Facehooked: How Facebook Affects Our Emotions, Relationships, and Lives

By Suzana E. Flores

The number of Facebook users worldwide exceeded one billion in August of 2012. With the increase in Facebook users, psychologists have seen an alarming increase in the number of Facebook related complaints from their clients. Dr. Suzana Flores, clinical psychologist, has interviewed Facebook users of all ages for three years exploring the positive and negative features of Facebook and evaluating the effect it has on our lives. Facehooked explores the problems most commonly found on Facebook, including controversial topics such as self-esteem, privacy, peer pressure, stalking, emotional manipulation, among others. Readers are not only provided with practical tools to help identify and avoid unhealthy behaviors, but also suggestions for healthier interaction on Facebook.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Reputation Books
• Release date: Sep 7, 2021
• ISBN: 9781944387358

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

HOW IS IT EVEN POSSIBLE THAT FACEBOOK CAN SEND someone to the Emergency Room? When I admitted a client to the Psychiatric Unit, after he saw something on Facebook that sent him into a tailspin, I was rattled. But I realized the impact of Facebook was something I’d been seeing more frequently with my therapy clients.

One client missed two sessions in a row after her friends posted comments about her weight gain after having seen recent photographs of her. Another was experiencing problems with his girlfriend’s suggestive and flirtatious comments to other male friends on Facebook. When I asked my colleagues if their clients were experiencing similar issues, many said yes. Clients were revealing their personal and interpersonal problems now had a new dimension: Facebook.

Many people feel that having no social network is the same as having no place to socialize with friends. Socializing with others on Facebook has become much more than a passive form of entertainment—for many, it’s a legitimate way to express ourselves and to record almost every moment of our lives. Many of us take our Facebook profiles pretty seriously. So seriously in fact that interacting on Facebook has caused us to experience a new kind of existential crisis: If I do something and I don’t post it on Facebook, did it ever really happen? Sure, you can connect with friends and family found across the globe, discover career opportunities and keep a digital account of all your achievements and relationships. But what Facebook users often don’t take into account are the many ways in which Facebook can harm our relationships instead of improve them.

Little by little, I began noticing a significant shift in the importance we were placing on our social-network interactions. Facebook posts triggered people to react—often stirring up strong emotions—to what they see (or think they see) on their computer screens. I noticed people making assumptions about other people’s Facebook posts and projecting their own feelings onto what such posts really meant. People were becoming paranoid, Was that about me? Is she insulting my kid? He just checked into a club—is he trying to make me jealous? Is she trying to tell me something by posting that song? Sometimes they were right, sometimes they were way off, but either way, they weren’t talking to each other anymore. Instead of checking-in and asking what a post meant, people often made their own assumptions based on a small tidbit of information on their News Feed. They often impulsively reacted by posting negative comments, sharing passive-aggressive posts, or distancing themselves from their friends, many times without just cause. It was clear to me then that Facebook had far more power over people’s emotional reactions than we’d like to believe—and it was messing many of us up, one Facebook post at a time.

Facebook has also caused our self-worth to become defined by how many likes we receive, our relationship status, our carefully edited photographs—Look at how happy I look with my new girlfriend, my new car, my new outfit. Most of us post our celebrity moments and filter what we really share—perhaps avoiding sharing our real selves. In many ways, we have started to connect and interact through this alternative and carefully created fantasy world and it’s affecting our real-life emotions.

I’ve often wondered if Facebook is causing some people so much pain, why not simply log off? One reason. People are addicted. Our sense of self is now being shaped through what we share and how we share it. Through our Facebook friends’ likes, shares and comments, we are receiving new messages about what is acceptable, what we should do and who we should be. Such public endorsement is intoxicating and it’s leading to addictive behaviors such as checking and rechecking our News Feeds and updates several times a day. Facebook is the ultimate time suck, yet many of us don’t realize just how hooked we are until we try to spend 48 hours completely unplugged.

Have our online personas started to take precedence over our offline worlds? I wondered if I was alone with my concern over the long-term effects of social-media interaction. I wanted to speak to people about their own experiences on Facebook but didn’t want to just meet with people who thought or felt like I did, so I came up with an idea. I made a huge sign that read, TALK TO ME ABOUT SOCIAL MEDIA and held it outside my office in downtown Chicago and patiently waited for people to start approaching me.

Standing outside alone, holding up my big sign on a busy sidewalk in the freezing Chicago weather, I certainly received a lot of you’re crazy stares from strangers who passed me by, but I didn’t care—I was on a mission. One by one, people slowly started to approach me with their stories. With their permission, I recorded many of their accounts with my trusty digital recorder. On some occasions I had an entire group of people discussing how Facebook has affected their self-esteem, their work productivity, their relationships and friendships, and the way they perceive themselves and others. I invited people to meet with me individually to share their more personal and intimate accounts of how Facebook interaction has affected them.

I opened up my questions to the Facebook audience, inviting people from across the globe to tell me their stories. I interviewed teenagers, mothers, doctors, teachers, students, other psychologists, child psychologists, Internet and social-network specialists—all enthusiastic to tell someone, who would listen without judgment, how Facebook caused them to behave differently than they normally would and how their online interactions profoundly affected their lives. Some had relationship issues due to inappropriate flirting, jealousy or attention-seeking behavior. Others experienced the loss of friendships due to passive-aggressive posts, unfriending, or communication misunderstandings. Others reported feeling overwhelmed by Facebook and tried taking Facebook vacations only to find themselves unable to break away because they were fully addicted to checking their News Feeds.

