The more "friends" on social media the higher stress levels are likely to be. That is what researchers at the University of Montreal were trying to determine.
In a recent research study conducted at the University of Montreal, researchers found that the more “friends” someone has on Facebook, especially teenagers, the higher the stress levels will tend to be. The stress levels begin to seriously occur once someone has more than 300 “friends” attached to their Facebook page.
The researchers at Pew Research have found that well over 80 percentof teens use social media frequently and that more than 70 percent of them have a Facebook page, according to Wall Street OTC. While many believe social media to be harmless, other researchers believe that there can be negative emotional and health consequences to being overly active on social media platforms.
In a separate study performed and reported at Medical News Today, the research found that too much exposure to social media sites leads to anxiety and many times depression. The University of Montreal study has reached those same conclusions, but found it was based on the number of “friends” they had to contend with.
The research team interviewed 88 children ages 12-17. In the study, 41 were boys and 47 were girls. They were asked the frequency with which they used and visited social media as well as the number of “friends” they have at their Facebook site. The were also asked about their self promotional actions as well as how often they supported or “liked” someone else or something someone posted.
The children who participated in the study who had more than 300 “friends” out on Facebook were generating more cortisol in their bodies than normal and at a rate that was far higher than their peers who had less than 300 “friends.” Cortisol is a steroid hormone released by the body during fight or flight situations. Rarely, these days, are cortisol levels allowed to balance out because most people lead lives of high stress, high anxiety and practice the delusion that multi-tasking actually allows someone to get more done when, in reality, research has shown that it actually decreases production.
The more they had over the 300, the higher the cortisol production and the higher the stress levels.
