An Investigation at the Intensity Use of Working Adults and Student Facebook Users, Their

AN INVESTIGATION AT THE INTENSITY USE OF WORKING ADULTS AND

STUDENT FACEBOOK USERS, THEIR RELATED LONELINESS AND

ENGAGEMETN WITH DIFFERENT FACEBOOK FEATURES ACCORDINGLY 1

An Investigation at the Intensity Use of Working Adults and Student Facebook Users, their

related loneliness and Engagement with Different Facebook Features Accordingly




Abstract

Internet is an integral part of people today. It influences many spheres of lives,

including the emotional one. Influences on this sphere, and particularly on the feeling of

loneliness is one of the most discussed issues since it is claimed that social networking

enhances loneliness. However, there is evidence that such influence does not exist and usage

of networking account helps people to develop social skills.

In any case, social networking influences life of people, especially of those who

because of some reason feel lonely. Paying attention to the fact that there are various levels of

loneliness, and particularly little, average, and severe, it is possible to identify a range of

actions which are tended to be performed by people with each level respectively.

A range of studies which examine social, emotional condition and areas of brain

which are responsible for feeling lonely, communication, social interaction and other actions

and emotions which are associated with communication, explain the reasons of such

differences (Dykstra, Fokkema, 2007).




Introduction

Nowadays the Internet is a very important part of people’s life. It is essential for

successful education, work, and also communication. With the process of globalization and

development of innovative technologies people became attracted to social networking, such

as Twitter or Facebook and started devoting more and more time to these networks.

However, for some people usage of social networking is only means to become

interacted, while for others, and these are the majority, social networking is the main way to

have some connection with the society. Today social networking and particularly usage of

Facebook provides people with all the necessary social interaction in terms of friendship,

communication, leisure, and even relationships (Boomsma, D2005).

On the basis of this fact social networks were blamed to contribute to loneliness of

people – spending more time online, they do not pay much attention to meeting people in real

life, so they lose their friends and become even lonelier.

At the same time it was noticed by the researchers that a range of other spheres of life

and attitudes are affected by usage of social networking, such as attitudes towards self and

other people. One of the researchers found that “Facebook users have higher narcissism,

exhibitionism and leadership levels than those who do not use Facebook.”

Probably, the reason is that the network became the place to speak about self, to share

one’s feelings, attitudes, likes and dislikes, posting and writing something frenetically in

order to reach as much audience as possible. Thus, social networking started meaning more

and more for people and for this it became blamed for making people lonely.

However, regardless of the fact whether lonely people became such because of social

networking or not, it is necessary to pay attention to the fact that similarly to the way




Facebook contributed to various spheres of people’s lives, it contributed to the attitude modes

of people and their behavior when they are online.

According to the data provided by the American consulting firm Euromonitor, “over

270 million people in the world, almost 4 per cent of the world’s population, lived alone in

2011, representing a growth of 27.6 per cent since 2006, and 77 per cent since 1996.

Developing nations currently hold almost half of one-person homes, or 130.7 million people

against 107.5 million in 2006, representing a growth of 21.6 per cent.”

It is also claimed that many of these people, not all, but the majority, are frequently

connected to their Facebook accounts, creating a vision of being not alone (Murer, 2012).

Moreover, since social networking influences people’s attitudes, their behavior is changed

when they are online. This means that the more time people spend on their Facebook

accounts, the more they tend to use different applications.

It is hypothesized, that people who have high intensity of visiting the site tend to give

more time to reading the news feeding and use scrolling, whole those who have the highest

level of loneliness tend to spend more time viewing photos.

Method

A survey the method chosen for the current experiment. Results of the experiment are

supported by the literature review of peer reviewed studies which deal with the issue of

loneliness, social networking, and various aspects of people’s lives, such as emotions and

social skills, in order to support the results of the tests.

