Researchers at Charles Sturt University found that lonely women were more likely to spend a greater amount of time on social networking sites and have less privacy settings in place so everyone online can view their profiles.
The study, “Self-disclosure on Facebook among female users and its relationship to feelings of loneliness”, collected data from 616 adult female Facebook users whose profiles were publicly available online.
Out of these users, half were categorised as ‘connected’ and the remaining 308 users were categorised as ‘lonely’; based on clearly stating this feeling in their latest wall posting.
The authors of the study, Yeslam Al-Saggaf and Sharon Nielsen, examined the privacy settings of both groups and found 98 per cent of women in the ‘lonely’ group shared their relationship status publicly and 79 per cent of the women in this category shared more information about favourite activities, quotations, movies, books, TV shows, language(s) spoken, address, and “about me” section.
The women in the ‘connected’ category only shared their relationship status 64 per cent of the time and were more likely to make their views on politics and religion public.
Al-Saggaf told Market Watch he found the observations unsurprising.
“It makes sense that the people who felt lonely would disclose this type of information,” he said.
“They want to make it easier for others to initiate contact with them, which may help them overcome their feelings of loneliness.”
In 2013, researchers at the University of Michigan found that the more time people spent on Facebook, the more likely they are to become unhappy and the study concluded that Facebook actually “undermines” people’s well-being.
