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Study: Facebook May Have Negative Impact On Mood

MIAMI (CBS4)- Have you ever looked at your friends' 'perfect' facebook pages and wondered why your life isn't? Well, you may want to think twice.

Over the last five years, social networking sites like facebook have become the place we share our lives publicly with family and friends. The more than 500 million user profiles are filled with images and updates of people enjoying the best moments of their lives.

"Everybody puts that they're going to Miami or they're doing fun stuff," facebook user Dana Welch said.

But a new study suggests that these sites could actually have a negative impact on your mood, and end up causing more distress than happiness.

"What you put on display is how great your life is - the cars you drive, the vacations you go on," psychologist David Swanson said. "Nobody's life is that perfect and so whenever you start to compare your life to those images you're going to be depressed because you're going to feel like your life is lacking."

Facebook user Brit Tashjian agreed.

"The sad thing about facebook is you would never put up something like a big mistake I made today or you'd never put in the 'About me' section, 'I'm struggling with self approval.'" Tashjian said.

Most of us tend to play-up the positive aspects of our lives while excluding the negative. The result is that a facebook profile never tells the whole story. And we end up comparing ourselves to a one dimensional version of someone else's life.

"If we could overcome the need to compare ourselves to other people and the need to keep up with the Jones', then maybe this wouldn't be a problem," Alex Jordan, a psychologist at Dartmouth College, said.

So remember, the next time you log on and get "facebook envy," the reality of one's life may not be as glamorous as their profile posts, or boasts.

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