Participants

Participants of the research are 360 users of Facebook. All of them are divided into

the following age groups:

• Younger 18-27




• Thirties 28-37

• Fourties 38-47

• Older 48-57

• Sixties 58+

Design

1) IV : Gender (Male / female)

Occupation (Student/ work/ unemployed)

DV FIS Score

LSQ score

2) IV: Age (Younger/ thirties/forties/fifties/sixties) (SELECT ONLY

participants who WORK)

Working Sector (Private/public/self employed)

DV: FIS score

LSQ score

3) IV: Age (Younger/ thirties/forties/fifties/sixties)

Marital Status: (Single / Married/ Divorced/ widowed/cohabitating)

DV: FIS score

LSQ Score

4) How are Facebook users related to the different features of facebook

Materials

A range of scales were used in order to reach the aim of the research and identify

whether the hypothesis is supported or it is not reliable.

Reliability Test




FIS : when considering the 8 questions, Cronbach alpha drops to a staggering 0.464.

This may be due to wrong interval composition between the choices. However, if Q7 or Q8

are deleted, the Cronbach alpha moves to 0.619 and 0.707 respectively.

We decide to remove Q8 from the questionnaire as according to us this might not be

in proper scaling interval and most importantly, 52.1% of participants reported being

constantly log on to Facebook.

In the open end questions, participants confirmed the fact that they are constantly

logged on and whatever free time available, they are surfing on Facebook. This mean that the

amount of time participants allocate to Facebook usage is not correctly defined and thus

possible erroneous or

Thus Q8 deleted from FISQ, Cronbach’sα = 0.707 means acceptable reliability

Facebook Intensity Scale (FIS): Considering all the criteria (8) for evaluation of

reliability of FIS, the value of Cronbach’s alpha comes out to be 0.464. The reason behind

this is that the selection involves wrong interval composition. On deletion of queries 7 and 8,

the Cronbach alpha moves to 0.619 and 0.707 respectively.

Therefore, query 8 is removed from the questionnaire because it might not be under

proper scaling interval. 52.1% of the participants reported being constantly logged on to

Facebook.

With regard to open ended questions, the participants confirmed the fact that they are

constantly logged on to Facebook and in whatever free time available, they surf Facebook.

This implies that the amount of time allocated by the participants to the usage of Facebook is

not properly defined and contributes towards possible errors in calculation. Thus, query 8 is

deleted from FISQ, so Cronbach alpha becomes 0.707, which signifies acceptable reliability

FIScore : Mean of 7 FISQ




• Lowest 0.1 – 1

1participant = 0.3 %

• Low 1.1 – 2

79 Participant = 22.0%

Mean= 1.74

SD=0.247

• Average 2.1 – 3

180 participants = 50.1%

Mean=2.56

SD=0.28

• High 3.1 – 4

88 participants =24.5%

Mean=3.41

SD=0.28

• Highest 4.1 - 5

11 participants= 3.1%

Mean=4.34

SD=0.12

RUCLA Loneliness Scale Cronbachα= 0.899 Good Reliability

FAS Cronbachα= 0.872 Good Reliability

LScore: Loneliness Score (Sum of all the 20 R-UCLA Question, care some questions

have been reversed namely LSQ1,5,6,9,10,15,16,19,20 – see LSQ1R)

Scoring Meaning:




• 20-39 – Little loneliness

• 40-59 - Average Loneliness

• 60-80 – Severe Loneliness

Procedure

Analytic Strategy which includes SPSS and a range of stats are used in order to

achieve a range of goals, for example Pearson correlation and Hierarchical linear regression.

Results and Discussion

In order to discuss the results of the tests, it is necessary to identify the issue of

loneliness. The most common definition states that it is distress which is led to by

discrepancies between social relationship and ideal relationship.

This type of discrepancy is called cognitive and it makes clear that loneliness and the

state of being alone are not the same issues; moreover, none of them guarantees being

protected from the second one.

It is more correct to state that the feeling of distressing which occurs as a consequence

of perceiving some social relationship to be not as satisfaction able as it is expected or desired

to be. Loneliness can be measured; it can be conceived and mentally represented. It

influences thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of people. Moreover, it might have serious

consequences of health of people and their well being (Boomsma, D2005).

Graphs below demonstrate percentage of loneliness and change of the percentage on

the basis of some factors which influence it directly. The first graph demonstrates the

percentage of lonely people. The data was gathered in the years 2006 and 2008 and it is

clearly seen the shift which occurred within two years.




