Active Facebook use and mood: When digital interaction turns maladaptive

Abstract

Despite the prevalence of Facebook use, its psychological impact remains unclear. Recent evidence suggests that active Facebook use (i.e., peer interaction) is more adaptive than passive use (i.e., browsing content), predicting increases in affective well-being and social connectedness. However, how individual differences in cognition and belonging may influence these relationships has been largely unexamined, limiting conclusions on whether these findings extend to vulnerable individuals. The present study sought to address this gap by investigating whether active Facebook use loses its benefits in the presence of social-cognitive vulnerabilities (i.e., rumination, interpretation bias, thwarted belongingness) that may be especially relevant to the digital context. Although active Facebook use was associated with feeling better after Facebook use and with perceiving more positive Facebook interactions, cognitive biases and thwarted belongingness predicted feeling worse after active Facebook use and reporting less positive interactions. Additionally, interpretation bias and thwarted belongingness together predicted feeling worse after one style of active Facebook use, through perceptions of less positive interactions. These findings suggest that beyond how one uses Facebook, the individual factors one brings to the Facebook experience may influence perceptions of interpersonal experiences in the digital space and contribute to low mood, rendering even active Facebook use maladaptive.