networks like LinkedIn, Facebook, or Twitter. Now that you have your online reputation cleaned up, you can actively use your digital presence to your advantage as a way to connect with recruiters, provide supplemental material to your resume, and increase your professional resources.

BEEF UP YOUR RESUME AND COVER LETTER

We’re often encouraged to keep paper and digital copies of our resumes brief, no longer than one page. However, our social media accounts can help us fill in the blanks. Here’s how:

• LinkedIn: The “Add Link or Upload File” option lets you add illustrative examples of your experience with an employer, which might include marketing campaigns, news articles, press releases, research reports, and even interactive media. You can also request former employers, teachers, and colleagues to give you recommendations so that future recruiters can see who’s vouching for you before they contact your references.
• Indeed: Many job seekers think of this website as a career listing database, but that’s not all it does. If you upload your resume to your Indeed account, it is added to a resume database that employers can browse. When you aren’t actively job seeking and applying, interested recruiters who have discovered you on Indeed still can contact you.
• Taleo: This is an employer and applicant cloud database driven by Oracle, one of the largest corporate software companies in the world. According to their statistics, almost 50% of Fortune 100 companies rely on Taleo for hiring. If you are applying to corporations that list jobs on Taleo, having a pre-filled Universal Profile can help you save time during the job search process since you won’t have to fill out the same information multiple times.

CREATE PROFILES TO COVER YOUR BASES

In this digital era, some recruiters see your social media presence as a sign of credibility. Unfortunately, this doesn’t bode well for those who wish to maintain their privacy by not participating in social media. A lack of networking accounts can actually send the wrong message to recruiters regarding social and emotional health. Having existing accounts, even if they provide sparse information, can be better than having no online presence at all.

EXPANDING YOUR DIGITAL INFLUENCE

Depending upon the types of industries you’re applying to, your personal networks can be extremely valuable commodities. Marketing industry recruiters, for example, are more likely to be impressed by applicants that can spark dozens of likes and shares with a single post update. This requires that you develop multiple social media skills, including:

• expanding your total number of friends and followers,
• posting engaging content,
• and updating on a regular basis.

First, you’ll need to get an idea of your current status. Here are a few resources that can help you measure influence and reputation:

• Klout
• Social Mention
• Google+ Ripples
• Kred
• PeerIndex
• Facebook Insights (for Pages)
• Edgerank Checker

Once you start monitoring your influence, you can grow it with the following activities:

• Starting conversations on group or event pages
• Adding new connections on a regular basis
• Posting thought provoking questions that encourage community answers
• Posting current and compelling news that gets shared, liked, or commented on

Social media reputation management can seem like an overwhelming task for many high school and college students who are also juggling time commitments like school work, extracurricular activities, jobs, and internships.

However, it is possible to cultivate a winning online presence by breaking your goals down into smaller tasks: evaluating reputation, removing inappropriate content, setting up profiles, increasing your search engine visibility, and branching out into professional networks.

Since social media practices and norms are constantly changing, students and young professionals should continue to actively use their accounts so that they don’t fall out of the loop.

Additional Resources:

ONLINE REPUTATION MANAGEMENT

• Trust Cloud
• Privacy Rights Clearinghouse
• Remove Content from Google Search
• Electronic Privacy Information Center
• YouTube Copyright Infringement Notification
• Pinterest Copyright Infringement Notification

CAREER RESOURCES

• Monster
• Indeed
• SimplyHired
• Craigslist
• Talent Exchange

SOCIAL MEDIA SITES

• About.me – Privacy Policy
• Blogger – Content Policy
• Facebook – Privacy Policy
• Google+ – Privacy Policy
• Instagram – Privacy Policy
• LinkedIn – Privacy Policy
• Medium – Privacy Policy
• Pinterest – Privacy Policy
• Tumblr – Privacy Policy
• Twitter – Privacy Policy

To Your Success!!!