As for the following graph, it demonstrates the percentage of lonely men and women

in various age groups.

The current graph demonstrates that there is some connection between the feeling of

loneliness and income of people. The graph does not provide division on males and females.

However, it demonstrates the three levels of severity of loneliness – sometimes, most of time

always are equal to little, average, and severe accordingly.




(Loneliness 2010. The social report.)

In order to understand the results of the test deeper, it is necessary to pay attention to

the fact that despite the fact that loneliness, when defined by different researchers, has many

common characteristics, it can be conceived in various ways.

According to one loneliness theory, specific provision deficiencies of social

relationship might contributed to specific types of feelings which are experienced by lonely

people. For example, if a person is not involved into social network life enough, he or she

might feel that he or she is socially lonely, that there is not aim in the person’s life, that he or

she is bored, etc.

However, when dealing with the results of people who do not have spouses, it is

necessary to pay attention to the fact the aspects of loneliness which are experienced them in

a greater measure are feelings of desolation, anxiety, and insecurity.

Recent studies demonstrate that such feelings are associated with many other aspects

of people’s lives. For example, a marriage starts serving as broad integrative mechanisms

which are aimed at diminishment of emotional and social loneliness, especially for females.

According to another theory, loneliness comes from deficit of social skills. This

theory is especially important for testing the hypothesis – people who experience severe

loneliness tend to participate less in social life, so they are not interested in current events, but

they are more likely to view photos, coming back to the past in their memories.

Viewing photos of their friends from some events, people tend to analyze each detail

of the photo in order to get as much information from the picture as possible. This allows

them to get to know more about the event and sometimes identify what had happened before

the picture was taken or what is going to happen after the photo is made.




According to a recent research, “loneliness is associated with more self focus, poorer

partner attention skills, a lack of self disclosure to friends, especially among females, and less

participation in organized groups, especially among males.”

The studies which have been mentioned above deal with the social aspect of the

problem. As for those which examine the issue of personality, it shows that “loneliness is

associated with shyness, neuroticism, and depressive symptoms, as well as low self esteem,

pessimism, low conscientiousness, and disagreeableness.

Associations among these characteristics have sometimes led to conceptual confusion

between loneliness and depressed affect, poor social support, introversion, and/or

neuroticism.

Research indicates, however, that loneliness, although related, is independent of these

characteristics both conceptually and operationally (the measurement tools for each of these

characteristics are relatively specific for the corresponding traits).

Moreover, the effects of loneliness on physical health and physiology are generally

not explained by the behavioral and personality characteristics with which loneliness are

associated, indicating that loneliness may be a unique psychosocial risk factor whose affects

are distinguishable from some combination fop or social support, depression, and personality

traits.”

Trying to understand behavior of lonely people who constantly use Facebook and

particularly some of its applications, it is essentially important to pay attention to their

psychological conditions and feelings. It is important to notice that in many cases loneliness

provokes aggression. However, aggression of this type is not necessarily a negative aspect of

behavior of people.




Addressing an evolutionary conceptualization of loneliness, it is necessary to pay

attention to the fact that aggressive feelings which come from this type of state are adaptive –

they also serve as motivation to replace or repair some social connections (Van Buskirk,

1991).

People are born free and independent, however, in order to survive and support

normal living it is necessary to communicate. So, this means that social connection is the key

to well being and health.

However, such issues as health, genes, environment and level of socialization of

parents play as efficient role when it comes to the level of loneliness of their children.

At the same time it is necessary to remember that genes are not the only issues which

promote loneliness or selection of activities online. A great importance is given to the issues

of people’s sensitivity to the social pain of people, their rejection and isolation, as well as

propensity to receive some “nutritious” issues from the environment in order to support their

social role and social interaction (Boomsma, 2005).

These help people to determine what context helps them to feel more comfortable and

what particular activities, in this case usage of applications, are able to make feeling of

loneliness more intensive or dampen it (Boomsma, 2005).).

