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People with low self-esteem post more negative updates, which makes them less likeable. On the surface, Facebook would seem to offer important benefits to people who have low self-esteem. Sharing is easy and feels safe on Facebook, and sharing is an important way to improve friendships. Having a stable network of social connections helps to improve self-esteem. In reality, though, it may not work out that way. A new study conducted by Amanda Forest and Joanne Wood of the University of Waterloo found that people with low self-esteem tend to post too many negative updates, causing friends to see them as less likeable. The study will be published in the journal Psychological Science . Initially, the researchers, who have a special focus on self-esteem and how it impacts which emotions people express, thought that Facebook would be an ideal venue for people to go to learn social skills and improve friendships. People who have lower self-esteem typically find it hard to share their feelings in a one-on-one setting. However, Facebook allows users to share and have social interactions without the need for face-to-face contact. The researchers found that participants with low self-esteem often view Facebook as a chance to connect and interact with others in a safe setting without the awkwardness they often feel in live, in-person social settings. Participants were also asked to provide the ten most recent updates about their life that they posted for their Facebook friends to see. The updates were rated for negativity, then an undergraduate research assistant went through the updates and indicated how likeable they found the person who made the statements from the updates. Participants who had low self-esteem tended to post updates that were more negative on average. In turn, the assistants who rated their updates tended to find them less likeable than people with higher self-esteem. Although the raters did not know the people who posted the updates, according to Forest, a previous study showed that almost half of the friends people list on Facebook are strangers or mere acquaintances, rather than close friends. The study found that when participants with low self-esteem placed very positive messages on their pages, they received more responses from members of their actual Facebook friends list than they did when they placed negative or neutral messages on Facebook. However, participants who had high self-esteem got more responses from their friends when they posted negative messages. Forest and Wood speculate that this may be because, in both cases, these types of posts are more unusual for these users. The investigators concluded that, while people who have low self-esteem may be more willing to share on Facebook, they might not receive the same benefits from doing so that they would get from face-to-face encounters. This is because people may not be as willing to provide feedback on Facebook the way they might in person. According to Forest, in a live social setting, people may be able to pick up on a friend’s negative reaction to to something they said. “On Facebook, you don’t see most of the reactions.” Related posts: Facebook positively influences education, study says Facebook’s Effect on Interpersonal Relationships [Infographic] Almost Half of Facebook Users Have Profanity on Their Wall

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Don’t Use Facebook If You Have Low Self-Esteem [Study]

Our lives are awash in the blue-white light of our smartphone screens. It is hard to walk down a street without bumping into someone, often literally, who is busily typing into their smartphones. More and more Americans are cancelling home phone service in favor of using their cell as their primary number. Servicing or even purchasing a non-smartphone is becoming harder and harder. Our phones keep our schedules, take our photos and videos, store our contacts, and –oh yeah– make phone calls. One of the primary reason we love our smartphones is the ability to keep in contact with friends far away. The pioneer application for this is of course Facebook. Facebook has altered the way this generation socializes. We can keep up with our friends who we may have otherwise fallen out of contact with years ago. Grandma can see all the photos from Junior’s birthday party in Time Square from her comfortable living room in Phoenix. A whole host of  apps have been spawned to give you Facebook on your phone. Each app offers different levels of access and features. Likewise each application has its own unique quirks and shortcomings. Let’s explore a few of them to better our understanding: Blackberry Facebook 2.0 beta Positives Facebook Chat – catching up in real-time New Navigation Grid – easier to find what you’re looking for Negatives Still sluggish for photos – don’t expect to thumb through an album quickly Bugs in chat app –these will likely be ironed out in the near future. Android: Friendcaster Facebook App Positives All in one app, instead of accessing some features through the browser. Tablet friendly taking full advantage of the larger screen Negatives Invasive notifications open the app itself despite what else you might be doing most of the time. Your farm will miss you if you don’t use a browser to keep up with it and your other games. Facebook Version 4 for iPhone Positives Games! You won’t have to open a browser to keep up with your farm and more Apps – access your favorite apps on the go! Navigation and Notification – Send a message or see your notifications or browse without losing your place in News Feed Negatives Scaling for the iPad causes spacing issues Comment bugs – sometimes the posts tease you from just off screen tapping around randomly will often fix the problem Related posts: The Facebook Obsession and Its Effect on Communication [Infographic] Facebook Profile Picture Statistics [Infographic] Study: Facebook photo sharing reflects focus on female appearance

