Well-Being Paradox of Social Networking Sites: Maintaining Relationships and Gathering Unhappiness

In the pursuit of happiness, it has been conventionally accepted that more friends would bring us a better quality of life. However, with the advent of social networking sites (SNS), unprecedented social influence has pervaded our daily lives. We argue that building and maintaining relationships in social network sites has differential effects on wellbeing. The results of our four studies establish an important and previously undocumented phenomenon—that keeping up with your online friends reduces life satisfaction because of feelings of envy associated with the ostentatious information shared in SNS. Reading friends´ posts on Facebook reduced wellbeing (maintaining relationships), whereas the reverse was true for adding new friends (building relationships). Moreover, this decrease in life satisfaction in maintaining relationships is mediated by envy as individuals are exposed to more ostentatious information. Our research extends social capital theory by demonstrating how relationships in social networki...