As it has been already mentioned above, psychological condition of people is very

important to be taken into account in order to explain their behavior. According to an axiom

of the human relationships study, all people are highly social animals.

This means that all people including those who feel severe loneliness and Facebook is

their only means of connection with the society, have some sense of social connectedness. It

is vital for people and it can be compared to drink and food.




In order not to feel lonely, people need maintain balance of relationships and

communication. Despite the fact this balance is individual for every human being, it is

important at every level of life and thus, it is defined and influenced by a range of conditions

and circumstances (Stokes, 1985).

According to a recent study, “mental representations of our connections with others

are characterized by individual, relational and collective dimensions. These dimensions

correspond to individual, relational, and collective selves posited by theories of the self.

At the individual level, feelings of isolation and low self-worth are precluded when

people feel comfortable with themselves, and their fit in a social world. At the relational

level, feelings of interpersonal connectedness are fostered in close dyadic relationships

(Weiss, 1973).

At the collective level, feelings of group identification and cohesion satisfy a need for

belonging. This three-dimensional representation of loneliness holds in young adults and

across gender and racial, ethnic lines in middle age adults, suggesting universality to this

representational structure of the social self.”

As it has been already mentioned above, Facebook and visiting the social networking

might influence behavior of people. However, more strong influence is exercised by the state

of loneliness – lack of social interaction influences people’s decisions and as a consequence,

their behaviors. These way trait-like characteristics, which come from the mixture of genetic

bias and life circumstances and feelings of isolation, form the result.

Since a person experiences trigging to loneliness, he or she tends to generate a form of

thinking which is defensive – a lonely social cognition. Cognition of this type changes the

world view of the person. As a consequence, people who are lonely tend to be pessimistic,

anxious, and have numerous fears, including fear of negative evaluation.




These feelings are much rarer in people who believe that their social life is balanced.

So, the groups of people who are lonely tend to act in a more anxious way, demonstrate more

negative emotions in order to become self protected. Paradoxically, but such behavior leads

to self defeating.

Addressing the issue of viewing photos and news feed, it is natural that in order to

protect themselves, people try to limit access of information – for them it is much better to

view photos of some past events and to get to know about something which has already

happened, while sometimes news feed represents current events or tell about something

which is going to happen (Amichai-Hamburger, Ben-Artzi, 2003).

Moreover, viewing photographs does not bring as much information as reading news

and this is an important aspect for the lonely people. Despite the fact that they are trying to

draw more information from the pictures, as it has been already mentioned above, they tend

to notice only that type of information which is acceptable for them, while news feed might

contain something which might bring hurt.

According to one of the studies, people who feel lonely tend to demonstrate negative

behavior towards other members of their community. It is natural that the rest people start

viewing them more negatively and as a consequence, they act in the appropriate way (Jones,

1981).

An experiment was conducted to verify this hypothesis. A group of people was

introduced to a person who was said to be lonely and not demonstrate advanced social skills.

As a consequence the main part of the group did not tend to communicate with this person

much.

It was expected that such behavior would only enhance loneliness of the person under

the experiment and it happened so. However, in a while it was noticed that the person was not




interested much in getting to know about events, but he tended to pay more attention to the

photos which could be found online and in the social networking systems.

It was concluded that viewing these photos the person created a kind of environment

which was similar to the one which was desired to be experienced – the person was safe since

he was alone and at the same time he had an opportunity to “participate” in some events.

It is notable that people who do not experience severe loneliness are involved in the

same type of creation of “artificial environment” – they view news feed to get to know what

is happening, to think about the events and experience some emotions about them, at the

same time they stay in safety. Moreover, entering their account and viewing more and more

news, they feel to be socially more active.

However, in both cases people do stay less communicative; they do not develop their

social skills. It is natural that this fact cannot be hidden from the society, so these people

become socially rejected.

Thus, the chances that they would experience more severe loneliness become higher;

at the same time people become more sensitive both to their surrounding, their emotions,

attitudes, and acceptable in their social environment.

Psychological and social aspects of loneliness and their influence on behavior of

people are important to identify the reasons of influence people’s behavior. However, the

main role in the process of determination is played by the processes which occur in the brain

of people.

