Just Your Friendly Neighborhood Facebook Friend

I’m the Facebook friend who shares his life on Facebook. I like to post quotes from books that make me seem intelligent. I look for witty things to say to make my friends laugh. I love to argue about politics and update my status with the unusual things that politicians say. I’m constantly adding new photos of my son and wife and places we go. I’m always checking into places letting everybody know where I’m at. Up until this moment I thought I was the ultra cool Facebook user but based on new research by ShockMd, I have self-esteem issues.

AllFacebook.com also reported the following in their post What Your “Cool” Facebook Friend Is Really Like:

York University psychologist Soraya Mehdizadeh analyzed the Facebook pages of 50 male and 50 female student participants after having the students answer questions about their demographics, Facebook activity, self-esteem, and narcissism. Mehdizadeh looked at the “About Me” section, the profile photo, the first 20 pictures in the “View Photos of Me” section, the notes, and the status updates of each student, rating each page based on extent it self-promotes the user.

Mehdizadeh found that Facebook users who were highly narcissistic with low-self esteem tended to spend the most time on Facebook and were highly self-promoting than those with high self-esteem and low narcissism regardless of gender. In other words, those “cool” Facebook friends you have who keep spamming your news feed with constant information about themselves and how awesome they are may not be too awesome after all.

So I guess I’m highly narcissistic with low-self esteem but I’m going to prove the study wrong. For the next month I’m not going to post anything new to Facebook…no status updates, or new pictures, or funny things, or unusual things politicians say, or cute photos of my son, or checking into my favorite restaurants. Who am I kidding, I just posted a status update that read…”I’m Stu and I love myself”.