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Social media is where we can meet, greet, and see what other people are doing and saying. But many people experience it more like a form of torture, unfortunately, and use it to hurt themselves. Instead, you can choose to use it wisely, and in so doing, you may construct a better world.

Much of our anxiety around social media has to do with questions of how to present ourselves online and who to find interesting. From a scientific and philosophical perspective, however, there is no fundamental self -just a story called consciousness created by our brains to make meaning from experiences.

We experience ourselves as real, participating in what neuroscientists call the " common hallucination " of reality, so we construct personalities which we project to the world, in person and online. But if there is no self, no one is really tweeting anyway, at least on some level. And with this added perspective, social media need not be so stressful.

Few of us deliberately show our whole selves online or elsewhere, even when we're trying to seem like we're authentic and honest. That's a good thing. In our lives, we all play various roles and wear different masks for different tasks-worker, partner, friend, relative, artist, welder, Instagram influencer, say. Since there's no such thing as a coherent or unified self, we should feel free to be fake online. But we should still try to be great, to cultivate a self that consumes and projects the qualities we'd like to see in society.

Consider the social media influencer whose job is to present a mask that looks real-ish and awesome. They're transacting authenticity, if you will. As much as these professional life-stylers seem to be laying out their lives online, it's actually their fakery that makes them look great. They present only the highs, so we perceive that there are no lows.

Their skill is framing life so that it looks perfect, even though no one's life is. The internet's folly is to envy, well, anyone really-but especially people whose job consists of seeming to have an enviable life. Influencers would be out of work if they didn't at least seem awesome.

The rest of us just have to manage online interactions with careful consideration. Being professionally enviable is a more popular job than ever before, but managing interactions is as old as human community. Long before social media, we constructed personas for the public square. The person who went out in the village center, wearing shoes and a hat, wasn't acting the same way as he did when he flopped on his mat and blew out the candle at the end of the day. We can't be our whole private selves when we venture into the public sphere, and few of us try to be.

A bit of fakery makes interactions in public life different from private life, where we can be raw, painful, and poignant. The more profound an experience or feeling, the less likely it is to warrant unvarnished mass exposure, which is why art and comedy are often used as filters for discussions of deep experiences, and why writers draft stories.

The 19th-century philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche considered people to be utterly constructed. Yet he didn't oppose the fakery, and saw no other way of being but for us each to wear a series of masks. Nietzsche admired the grace it takes to be fake for authenticity's sake, especially when protecting our most precious or profound moments. Deep experiences are kept safe with a bit of bluster, he believed, writing:

There are occurrences of such a delicate nature that one does well to cover them up with some rudeness to conceal them; there are actions of love and extravagant generosity after which nothing is more advisable than to take a stick and give any eyewitness a sound thrashing: that would muddle his memory.

In other words, Nietzsche was saying, "Don't keep it real." Instead, construct the right masks for the right situation. That is as gracious as you can ever be.

The same goes for social media. All of us are are totally faking it out there, to varying degrees. But which illusions we choose do make a difference to us personally and universally, as we together construct reality.

Just as it's preferable to eat healthy food, it's better to create and consume smart, meaningful media that feeds our deepest needs, or to take a break from the digital streams altogether. In an illusionary world, you must still choose your illusions wisely- your life and your internet feeds will bleed into each other until they become one.

That means we are creating our reality with every tweet and post, so we should focus on understanding what's really valuable to us; what world we wish to live in. Think too of what makes you anxious, what feeds your spirit, what makes you sick. Then you can choose who and how to be.

Here are some possible rules to adopt, for example:

Engage thoughtfully.

Do post art, ideas, creations, information, humor, and wondrous things.

Do try to connect with humans and understand their lives better.

Do cultivate connections that offer unique or insightful views.

Don't follow people who make you angry, unless you're up to exploring anger thoughtfully and seeing what your resistance to an idea signals.

Don't talk complex politics in simple forums.

Don't worry about showing everything you know just because others expose their ignorance.

Be more circumspect on the internet than in an exchange where there are other cues providing context.

Manage yourself, and the internet will just be the place you go to hang out sometimes, sharing the parts you care to show-not an all-consuming poison that demands your total nakedness and devotion. This doesn't mean you have to stop going online. It means you shift your focus from externally-driven to internally-driven, so that your activism or art or politics are not a show, but as close to the real you as real can be.

