Facebook Can Be Related To Teens’ Stress Levels

Facebook might be connected to an adolescent's stress levels; this is suggested by a small study conducted in Canada. The result of the said study indicated that for adolescents, their stress levels might be associated with the number of Facebook friends they have. Having more than 300 Facebook friends is related to higher levels of the stress hormone cortisol.

The study however has involved only 88 participants which is relatively small and might not be enough to conclude that the changes in the Facebook metrics have caused the increase in stress. According to Montreal Mental Health University Senior Author Sonia Lupien, other important external factors can also be responsible for the cortisol levels; the involvement of Facebook has its own effect.

Through the study, Lupien said that they were able to show that having beyond 300 Facebook friends, raises cortisol levels; therefore they can imagine that those that have 1,000 or 2, 000 Facebook friends may be experiencing an even greater level of stress.

The study involved 88 teens aging from 12 to 17. These teens were subjected to answering questions regarding their use of the social media, number of friends, self-promoting behaviour and supporting the behaviour of their friends. The teens' cortisol levels has then been measured and monitored for three days, four times each day.

During this period the research reported that kids who have more than 300 friends on the social networking site tend to have higher cortisol levels than those who have lesser friends. However, the more peer interaction done on Facebook, the lower the cortisol levels tends to be. The researchers also wrote that the cortisol levels in early adolescence might influence the risk of depression in the later years.

On the other hand, Wenhong Chen of the Department of Ratio-TV-Film and Department of Sociology in the University of Texas point out that the research is on Facebook. So the findings can't be generalized to other forms of social media use. It might not also be generalized to other age groups.

Lupien however said that the preliminary nature of their findings will require a refined measurement of Facebook behaviours in relation to physiological functioning. They will need to do a lot more studies in the future to determine whether the effects they have observed exist in younger children and in adults. She adds that developmental analysis might also reveal whether the virtual stress is getting under the skin to modulate neurobiological processes that is related to adaptation.

Offline friend network size is said to be also related to cortisol levels. Chen, on the other hand, said that that it might not be about the number of friends either online or offline but rather more about the potential communication overload.

Larger networks may mean more peers and drama but instead of using the overall number of friends either online or offline, it might be more revealing to examine network composition, the strong and weak ties and the individuals' position in their networks.