It is necessary to pay attention to the fact that even if people who are lonely and spend

more time in social networks tend to pay more attention to social events, still they do not get

better or more sophisticated skills of communication. People who are lonely are not as




accurate as not lonely people when it comes to decoding of their postural and facial

expressions of thoughts or emotions.

Since lonely people do not have any normal balance or correspondence between

accuracy and attention, when they are shown different scenes, people or objects (positive or

negative) those parts of the brain which are associated with taking perspectives and attention

vary accordingly in order to respond each of the shown pictures of scenes.

Research identifies that in comparison with not lonely people, those who are lonely

demonstrate greater activation of the casual cortical part (it is consistent with more significant

and greater efforts to pay attention to something negative); they also demonstrate lesser

temporal parietal junction activation (since other person’s perspective is paid less attention

to).

The research identifies that set of regions of the brain which is associated with reward

systems (ventral striatum, etc.) is down regulated in people who are lonely (in comparison to

those who are not lonely) when they were shown some positive social pictures. This means

that lonely people receive less pleasure from some positive circumstances in comparison with

people who are not lonely.

Moreover, for lonely people it is not less enjoyable to become informed about some

good event, news in general are not liked by them. One of the reasons is that lonely people

tend to “close” in themselves, that is not only to stay conservative, but also to prevent any

changes enter into their lives.

Despite the fact that actually these changes are desirable, because of anxiety and fear

extremely lonely people are afraid of these changes; they prefer viewing changes which occur

in lives of these people and at the same time stay sure that the lack of interaction and absence

of real life communication bring stability and safety into their lives.




Time is an important factor to be taken into account when it comes to construction of

negative realities in lonely people. A research involved measurement of integration of lonely

people and particularly measurement of various points which could be noticed at a recorded

video.

It was noticed that the more time people who are lonely spend in some social

environment which is full of people, the more negative development they develop towards it.

This means that greater amount of communication and as a consequence, greater flow of

information develops more negative social cognition.

In the cases when loneliness is viewed on a continuum which ranges from little degree

to severe loneliness, it is possible to claim that behavioral and cognitive characteristics differ

when it comes to commensuration with the loneliness degree.

However, people who experience little feeling of loneliness can be characterized by

unique profile which is adaptable and which is not always the opposite to the profile of

people who are severely lonely.

The research demonstrates that 20 per cent of the participants experience little

loneliness, 20 per cent experience average loneliness, and 60 per cent of the participants

experience severe loneliness.

Approximately four or five personality dimensions differ from people with little and

severe loneliness. The dimensions were being agreeable, more outgoing, non neurotic, and

conscientious; such issues as positive mood, social skills, higher optimism, better self esteem,

support of the society, lower anxiety, lower anger, shyness, less fear of negative

consequences of evaluation, negativity, etc. It is necessary to pay attention to the fact that

people who have average or high loneliness demonstrated indistinguishable results on these

scales (Peplau, 1982; Pinquart, Sorensen, 2003).




However, the results do not prove that people who have little loneliness have

characteristics which make them immune to feeling lonely. Rather the results mean that when

these people feel that they are socially connected, dispositions and states constellation are

expressed by them in order to enrich their lives both qualitatively and quantitatively in

relation to people who have severe or average feeling of loneliness.

This means that for every person it is very important to be socially connected. Such

interpretation of the results of the tests can be supported by information from a study which

reveals young adults to feel lonely and alter connected in terms of social communication (as

well as vice versa) by recalling a time when they did not feel like belonging to the society or

as if they were rejected by it, as well as when they felt that they were an essential part of their

community.

The study reports that “measures of affect, social factors, and even personality traits

mirrored and tracked the acute changes in loneliness introduced by the hypnotic

manipulation.

Participants introduced to feel socially connected, compared to lonely, reported

significantly less negative mood, higher self esteem and optimism, better social skills, social

support and sociability, greater extraversion and agreeableness, and less shyness, anxiety,

anger, fear of negative evaluation and neuroticism.”

