1. Does Posting Status Updates Increase or Decrease Loneliness? An Online Social Networking Experiment Fenne große Deters & Matthias R. Mehl 15th General Online Research Conference March 05, 2013. Mannheim

2. “We live in an accelerating contradiction: the more connected we become, the lonelier we are. We were promised a global village; instead we inhabit the drab cul-de-sacs and endless freeways of a vast suburb of information. (... ) The question of the future is this: Is Facebook part of the separating or part of the congregating; is it a huddling together for warmth or a shuffling away in pain?” Stephen Marche, Is Facebook Making Us Lonely? The Atlantic, May 2012 2

3. Online Social Networking Research Still scarce & contradicting results (e.g. Wilson et al., 2012) Lack of – causally-conclusive, experimental research (e.g. Burke et al., 2010) – use of observational data (e.g. Anderson et al., 2012) – studies that differentiate among different online social networking activities (e.g. Smock et al., 2011) 3

4. Status Updates Popular and new form of one-to-many communication Empirical evidence: Computer-mediated communication can help maintain/solidify friendships (e.g. Ellison et al., 2007; Cummings et al., 2006) Fast and effortless  ideal to keep friends up to date 4

5. Hypotheses 1.An -experimentally induced- increase in status updating activity reduces loneliness. 2.This decrease in loneliness is, at least in part, due to feeling more connected to friends on a daily basis. 5

6. Research Question Is social feedback necessary for the hypothesized social effects of status updating? 6

7. Design 7

8. Sample N = 86 Undergraduates at the University of Arizona – 61% female – 90% 18 to 22 years old 8 CC Huperphuff

9. Manipulation Check Baseline vs. Intervention: EG: M diff = 8.71**  Strong increase CG: M diff = 0.69*  Only minimal increase Experimental Group vs. Control Group EG increased status updating activity significantly more than CG: M diff = 8.02** 9

10. Effect of the Intervention: Did Higher Status Updating Activity Affect Loneliness? 10 M change = -.19*, d =.31

11. Test for Mediator: Daily Social Connectedness 11

12. Is It Important for the Posted Status Updates to Receive Responses? 12

13. How Can ‘‘Uni-Directional’’ Status Updating Foster a Sense of Social Inclusion? „Social Snacking Behaviors“(Gardner et al., 2005)  Reminder of existing social bonds (Unmeasured) influence on social interactions  Quantity: drawing attention to user  Quality: facilitating more satisfying off-line conversations by „skipping“ small talk 13

14. Future Directions Replication!!  other locations and populations Assessment of different explanations Long-term effects Content of status updates 14

15. 15 Publication: Deters, F. g., & Mehl, M. R. (2013). Does Posting Facebook Status Updates Increase or Decrease Loneliness? An Online Social Networking Experiment. Social Psychological and Personality Science. doi:10.1177/1948550612469233

16. References Anderson, B., Fagan, P., Woodnutt, T., & Chamorro-Premuzic, T. (2012) Facebook psychology: Popular questions answered by research. Psychology of Popular Media Culture, 1(1), 23–37. doi:10.1037/a0026452 Burke, M., Marlow, C., & Lento, T. (2010). Social network activity and social well-being. Paper presented at the Proceedings of the 28th International Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 1901–1912), New York, NY: ACM Press. Cummings, J., Lee, J., & Kraut, R. (2006). Communication technology and friendship during the transition from high school to college. In R. Kraut, M. Brynin, & S. Kiesler (Eds.), Computers, phones, and the internet; Domesticating information technology (pp. 265–278). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Ellison, N. B., Steinfield, C., & Lampe, C. (2007). The benefits of Facebook ‘‘friends’’: Social capital and college students’ use of online social network sites. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 12, 1143–1168. Gardner, W., Pickett, C., & Knowles, M. (2005). Social snacking and shielding: Using social symbols, selves, and surrogates in the service of belonging needs. In K. D. Williams, J. P. Forgas, & W. von Hippel (Eds.), The social outcast: Ostracism, social exclusion, rejection, and bullying (pp. 227–242). New York, NY: Psychology Press. Smock, A. D., Ellison, N. B., Lampe, C., & Wohn, D. Y. (2011). Facebook as a toolkit: A uses and gratification approach to unbundling feature use. Computers in Human Behavior, 27, 2322–2329. Wilson, R. E., Gosling, S. D., & Graham, L. T. (2012). A review of facebook research in the social sciences. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 7, 203–220. doi:10.1177/ 1745691612442904 16