Kristine Kilgour, M.Ed., LPSC

School Counselor & Mediator

rfhscounselor@gmail.com

Social Media Cleanup Before Applying For Colleges or Jobs

Social media background checks are gaining prevalence in the modern world of applicant screening from college admissions boards to employers at major corporations. While the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) isn’t so sure about the ethicality of social media background checks, they have still become commonplace for many companies and organizations throughout the United States.

In other words, if you are applying for college and/or hunting for a new job, chances are good that your prospective educational institution and employers are going to investigate your social media profiles. Where traditional background checks are generally instituted to look into the criminal histories, educational background, and experience of applicants, social media background checks investigate a different set of criteria. While unsavory social findings may not seem like they would have the same stakes as a major criminal conviction for schools and employers, they can still have the same ultimate result, which is losing your chance at the college acceptance and/or job you are seeking.

Luckily, your social media profiles are easier to clean up than any criminal history you may have. By viewing your Facebook profile, Twitter feed, LinkedIn page, Instagram page, blog, Flickr photostream, and other social media formats as extensions of your resume, and your college or job application, you can build your social media profiles and posts into resources that position you as the perfect candidate rather than unflattering posts that can potentially shatter a potential school or employer’s positive image of you. 

In order to do this, you merely need to know what colleges and employers are looking for when conducting their social media background checks.  

To get started in making sure your social media profiles shed a positive light on you, consider the following:

1. Watch Your Statuses and Comments: When employers browse your Facebook or Twitter pages, they look at the kinds of comments and statuses you have made in order to get a better sense of your online behavior. The theory is that, while you try to present yourself in a very favorable light during interviews, social media behavior can give prospective colleges and employers an idea of who you really are outside of school and  work. Profanity, complaints about former teachers, schools, or employers, or comments with a sexist, racist, or otherwise discriminatory connotation are all social media red flags that may cause colleges and employers to reconsider you as a competitive applicant.

2. Look Through Your Photos: Photographic proof of lewd or reckless behavior can be a huge turn off for schools and employers when it comes to assessing their applicants. Facebook photos depicting drug use, excessive alcohol consumption, full or partial nudity, vandalism, or any other destructive or illegal activities will cast you as a reckless partier rather than as a serious student or seasoned professional. Questionable photographs on social media sites are an especially large problem for recent graduates looking to gain college acceptance, or to break into the job market. 

3. Trim Down Your Groups, Likes, or Apps: Are you a passionate Farmville player? Do you list “Alcohol” as one of your interests? These are just a few of the behaviors that colleges and employers might not want to see from their applicants. Social media games aren’t necessarily a turn off for employers; however, someone who spends their days playing Farmville or Candy Crush on Facebook doesn’t always appear to be the most professional choice for a prospective student or job.

4. Consider Amending Your Friends List: Most colleges and employers won’t care too much if you have a couple thousand friends on Facebook; however, it’s never a bad idea to go through your friends list and trim it down to only the people you know well and frequently communicate with. If there’s a friend on social media who you think could make you look bad by either by posting obnoxious things on your wall or tagging you in inappropriate photos, it is a good idea to put that social media friendship on hold for now.

5. Check Your Blogs: Whether you’ve blogged on Facebook or on a separate website, read through your posts to see how they make you come across to others. Some blog writing can be professional, thoughtful, and perhaps even a boost to your college acceptance employment chances; and, these blog posts will be good to keep. Other blog writing can be petty, profane, and immature; and, when this is the case, you will want to delete or return these blog posts to draft status.

6. Look at Your YouTube Account: Many people forget about YouTube when cleaning up their online presence; however, if you’ve been a frequent video poster at any point in your time spent online, it’s worth a look. In most cases, YouTube videos are harmless; but, if you’ve ever uploaded anything that that could be considered offensive or anything that infringes a copyright, take it down just to be safe.

