Facebook 'makes people feel close'

Social media sites such as Facebook make people feel better about themselves, according to a US study

The majority of people have a positive experience of social networking sites and regularly experience kind gestures when using them, a study by Pew Internet, an American not-for-profit research organisation, has found.

Contrary to reports which claim that sites such as Facebook and Twitter as having a detrimental effect on users and their friendships, Pew found that 85 per cent of adults using social networks say their experience is that people on social networking sites are mostly kind, compared with 5 per cent who say people on the sites are mostly unkind.

Sixty-eight per cent of those polled said they had had an experience on a social network site which had made them feel good about themselves and 61 per cent said events on sites such as Facebook, had made them feel closer to others.

Generosity was another characteristic many said featured on social networking sites. The report, entitled ‘The tone of life on social networking sites’, says that thirty-nine per cent of adults using these sites say they frequently see acts of other behaving generously and helpfully to other users.

However, a “notable proportion” of the American adults questioned said that they had witnessed bad behaviour on the sites, and nearly a third have experienced negative outcomes from their experiences on social networking sites. Some 49 per cent of those using Facebook and Twitter, said they have seen “mean or cruel” behaviour displayed by others at least occasionally.