It is suggested by the study that the feeling of loneliness has some central trait

features. However, central in the sense that it is able to influence the way people construed

themselves and other people, as well as by extension and the way other individuals view and

act themselves when communicating with these people.




Thus, despite the fact that social circumstances which objective (such as ostracism)

are very likely to change the feeling of loneliness, those factors which are subjective tend to

keep people in the state of being lonely or socially connected (Mahon, 2006).

As a consequence, when people who are lonely in a greater measure think about

behaving and acting toward other people in a way which only supports their isolated

existence, those who are less lonely hold a view of others which is more favorable and which

tends to contribute to their state of being treated in a more positive way (Peplau, Perlman,

1982; Pinquart, Sorensen, 2003).

Since people who are very lonely demonstrate behaviors which make them even

lonelier, it is necessary to examine the main approaches which are taken in order to limit

influence of the society.

First of all, many people who are lonely spend a lot of time in social networks because

they protect themselves from the society; they are embarrassed by the fact that they are lonely

or have no private life.

However, such activity as viewing friends’ photographs makes them feel that they still

are the part of the community and this feeling of connection, as it has been already mentioned

above, is an essential element of being of every person.

Secondly, it is important to pay attention to the fact that severely lonely people are

very likely to use a range of other applications in order to distract themselves from their

loneliness.

Choosing the applications, people tend to create their own set of conditions to accept

and to pay their attention to - this set of conditions is limited by the applications which do not

bring much new information that might be hurtful (Amichai-Hamburger, Ben-Artzi, 2003).




Despite the fact that severely lonely people tend to hide from the society, still they

have desire to communicate. This fact is obvious because first of all, communication is one of

the basic elements of the normal living, which are aimed at the process of balancing physical

and psychological aspects of life.

And secondly, because of the fact that people become lonely because their social role

does not meet their desires or expectations; what is important about this is that they do have

desire to communicate (Mistakes lonely people often make).

However, becoming lonely is not about personal attitudes, desires, and possibility or

impossibility to meet some expectations, but, as it has been already mentioned above,

numerous factors influence the condition and social support is one of them.

It is important to pay attention to the fact that there exists a unique relationship

between poor orientation in the networking system and loneliness and this relationship is

dealing with the importance of individual differences in terms of ability and willingness to

use social networks to gain some support.

Despite the fact that some people usually do not receive enough social support form

Facebook, some seem to use the network exactly in the periods when they need social support

more.

Thus supports the hypotheses that characteristics of personality are very important

predictors of feeling of loneliness, especially when affinitive situations in the model include

attributions and strategies. However, in many cases contribution of the factors is reduced and

it is necessary to note that loneliness extraversion effect might become diminished by more

than 50 per cent (Nurmi, Toivonen, Salmela-Aro, 1997).




As a rule, extraversion is associated with a great need of stimulus because the cortical

arousal level of low. This means that behaviors increase the social contracts extent and as a

consequence, lower possibility of experiencing feeling of loneliness.

The research demonstrates that students experience some relationship between

loneliness and extraversion which can be found to be mediated by some variables of social

networking. This indicates that people who are extraverts are not so lonely because their

networks are large.

At the same time attributions and strategies are likely to impact negatively on the

social networking life which explains why the factors’ inclusion reduces the extraversion

effect.

Neuroticism turns out to be one of the strongest factors which indicate loneliness in

the expanded model because the model itself identifies the fact that neuroticism is an

important feature of the feeling of loneliness among students (Hecht, Baum, 1984).

Self perceived likeability and self esteem are important factors which are associated

with loneliness in males. An analysis of data was performed separately for males and females

and it was indicated that self esteem is the issues which might predict the feeling of loneliness

in males only.

However, the loneliness and self esteem association is not significantly influenced by

gender. Similarly the experiment did not show any gender differences which might emerge

because of the five predictors of variables of the feeling of loneliness. This finding is notable

because it is innovative and it was performed at a more effective level of analysis and

samples representativeness (Amichai-Hamburger, Ben-Artzi, 2003).




Dealing with the issue of amount of people who are lonely, it is necessary to pay

attention to the fact that there are no demographic variables which would predict the

outcomes of the full model.

