Attention and Social Comparison on Facebook : A Quantitative Study about Adolescents’ Psychological Wellbeing

• Main Author: Seldert, Sofie
• Format: Others
• Language: English
• Published: Högskolan i Gävle, Avdelningen för socialt arbete och psykologi 2014
• Online Access: http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:hig:diva-16923

The purpose of this quantitative study with a logical positivistic perspective was to explore to what extent Facebook had an effect on the psychological wellbeing amongst adolescents in southern Sweden. Adolescence is a difficult time when the adolescents face a number of challenges, this may be reasons for why some adolescents have low psychological wellbeing. A survey was conducted with 100 adolescents, ages 15 to 20, which then was presented and analyzed with help from Erikson’s Psychosocial Theory and the Social Comparison Theory. This revealed the attention adolescents got on Facebook, in form of “likes” and comments, had no significant impact on their psychological wellbeing. Additionally, the social comparisons on Facebook made adolescents compare themselves to fictive improved identities. However, this comparison had no significant relation to the adolescents’ psychological wellbeing, this because most adolescents were aware that the identities on Facebook did not display all aspects of a person.