Does Facebook give a false impression of how happy my friends' lives are?

[Josephine]

When I look through my friends' / acquaintances' Facebook pages it seems that everyone has such an amazing life, filled with friends, unusual opportunities, travel, interest... I always get this impression. Does this suggest that my life is more boring or is it something about Facebook that it makes everyone else seem to be having an amazing time?

[rocker~chick]

naw....the thing about facebook is that everyone basically writes the good stuff that's happening... no one really writes about how theyre misserable and stuff...u know...
so its not that YOURE boring, its just that your friends write about things they find interesting that happened to them,..i guess....no biggy

[Kayleigh]

Well duh - they're aren't going publicly air the crappy parts of their life.

[Amanda]

Nahhh...it's just that people (including myself) only write about the good and exciting stuff..
No one wants to read about others crappy bits..and I for one don't want people to know when life's not so good. That information is for very close friends only! x

[A-lis-e-ah]

Oh yeah course it does.
Its the way people put things on there - tring to sound interesting and saying about every little thing that happens to them.
like 'oooh im waiting for a train', or 'getting ready!'. - i bet there only going over the road to get a magazine or something!
And when people dont put statuses or pictures up for a while,it again gives the impression they are so busy they dont have time to put things on fb.
tbh, people are so seaperate to make themselves lok good they would go down their street and takes pictures of them, so it looks like they have been somewhere - its funny.

[amanda m]

No way. alot of people take alot of pictures just so people think there life is amazing and have everything going.. alot of people are jelous or really dont have that great of family life so they lie and make up things. i wouldnt let things like that bother you. i had friends like that too and i deleted them bc they made up so much stuff to try to be cool that it got rediculus. GOOD LUCK. hope i help some.

[Aurora]

yep, cause on facebook you can just write stuff like its cheery with smiley faces. There is a girl i know who's pretty quiet, but i was surprised to see on facebook she had like 700 friends!

[Icypole]

Perhaps your friends and acquaintances really are having happy, exciting lives full of friends, unusual opportunities, travel and interests. If so, as their friend, you should be pleased for them.

Does it really matter? Would you feel any happier about your own life if their lives were more boring than they seem?

One great step towards having an amazing life yourself is not spending much time on Facebook, especially not spending a whole lot of time looking through other people's pages.

[han_04]

Interesting question.....actually most of it I presume isn't true at all....the 'friends' you get on facebook are mostly fake and some just add them to come up with the most 'friends' for a competition based thing. I wouldn't worry about it at all, there's sooo much more to do in life than facebook which to be honest drags you away from your real life most of the time and it can become all too easy to get addicted to it (I've had friends who've updated their status every 5 mins!)
It doesn't anything at all, if anything you're luckier as you have more time to enjoy the beauty and surroundings of life instead of just getting sucked into some screen for hours! You'll realise that life is too short to be wasted on that and frankly I feel sorry for those people who do 'claim' to be having an 'amazing' life on facebook when reality they're probably so desperate for attention!
x