Moreover, social desirability influences the experiment only to some extent,

indicating that there is little correlation between a range of investigated psychosocial

variables and social desirability (Amichai-Hamburger, Ben-Artzi, 2003).

Reasons of loneliness can be different. However, its connection to genetics cannot be

overestimating and it is the main contributing factor. As for the rest one, these are situational

variables, such as diverse, moving to some other location, some trauma, or physical isolation.

It is necessary to pay attention to the fact that in some cases loneliness is the sign of

some psychological disorder, depression for example. The most frequently it is observed in

people who are not self confident enough and believe that they are not worth attention of

other people or their regard. Such attitude towards self might lead to chronic loneliness,

isolation and some serious mental or physical disease.

Loneliness is able to cause numerous negative effects on health. The risks which are

the most frequently associated with loneliness are:

• Stroke;

• Cardiovascular disease;

• Depression;

• Suicide;

• Decreased ability to learn;

• Decreased memory

• Higher level of stress;




• Behavior of antisocial type;

• Inability to make decision effectively;

• Drug abuse;

• Alcohol abuse;

• Altered function of the brain, etc.

• Immunity is also impacted by stress which is caused by feeling of loneliness.

However, the issues mentioned above are not the only contributions of loneliness.

Such aspects of people’s lives as diet, healthy lifestyle, sleep, fatigue and many others are

influenced by the sense of loneliness.

There are a range of measures which are advised to be taken in order to fight

loneliness. However, these are not frequently effective because in some cases only

specialist’s help might bring some changes.

Still, if it is noticed that somebody spends too much time in social networks, and even

more – at the same time demonstrates antisocial behavior and other actions of a lonely

person, he or she should be helped to recognize that something should be done in order to

shift from the virtual world of friends into the real one. Some more steps which might help

people with little loneliness level to fight it are:

Recognition of the fact that the person is lonely and something should be changed in

order to prevent this person from being addicted to social environment which is created by

himself or herself with the help of social networking;

Understanding of impact of social networking on the feeling of loneliness, and it

influence on life, physical and mental health;

Changing activities in order to become more enjoyed by one’s life;




Focusing on the development of relationship of high quality with people in the real

world; on this step it is important to choose people who have the same interests, point of

view, values, traditions, etc. in order not to become disappointed and not come back to usual

social networking messaging system (Loneliness. Causes, Effects and Treatments for

Loneliness.).

Limitations and recommendations

The study involves 360 participants and most of them come from Mauritius, and this

means that it might not reliable for many other countries in terms of population tendencies.

Despite the fact that the study analyses numerous aspects of life which influence the issue

studied, it uses data of the tests only of those people who work and pays little attention to the

students, adolescents, and children.

Future direction

Future research might address the issue of relationship between social support which

is obtained by lonely people through social networking, their ability to use these support

resources, and the relationship between the sources and the loneliness itself.

Implications

It was found out by earlier researches that people who are lonely tend to attribute their

loneliness to characteristics of personal type and these are hardly changeable in comparison

with situational ones.

It is shown by the current study that loneliness and lack of usage of social support

resources influences behavior of people. The first signs that a person enhances his or her

loneliness occur when people start following particular model of behavior, in this particular

case starting paying more and more attention to viewing photos and receiving less

information about the society and the world.




The findings indicate the reasons which might enhance loneliness and well as actions

which make it more severe in people. This data could be used in order to identify people who

have little, average, or severe loneliness in order to address their problem in the future and

give them an opportunity to avoid serious problem with their physical and mental health.

Conclusion

The current study is aimed at investigation of the problem of loneliness and its

connection with social networking and engagement with different Facebook features.

According to the initial hypothesis, people who are severely lonely all the time are engaged

into viewing photos in Facebook, while those who enter their accounts very often tend to read

news feed.

The hypothesis was supported by the tests and literature review of already existing

researches, which view the phenomenon of loneliness from different perspectives, explaining

how various aspects of the condition influence behavior of people and make them behave one

way or another.




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An Investigation at the Intensity Use of Working Adults and Student Facebook Users, Their

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