My goal in writing this book is to help readers understand how Facebook is affecting us personally and globally. Rather than providing a theoretical and data-filled account of social-media studies, this book provides real accounts from people who have struggled with their Facebook interactions, and teaches how we can start to make sense of the many personality and social changes developing as a result of Facebook encounters.

What follows is an attempt to address the general problems that arise from Facebook through case studies and examination. I have collected stories from adults and teens, who have shared their personal struggles with Facebook. I have changed the names of participants and made some minor changes in detail to protect the anonymity of those who have participated, but all the case studies are firsthand accounts of Facebook users’ experiences. Through these case studies, we understand why people interact differently online, how such interactions can lead to negative emotional outcomes, and what steps can be taken to find a new sense of balance. I’ll examine how Facebook is affecting our sense of ourselves and of privacy and how we connect and seek approval in a way we never have before. I’ll also discuss romantic relationships, how teens use and are impacted by social media, and the very real phenomenon of Facebook addictions. Last, you will learn about five types of emotional manipulators who find Facebook the perfect medium in which to victimize people.

The questions I asked my interview subjects over three years led to many more questions: Why are some people neglecting their families, friends, relationships, work, and education in order to spend more time logged on to Facebook? Why do we feel comfortable sharing personal information in a public forum when we wouldn’t reveal it to a person standing right in front of us? Are we posting a link to express our opinions, or are we sharing it in order to impress others? Is the status update governing our behavior? Exactly how much influence does Facebook have on our emotions, relationships and lives?

Why are we so Facehooked?

chapter one

Connecting in the Digital Age

I’m a different person on Facebook. I think everyone is in a way. I know this sounds crazy, but I like when people really notice me and what I post—like people are seeing a new me; a better me. I share something on Facebook about five times a day. It’s a part of life now isn’t it? But sometimes I will admit—life on Facebook is more interesting than reality. I’d rather be responding to a comment on my wall than speaking to the boring person in front of me.

BEFORE THE DAWN

ONE OF MY CLIENTS, SAM, CALLED IN A SEVERE PANIC—he couldn’t tell me why, but repeated over and over that he felt completely out of control and needed to see me right away. As a clinical psychologist, I’m used to working with people in distress and recognized immediately this man was overwhelmed with grief. After I helped Sam calm down, he told me that his fiancé, Lisa, had broken their engagement. This was certainly traumatic, but what struck me about his story wasn’t so much that she had ended the engagement, but in how she had chosen to do so.

Sam had logged into Facebook that evening and discovered that Lisa had changed her relationship status from engaged to in a relationship. More important, the photo next to the in a relationship with was no longer his, but that of his best friend. He called Lisa as soon as he saw her status update and learned she and his friend had been an item for the past three months and that they both thought it was time to let him know—by changing their Facebook statuses. Sam was so overtaken with heartache I feared he might harm himself. When his anguish escalated into suicidal thoughts, he agreed that he might be safer in a hospital. I admitted him to the Emergency Room and asked that he be placed on suicide watch. He was hospitalized for four days.

Another client, Megan, called me because something tragic happened to her family. Megan’s husband, John, was scrolling through his Facebook News Feed when he came across a photograph posted by one of his cousins. The photo showed John’s parents’ totaled car—the front of the car was caved in and the windows were smashed. The caption underneath the photograph read, Oh my God. My aunt and uncle died in a car crash! John discovered his parents died in a car crash—on Facebook. He became hysterical. He called his family members in Texas only to find out that the Facebook post was true; his parents had perished in a car crash near their home. Ultimately the shock was so devastating that he was taken to a psychiatric hospital for treatment.

A few months back I conducted an intake evaluation on Ray, an eighteen-year-old with depression and severe pain related to a gunshot injury. Ray had been shot after fighting with his stepfather, who was upset that Ray was running up his cellphone bill because he was on Facebook all the time. This night, his stepfather screamed at him to get off Facebook because he’d been scrolling through his News Feed for two hours. The fight turned physical and Ray’s stepfather grabbed a gun and shot Ray in the foot. Not only will Ray never walk normally again, he’s been ostracized by his mother and other family members, who blame him for his stepfather’s incarceration.

These are clearly extreme cases of the damage that Facebook can inflict. For Sam and John, Facebook was almost a weapon used against them: people they loved and trusted used Facebook to inflict pain upon them, without thinking about what effect their posts would have.

However, these are also examples of how Facebook is changing the way some of us express ourselves on social-media networks. Every day psychologists are hearing clients discuss issues pertaining to Facebook. Whether it has to do with a passive-aggressive comment that someone has made, poor boundaries, stalking behavior or social-media addiction, Facebook is a new dimension in our clients’ therapeutic presentations.

Perhaps it’s the instant access we all suddenly have to one another, or perhaps it’s the distancing factor within Facebook that makes us believe that what we post will not affect other people as much as it would in real life. But there’s something about Facebook that is causing many of us to lose sight of who we are, changing how we wish to represent ourselves online, and, in some cases, allowing common sense and judgment to go out the window.

The most significant problematic changes I’ve observed regarding Facebook self-identity, self-expression, and social interaction are: the amount of time we spend editing or enhancing our self-image, our increased need for public expression and decreased need for privacy, the emphasis we are placing on performing for others through our profiles, and choosing to connect with others through our Facebook avatars while neglecting real-life