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Facebook App Comparison for Your Smartphone

With over 48 hours of video being uploaded to YouTube every minute, 200 million Tweets posted daily, and an average of 90 pieces of content per user posted to Facebook every day, we are uploading our personalities, our thoughts, and our ideas onto the web, but what happens to these online personas after we die? Already services are offering options for this — such as IfIDie.Net — which lets you record a last video or Tweet to be posted once you die. Even Facebook’s recent rollout of Timeline allows users to make a digital archive of their lives. But SVP Content & Exec Editor at Mashable, Adam Ostrow, takes it once step further in this video as he discusses the implications of these ideas mixed with machine learning, where computers can make intelligent decisions based on data. Ostrow notes that computers grow more advanced at analyzing content every day. He wonders whether a person’s death and the personification of their analyzed content can extend their life virtually. For example, what if we could program robots to act like a person based on their created content? This isn’t too far of a stretch. One site, My Next Tweet, already offers a service that will analyze all your tweets to predict what you’ll say next. What if Adam is right? Will we need to redefine our definition of “life?” Related posts: Fotoshop by Adobé Makes Fun of Media Beauty Standards [Video] The Ramifications of Social Media On Actual Social Interaction Perry Hewitt on Harvard’s Social Media

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Social Media After Death [Video]

Jasmine closes her eyes, takes a breath, and begins belting out Carrie Underwood’s “Before He Cheats,” in front of three judges. Jasmine had spent 12 hours out in the cold waiting for her chance at becoming an overnight success, but the judges tell her this will be the end of the road. Her dreams shattered, she sulks away in disbelief. This story is not unique to Jasmine, she is among the 100,000 who try out for American Idol every year. These kids all believe that they are destined to have their name in shining lights, but it is not until an awakening like Jasmine’s that dreams of fame become nothing but a dim memory. Jasmine is a member of Generation Y — a generation who earned not only a birth from their mothers, but a second birth on the internet. Each of their identities has been designed so that the world can be constantly apprised to every minute detail of their lives, as if anyone cared. They believe everyone wants to hear what they think, do, and see at any given moment, so their stream of consciousness is on display in Facebook and Twitter and you can find their video responses to Kanye West’s new video on YouTube. They have become masters of self-promotion, even before they developed a sense-of-self. Generation Y members — also known as Generation Me, millennials, and echoboomers — were born between 1982 and 2002, and are seen by many as over self-entitled whiners who believe they deserve at least a B for showing up to class, and a trophy for simply participating in events. Hara Estroff Marano, editor of Psychology Today , calls them “a nation of wimps.” In the previous generation, celebrities were famous for actually doing things. The names that made the paper were Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft, Bruce Springsteen, songwriter, and many others who built something valuable from the ground up. Today, with shows like, Survivor , no-talent celebrities like Paris Hilton, and opportunists like the Balloon Boy parents, viewers learn to associate fame with people who do absolutely nothing of value. Mike is a 20 year old “man” who spends his time playing poker on the internet. He is subscribed to 13 different get-rich-quick blogs and he believes he will make his first million by 25. Mike is no different than most other guys his age. Just like Jasmine, they represent the entitlement generation. A generation that was told they could have it all. They were told to expect big things, because they deserved it. Their parents told them so. As did their teachers. As did the media. Meals are microwavable, blogs are books, music is free, and software is customized to their needs. Even relationships are only a click away. Big breasts, Asian, teen, it’s up to them and their mouse. With all this at their fingertips, they believe they have the control, whatever they want is theirs. So what will happen when they inevitably find out they have so very little? Jasmine and Mike will soon be graduating college and they believe — no, they know — they will “find a job that’s not just a job, but an expression of their identity, a form of self-fulfillment,” as Jeffrey Jensen Arnett, a Professor of Psychology at Clark University puts it in his book, Emerging Adulthood: The Winding Road From the Late Teens Through the Twenties . But Jasmine and Mike will soon enter into a world where they will quickly learn that they are not the center of the universe, that they are not entitled to all they thought they were promised, and that they are not as important as they were told. They will walk into job interviews expecting big salaries and an