Jennifer Golbeck
ABSTRACT
Social media can impact how people feel both in the short and long term. Most studies in this area have focused on longer-term feelings of happiness and life satisfaction, but the immediate impact on users' sense of well-being and anxiety levels are not well studied. In this work, we had 1,880 subjects complete surveys about their immediate sense of well-being and contentment and then view one of three possible social media pages: a collection of happy dog pictures and videos; a collection of non-dog related images and videos that generally were funny, non-political, and popular; and Donald Trump's Twitter account. After viewing this content, they were re-surveyed on their sense of well-being. We found viewing dogs led to a large and significant increase in the sense of well-being, viewing popular content led to a smaller but still significant improvement, and viewing Donald Trump's Twitter account led to a very large decrease in sense of well-being. This work has implications for recommender systems, which may consider these results as a step toward optimizing user well-being rather than simply engagement, and for users who may want to manage their own happiness through social media channels and following patterns.
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Index Terms
- Dogs Good, Trump Bad: The Impact of Social Media Content on Sense of Well-Being
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