The sage Patanjali in the fourth century CE advised readers of his classic guide to consciousness, the Yoga Sutras, to study the student rather than the text. This advice also works nicely for social media. Why worry about mastering digital platforms-knowing all the right people, as if there is such a thing, and being known by them-before mastering you? Or, in the words of the Taoist sage Lao Tzu in the Tao Te Ching, "To know others is clever. To know oneself is discerning."

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These philosophical theories will transform your experience of social media

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Social media is where we can meet, greet, and see what other people are doing and saying. But many people experience it more like a form of torture, unfortunately, and use it to hurt themselves. Instead, you can choose to use it wisely, and in so doing, you may construct a better world.

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Social Media's Dark Side: How Facebook and Snapchat Try to Steal Our Self-Worth | Tristan Harris

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Jaron Lanier interview on how social media ruins your life

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Does technology affect us or do we affect it? Do internet social networking sites operate as a substitute for face-to-face contact? How have sites like Facebook and Twitter changed how we conceive of and publicly present our identity?

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When one researches within the domain of moral psychology their aim is mostly to investigate human functioning within a specific or general moral context. These investigations may impact wider debates being had in the domain of ethical theory. In this short post I'd like to think out loud a bit about the moral psychology of social media and what lessons we may be able to draw from the norms that are emerging from a number of platforms. Ultimately I'll be asking a set of questions and offering only partial answers to a couple of them with the hopes of writing on these questions later and filling in the answers with more detail as well. What I am most intrigued by lately has been the norm, or at least the perceived norm I have seen, of sharing positive things but not sharing negative things. In other words, I am interested in why we do not share negative things, why we tend to think of those that do share such things differently, and why such norms may be hurtful to those most in need of comfort from their extended family of social friends. If you've read some interesting stuff on this feel free to post a link in the comment thread.

I have often wondered what is okay to share on my FaceBook or Twitter feed. I'm a fairly open person who has moved a bit over the past 8 years so I utilize social media to keep in touch with and keep tabs on those friends that I can no longer catch up with over a beer or a coffee. Sending multiple texts to multiple friends seems over the top and far too time consuming when I have a platform that I can use to share ONE TIME about any news I find worthwhile to share. This way whoever cares to check in can do so when they have the time and they are not pressured to respond to a direct message I may send instead. This allows me to share what's going on without burdening my friends who are busy doing their own thing with constant texts and direct updates. Don't get me wrong, I still text and snap with friends but I try not to bombard them and using Facebook and Twitter affords me the opportunity to keep those who care to know what's going on in the loop. I also utilize these platforms to discuss my work and the work of others with colleagues from around the world. I've transitioned to twitter to do this for the most part but still do use Facebook for this reason as well (though admittedly I tend to engage on the page of others when on FaceBook). This has allowed me to mix business and personal life fairly easily. I post sparingly about personal stuff on my @justincaouette twitter account and I'm getting into far less philosophical debates these days on facebook. Things go fairly smoothly or so it may seem.

Okay, so far so good; I've just described what I think is a fairly widespread use of social media. Some people use it for business and others for pleasure and then there are those, like myself, that try to use it for both. But so many questions have sprung up for me over the last few years that I think it's time to do *some* philosophical work regarding the ethics of social media (though admittedly it will be quite light). Specifically, I'm interested in these questions: (1) when should I share something? (2) who should I share this with? (3) why do I share my good news but rarely share my bad news? (4) What are the norms regarding social media sharing? (5) Are we justified in making broad evaluations of a person based on what they share or how often they share? Some of these questions are normative and some of them are not but I think they are all important when trying to correctly navigate our online presence and evaluating the presence of others.

In thinking through these questions I was struck by something my friend Samir Chopra recently wrote on the topic. He writes:

"There is something undignified, grubby, and sordid about the whole business (of social media): this massive machinery of communication, all tricked out in its many glories, with its complex software and hardware and intangible protocols, all dedicated to selling us goods. It is a cosmic letdown of sorts to realize that our communications with family and friends, our passionate and informed political discussions, are merely there to inform advertisers of what our preferences, are, so that they may more accurately direct their trinkets and baubles at us. Something important happens on social media-we are, after all, communicating with each other-but we realize too, that we are being used. A social network is a good thing; one used for advertising, controlled by a corporation, and used to spy and surveil us, is not.

I have no positive theory to offer here; no suggestion of an alternative system, a new social network. (Competitors to Facebook, like Google Plus and Diaspora, are anything but.) But we should be aware to what is happening to us, and how we are changing. That sensitivity, at least, should help us navigate these new, uncharted waters of communications and relationships, and ultimately how we see the world, and ourselves in it."