office overlooking the city. But what is more likely, is that they will move back in with their parents while they spend a year trying to find a job that isn’t much more than an internship. These same kids, who were too good to work at Starbucks a year ago, will be fighting for pennies in a down economy, struggling to understand how they can be so under-appreciated. Even the financial crisis we find ourselves in is partially a result of the overvaluing of self-worth among people today. Research psychologists, Jean Twenge and W. Keith Campbell, detail in their book, The Narcissism Epidemic , a growing rise in clinical narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) among Americans in their 20s. In fact, one in 16 Americans have experienced the symptoms at some time in their life. In an interview with US News and World Report , Twenge noted, “Narcissism contributed to the economic crisis. Many people had narcissistic overconfidence [when they said], ‘Yeah, I can afford that million-dollar house,’ and lenders said, ‘Sure, I know you’ll pay off that loan.’” Overconfidence is making it increasingly difficult to distinguish dreams from reality, and the results are catastrophic. In 2009, a study found that the top three career aspirations of children were to be a sportsman, a popstar, or an actor. So what, you say? Kids have always wanted fame and fortune. This is actually not true. The study compared the results to the ambitions of pre-teens from 25 years ago as well. During that generation, the top three career aspirations were teaching, banking/finance, and medicine. There is a survey that has been asking kids since the 1950s, “Am I important?” Back in 1950, 12% of teenagers answered “yes.” Today, that number is 80%. And of course they feel that way. After all, the recent development of the commercial tween market has shown that the children are the actually the consumers, not the parents. Tweens dictate, and over-indulgent, baby boomer parents, follow orders. And as our kids get louder, fatter, and more demanding, so do their egos, sense of entitlement, and sense of importance. So, where are the parents, their supposed role models? If you thought “me, me, me” social networking was just an infatuation with youth, think again. It turns out that the over-25 crowd is the fastest-growing demographic of Facebook users, and people over 35 make up more than half of MySpace’s 110 million users. Parents have fallen for this “reality” of the world as well. While magazines like Newsweek and Time have seen their circulation decline, magazines like People and Us Weekly have been on the rise. It is all about the frivolous details of peoples lives — not what they do of worth — but what they wear, what they buy, who they know. Celebrity voyeurism. If parents are too preoccupied with Perez Hilton’s latest post, then who is going to teach our children the counter-lessons of celebrity culture: that fame should not be born of self-humiliation, and that self-respect is NOT earned by 15 minutes of empty self-esteem. Once the culture bomb does its final damage on these youth and the personal post-traumatic-stress-disorder passes, they will have to learn to pick up the pieces of their sorry selves, and build something of value. Michael Kimmel is a sociologist and author who has written a book, Guyland , devoted to discussing the male sense of entitlement. Kimmel describes how rage takes control once a person feels their entitlement is threatened. Kimmel gives an example of a group who are consistently stripped of their entitlement: bullies. He points to research by William Coleman, who is a Professor of Pediatrics at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine. Coleman says that bullies are a prime example of a privileged group in school, but once they leave this arena, they become shocked at how much they overestimated their prestige. And this overestimation typically leads to substance abuse and violent crime. Generation Y’s focus on self has brought collateral damage on others as well. Another recent survey found that empathy among students is nowhere the figure it used to be. In fact, researchers found that the ability to empathize has dropped almost 40% since 1980, with the biggest drop occuring after 2000. Our society is overly selfish, and like Bengel’s wide receiver, Terrell Owens, once said at a press conference, he is fine with that. We are inconsiderate. A bunch of assholes and douchebags, as we so like to call each other. We have inflated our expectations. The media and society in general offered us false dreams. They said we could be stars. Among the 500 TV stations, we thought there was surely a place for us. But we are not as important as we thought we were. Tyler Durden said it best, “You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake, you are the same organic decaying matter as everything else.” The only question is, what now? It starts with not updating our Facebook status at dinner. It starts with reading a news story rather than Lohan’s latest tweet. It starts with asking someone how their day is going. And it ends when…well a recovering Generation Y’er can dream, right? Written by Chase Fleming . Follow Chase on Twitter @chasefleming . No related posts.

