Use Facebook for your Mental Health

As reported by the LA Times Tech blog, "Pew report: Facebook users have a higher degree of social well-being." I used to only log onto Facebook if I got an alert that I'd received some sort of message or wall post-- obviously this meant that I wasn't highly engaged in general, so this logging on didn't go down all that often. Recently I've been logging on ("log on"-- visit) a few times day, but we just finished up a 5 day car trip from LA to South Bend, IN, and going back on to check Facebook was less than rewarding-- while I scrolled through a few pages of blogs I visit to see what had been going on, my Facebook newsfeed wasn't something I bothered to expand the page on-- ok, I see you went to the same party those 20 year olds are going to, and somebody watered your corn, and you posted another news story that directly aligns with your political views that I know already from your other posts, so it was business as usual.

That sounds crotchety-- I don't mind Facebook-- I think it is an interesting social networking tool, and its use during the "Arab Spring" are fascinating to read about. I don't have a problem with people who are constantly on it, as long as it doesn't affect the motherfucking health and safety of those around you. (Seriously.) But this study is interesting because it suggests there is a certain way of being "socially well," defined here as being "more trusting of other people, [having a] larger numbers of close friends, [...] exhibit[ing] a higher level of civic engagement and [receiving] more social support from their friends."

The obviously flipside of that last one is the negative influence of those friends, on the less drastic but just as unfortunate side, peer pressure, and on the far end of the spectrum: bullying. In general, a large group of people coming together to dilute how you should experience things, whether its that civic engagement or what is considered a friend. More problematically, it suggests a "bad":

One disturbing finding: The social fallout from the digital divide. People who are not online have the smallest social networks, are more socially isolated, get the least amount of social support and are least likely to vote, Hampton said.

While I doubt this particular study will lead to anything, it has implications in the nexus of agreement that has come together from the people surveyed: in a world where 99.9% of behavior is classified as diagnosable and able to be medicated, it's too bad that if you don't vote, don't have tons of friends who throw awesome parties where each person only knows 2 other people, and feel that a small group of tight-knit group of friends works for you the way large casual groups of friends work for other people, you could end up being lumped into a "disturbing" set.

Also, speaking of technology, LulzSec, whose mothers never taught them that eventually people wouldn't always say nice things about the things that they hero-worship (single-mindedness like this is why your DVD warns you that the opinions offered aren't those of Sony Entertainment, and PBS? really?) has released a list of hacked email/password combinations, happily confirming (because I'm a fucking genius) my suspicions that they are a lot less political activists and a lot more douchebag cyber frat boys. [ps - pic source]