Social media started out as a way to stay in touch with our friends and share happy memories. However, recent results researchKaspersky Lab's research shows that social media is now making many people feel bad. The 'hunt' for likes plays a central role in this, with the majority of people feeling bad or upset when they don't get the number of likes they want for a post, and with 42% saying they feel jealous when their friends get more likes. Additionally, research shows that people feel jealous when they see their friends' seemingly happier lives on social media.
In a survey of 16.750 people from around the world, Kaspersky Lab identified users' feelings of frustration with social media. People often experience negative emotions when they have spent time on social media due to various events, which indirectly neutralizes its positive effects.
Social network users visit social media for mostly positive reasons and to feel good. Most people (65%) use social networks to keep in touch with friends and colleagues and to see fun and funny posts (60%). People also spend a considerable amount of time on it creation digital profiles and feed it with all kinds of positive moments, noting the things that make them smile (61%), and telling their networks about the great times they have during their holidays and vacations (43%) .
While it is no surprise that 72% of people are bothered by advertisements that have become extremely intrusive and interrupt their online communications, the underlying reasons for their disappointment are far deeper. Despite the desire to feel good about their interactions in social media, when people see their friends' happy holidays about holidays, hobbies and parties, they often have the bitter feeling that other people enjoy life more than themselves . For example, 59% felt unhappy when he saw his friend posts from a party he had not been invited to, while 45% revealed that his friends' happy photos from their holidays had a negative impact on him. In addition, 37% has also admitted that revisiting his old, happy publications may give him the feeling that his past was better than his current life.
Previous research has also shown people's disillusionment with social media, with 78% admitting they have considered quitting social networks altogether. The only thing that keeps people on social media is the fear of losing their digital memories like photos and contacts with their friends. As keeping in touch with friends can be a difficult problem to resolution, Kaspersky Lab is working hard to create a comprehensive solution to help people save their digital memories.
“Our relationship with social media has become a vicious cycle. We want to enter our favorite social platforms to share with all our contacts the positive things we do that make us feel good," commented Evgeny Chereshnev, Head of Social Media at Kaspersky Lab. "But the reality is that everyone is doing the same thing, so when we go on social media, we're bombarded with pictures and posts from our friends having fun. And it seems like they enjoy life more than we do. It's easy to see why this leaves people feeling sad and why so many people have considered quitting social media altogether. The difficulty is that people feel trapped because so many of their precious memories are stored on social media and they don't want to lose access to them."
To help people decide more freely if they want to stay in or out of social media without losing their digital memories, Kaspersky Lab is developing a new application, FFForget, which allows users to back up all of their memories from the social networks they use and keep them in a secure, encrypted "warehouse". This will make users free to leave any network whenever they wish, without losing everything they own, iladi their digital lives.
FFForget release is scheduled for 2017.