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The Age of Self-Importance

In this age of natural disasters, chronic unemployment, terrorism, public protests and housing foreclosures, one might expect newspapers and social media sites to be flooded with a deluge of negative words. Surprisingly, however, that is not the case. Researchers at the University of Vermont have found that the English language contains a natural positivity, meaning that even in troubled times, people use more happy words than sad ones. The study, entitled “Positivity of the English Language,” examined billions of words collected from Twitter, 50 years of music lyrics, 20 years of the New York Times and nearly six centuries of publications on the Google Books Project. From those sources, researchers singled out the 10,222 most commonly used words and hired a panel of subjects to rate, on a scale from one to nine, the level of emotional happiness each word inspires. “Laughter” received an 8.50, “food” 7.44, “truck” 5.48, “greed” 3.06 and “terrorist” 1.30. Words receiving a rating of 5 were considered neutral. When researchers then analyzed the top 5,000 words by frequency of use in each of their sources, they discovered that the rate of positivity remained pretty much the same over time. Whether the writer was a country music star, a sixteenth-century poet or an angsty teen complaining about homework on Twitter, happy words dominated the text. The study comes on the heels of another one by the same group of scientists that showed a two-year decline in global happiness based on the language contained in Twitter updates—a story that drew national attention. The researchers now say that while people’s short-term happiness has decreased, the language they use to express their discontent remains fundamentally positive—at the “atomic” level, so to speak. Even news articles about war, corruption and death reveal a “net happiness” inherent in English. Scientists say this universal “bias of positivity” in language reflects the social nature of humanity. Social contracts often hinge upon one’s ability to be pleasant and upbeat. Therefore, it stands to reason that a million years of language development would ingrain more positive words into our vocabulary than negative ones. The study’s findings support the Pollyanna Principle of 1969, which theorized that humans naturally use positive words more easily and frequently than negative ones. The study appears in the January 11 issue of the journal PloS ONE. Related posts: English Language Has Doubled In Size Over Last Century, Says New Study Ability to Gauge Emotion is Independent of Language, Study Says Building Language Skills More Critical for Boys than Girls, Study Finds

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Even in Tough Times, Language Remains Positive [Study]

Written by Elaine Hirsch You finally have your MBA and your first “real” job. Writing the resume was easy since your department counselor helped you with it. The interview also went well because you were given problems taken straight out of textbooks. Now you are faced with a difficulty at work that none of your professors ever covered, leaving you helpless. What Is Communication and How Important Is It? Dictionary.com defines communication as “The imparting or interchange of thoughts, opinions, or information by speech, writing, or signs”. Did you know that listening is also an important communication skill and requires practice? The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business published a paper entitled “ In Defense of the MBA ,” which stated, “And they realize that faculty who are stars with students because of their outstanding communication, teaching,and advising are also a valuable part of the b-school equation.” Understanding financial formulas, memorizing case studies, and recalling successful companies is no longer enough to succeed in business; according to MBA Online , adequately communicating your ideas has become a crucial skill to have. What an MBA Doesn’t Cover Just as the example in paragraph one explains, most classes in an MBA are geared to learning the mechanics of a business enterprise. Unfortunately, many MBA programs won’t teach its students how to close sales, pitch a business idea,or even conduct day-to-day customer service. As more companies are competing for the consumer’s dollar, having these skills will make a huge difference in getting visibility for your product. There is a concern also with online education. Does it give an MBA graduate the interpersonal skills required to effectively do their job once they land it? According to authors from Drexel University the number of students taking at least one online course in the fall of 2007 was 3.9 million and is increasing every year. While online programs could improve communication skills in terms of using social media and email to get in touch with professors and students, it still detracts students from learning how to interact with customers. How to Learn on Your Own Consider joining a group that reads and discusses a book to share opinions and analyze what you read. Speaking of books, Jeff Bezos’ biography is one of great achievement. You can read about it on his website . He made book reading easy through Kindle communication technology. Getting your hands dirty by starting your personal social media campaign isa great way to learn communication skills. Starting a blog and writing weekly articles about a topic that interests you, linking it to your Twitter account and networking with like-minded people, and leveraging these tools to improve visibility on your LinkedIn account are great (and free) ways to being increasing your network size. All that you do to improve your communication skills will help you personally andin the business world. A degree, while helpful, can only go so far. All you say and do will have a lasting impact. Carefully consider adding all you can to your communication skills. Related posts: Police officers to receive communication skills training Being An Only Child Does Not Hurt Social Skills Botox Impairs Communication Skills

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Important Communication Skills You Can’t Learn From an MBA