7. Restrict Tagging: One of the reasons that Facebook, in particular, represents such a threat to your chances of of college acceptance or getting hired is that it is unpredictable when tagging is involved. Even after you’ve cleaned your profile, you never know when a friend is going to tag you in a comment or photo that casts you in a questionable light. By adjusting your privacy settings so that you can review all tags before they show up on your profile, you can have better control of the story your Facebook profile is telling the world.

8. Set Your Profile to Private: If you absolutely don’t want your future college and employers looking at your social media profiles, then get to work making everything as private as possible. Twitter is inherently a public social networking site, and LinkedIn is a place where you should want to be found by potential college and employers. Facebook, on the other hand, makes it possible for users to set safeguards for their privacy. That way, certain profile elements, such as photographs, statuses, groups, and pages liked, can be kept invisible to non-friends; and, since most college acceptance committess and potential employers won’t be friends with you on Facebook when considering your application, privacy settings can be a good way for you to privatize your private live from those prying eyes.

9. Set Your Albums to Private: Alternatively, if you don’t want to entirely shut  potential colleges or employers out of your social media world, you can tailor your privacy settings to allow non-friends access to only specific parts of your profile. In other words, you can show off your statuses and info, but restrict access to your photo albums. Although it's not completely private, this generally serves as a good compromise, especially if most of your unflattering social media actions are contained to your photos.

Of course, if you have photos that you absolutely don’t want potential colleges and employers to see, it’s best to take them down. You might even consider adopting a “no photos” policy on Facebook, and resort to storing your photo albums on another cloud-based service that sees less traffic from potential employers.

10. Match Your LinkedIn Profile to Your Resume…and Vice Versa: Make sure your LinkedIn profile is up-to-date and accurate in relation to your resume. If you are presenting different information between the two resources, potential colleges and employers will red flag your application. Synchronize all of your information, and work to make LinkedIn a place for colleges and employers to learn more about your educational and work history.

Is Facebook Increasing Your Teenager's Anxiety Levels?

The Anxiety of Social Media

 Because we can now remain in constant contact with hundreds of so-called friends, even ones we rarely see in person, social media has changed the way many of us interact, espcially teenagers and young adults.

The impact of social media on our society has prompted researchers to investigate whether its effect is positive or negative on the mental health of peoplel abd one big area of focus in these studies is the effect of social media on mental health.

Recent research has shown that using social networking sites, namely Facebook, can increase people’s stress levels, produce anxiety, and negatively affect a person’s sense of self. Using these sites are thought to have the possibility of exacerbating, or even causing, a mental health disorder. It has been shown that social media even has the power to quickly spread moods around the world.

Social media sites provide places where people can create the face they want the world to see, which may, or may not, be accurate. Creating a profile allows a person to decide exactly what image to present to others. For some people, this can lead to a near-obsession. This could reflect a person’s self-esteem, according to one study.

This study looked into the association between a person’s self-esteem based upon the amount of time he or she spent on maintaining his or her profile, specifically looking at what actions they performed to create their online persona. The findings were that those with lower self-esteem cared more about what others had posted about them on Facebook, and were more likely to remove certain posts to ensure their profile remained a reflection of the image they wanted to portray. They might even constantly scan Facebook, as well as other networking sites, to ensure that there are no negative remarks or unflattering photos. On the other hand, those with higher self-esteem were found to spend time creating their own profile, and in adding pictures and information about themselves to show the world their ultimate persona.

Another study showed that Facebook increases people’s anxiety levels by making them feel inadequate which led to excess worry and stress. Social media provides constant updates, which can be extremely chaotic and stressful to the brain because many people begin to feel compelled to continually check their statuses and newsfeed on their mobile devices. For some people, the constant impulse to check for updates becomes obsessive.  In this particular study, over half of the respondents felt uneasy when they were unable to access their social media and email accounts.

