How do Online Social Networks Influence People’s Emotional Lives?

Abstract

In 2004, Mark Zuckerberg and his roommates launched a virtual directory of college student profiles. Fifteen years later, what began as a modest attempt to help students connect with one another became the largest online social network in the world, a technological innovation that changed the way human beings interact. In this chapter, we discuss what we have learned about how this technology influences people’s emotional lives. We begin by providing a brief overview of research on online social network usage and emotional well-being, highlighting some of the conceptual and methodological challenges that prevented early work from drawing strong inferences about the links between these variables. We then describe a program of research designed to address these concerns by focusing on the mechanisms underlying how two different types of online social network usage—"active” and “passive”— influence how people feel in the lab and in daily life. We conclude by discussing how researchers can draw inferences about emotion from social media “big data” and whether online social networks can be strategically harnessed to promote well-being.