Additionally, two-thirds of those surveyed had difficulty sleeping due to anxiety and other negative emotions that resulted in using the sites. Their constant updates were found to lead many respondents to frequently compare themselves to others which they found led to feelings of inadequacy, even depression. The anxiety and worry caused by the overuse of social media was found to lead to chronic stress that are known to lead to health problems, including mental health issues.

Another recent study found that Facebook also can increase the amount of social anxiety a person has upon meeting someone for the first time. It was hypothesized prior to this study that for those with social anxiety, looking at a person’s Facebook or other social media profile prior to meeting could help alleviate some of their feelings of nervousness. Reviewing someone’s social media profile, it was thought, is a way to get to know someone prior to meeting them. The opposite, however, was found to be the case. Other studies have shown that people with social anxiety prefer communicating with people via the Internet, which can lead to a lack of true socialization with others.

Another team of researchers performed an experiment to see whether reviewing a person’s Facebook profile before picking a person out of a picture would decrease anxiety levels. The researchers looked at the social anxiety levels of 26 female students between the ages of 18 and 20 using the Interaction Anxiousness Scale (IAS).

The participants had to interact with another student in one of four randomly assigned conditions while their skin response (which shows the body’s psychological arousal) was measured by electrodes on their ring and index finger. These prescribed conditions included Facebook only (memorizing student’s face from the profile page only), face-to-face only (a participant studied the student’s face in the same room), face-to-face and Facebook (study the Facebook photos and then meeting the person), and in person to Facebook (meeting a person face-to-face and then having to find their picture on Facebook). After being introduced to the other person, in one of these four manners they had to identify and circle the student in four different group pictures.

The researchers found that the participants who were first exposed to another student via Facebook, who then had to meet the other student in personm had increased psychological arousal, which means that they were more anxious. The researchers are not completely sure why this might be the case; however, they theorize that this might be due to the participants making comparisons between the other students and themselves when reviewing the Facebook profile. The participants may also have felt safer at first, but then became nervous knowing they had to meet the person in real life because there was already a basis of knowledge about the person,  Additional research is currently being done in this area.

Another phenomenon that has been found with the high use of Facebook is that it has the ability to affect one’s mood, and to even spread that mood globally, accordine to studies. Researchers have focused on weather patterns and their effect on a person’s mood. They found that when it rained in one location, making people feel gloomier and subsequently posting negative comments, a causal effect of an increase in bad moods occured in people who were friends with those people on Facebook but lived farther away, in places where it was not raining.

Of course, this mood transference can also have the opposite effect. For example, it has also been found that people whose friends posted cheery status updates tended also to have a more positive mood, at least reflected by their status posts. The researchers found that for every negative post, there were an extra 1.29 negative posts than normal in that person’s social networkm while happy posts had an even stronger effect, with every upbeat statement causing an extra 1.75 positive posts in the social network. It should be noted some of these researchers were Facebook employees.

There are studies that have found that Facebook actually can make people miserable. Researchers for this study looked at 82 young, frequent Facebook users, 53 female and 29 males. The participants were sent text messages with links to an online survey that asked how they felt, whether they were worried, if they felt lonely, how often they use Facebook, and how often they interacted directly with people.

The researchers found that when the participants increased their Facebook use, their state of well-being declined, while those who increased the amount of time they spent with people face to face had an increased sense of well-being.media sites on users.

Although social media sites like Facebook can cause problems, as recemt research has shown, these sites also have been shown to have some positive effects on people. Social media sites and statistics can help psychologists monitor the mental health of patients, spread awareness about issues (including mental health disorders), connect people with the same interests with one another, and make the world feel a little smaller.

Although there are many benefits, it is important to remember the possible downsides of social media sites, and their use. in order to help people who are vulnerable to self esteem and mental health problems, such as anxiety disorder or depression, to not develop or exacerbate existing problems due to use. The best way for anyone to take advantage of the benefits of these sites, while minimizing the downsides, is to moderate his or her use and maintain a level of detachment. Where social media is concered, moderation is definitely the key to happiness!