This bolded passage struck me because it is quite easy to forget this clear point! We need to be aware that our relationships are being affected (and in no small way for some of us) by the use of social media. What we choose or not choose to share has affects on us and our loved ones. And this is why I think it's important to not only keep Samir's suggestion in mind but also to develop or at least apply our moral views or moral reasoning to accomodate the social media domain. After all, if our ethical theory is to guide our action then what better place to utilize these theories than in the social media domain? So consider this a really poor first attempt at doing just that. But before making ought claims about what we should or should not be doing on our feeds I'd like to share a personal anecdote which may add some rationale to the answers I'll tentatively give to these questions. Warning: in what follows is a paragraph of sappy shit, kinda.

In July 2015 my wife and I broke up abruptly after nearly 10 years of being together. As I mentioned earlier I tend to share often on social media but I decided not to share this information. I spoke to close friends in person and on the phone but I was silent on social media. As the weeks and months passed this caused some awkward conversations. My living arrangement was chaotic but I chose not to share that either (you'll have to read the autobiography for the details on that one). Mutual friends were publicly asking about why I wasn't sharing pics of my ex-wife (jokingly but little did they know), others were tagging us in things unaware that we split among other little awkward moments. While others were asking if they could stay with "us" when they were coming to visit. Though hard, this wasn't too bad; but once I started dating again it brought another lair of complexity and the decision not to share had some negative affects on a process that was already hard enough as it is. This brings me to the 5 questions I mentioned above which can be summarized in two questions (1B) Why did I not share my bad news, and should I have shared this news? and (2B) what should the evaluation be of those that decide to share such news?

To (1B) I can answer it straight forwardly as a few considerations were doing the work for me. Here are some of the considerations: I didn't share in part because I wasn't sure if the breakup would stick; I didn't share in part because I was embarrassed that I could not make a relationship work that everyone who knew me knew I was dedicated to; I didn't share in part because I didn't want to deal with the aftermath of people feeling sorry for me. But are these good reasons for not sharing? I think the answer to this is yes and no, let me explain.

In another (excellent) post on the affects of social media, Samir touches on a criticism I hear often about social media; that it "is where we all go to pretend to be happier than we are". This produces the "fake life" people talk about when referencing the social media realm. If this is a problem, then I am part of it by not sharing this news at some point (I still have not shared the news straightforwardly (!). But it's important to note here that it was my LACK of sharing that made me part of the problem and not the sharing of my accomplishments or of my son's newest milestone. Further, given that one of my goals was to circumvent people feeling sorry for me it seems that not sharing this news at all seems to have backfired. Not only did I have to deal with that once they found out (some people still haven't figured it out) but people find out at different times and so it's been a constant answering of the very question and sentiment I was looking to prevent. Further, some people get offended that they were left out of the fray so not only do I field the initial sentiments and reactions I was looking to avoid but I also deal with further complications that not sharing at all has produced. For this reason maybe not sharing at all wasn't the best idea.

I'm skeptical that there can be rules that apply to all forms of sharing for all people given the complexities of each of our situations in life, but I am confident that we should think a bit harder about what we share and when we share things; we should be a bit more sensitive to how our decisions can positively or negatively affect our lives and the lives of others. If one has moved to be an active member of social media as an outlet of communication between friends and work colleagues, then one has an obligation to be sensitive to the affects of their online behavior. I think the goal of this post, if there is one, is to give weight to this claim: we should think a bit harder about what we share and when we share it as our decision to share has effects on our social lives.

I have yet to comment on (2B) as this post is long enough already but maybe I'll tackle that in the near future. I will only say that I think the norms of social media sharing create expectations for us. If the norm is that we don't share news about our marriage and if we decide to go against that norm, I think many people will weigh in negatively on that decision (likely not out loud but still). But is a negative evaluation warranted on these grounds? I think this will depend on which moral view one appeals to. But I'd like to hear thoughts from readers on this. If I do write more on this I'll be sure to let you know on twitter 🙂

I'd like to hear how you all decide to share what you share and how you have navigated similar life events in your own lives as well as what worked and what did not for you.

In closing, it seems that we are all quick to complain about the fact that social media is a fake place where everything that is shared is shiny and/or an attempt to sell some false narrative of ourselves. But if you are like me and fail to share most of the most important obstacles you face in your life then maybe you (and I) are part of that problem. That's not to say we all should be sharing more per se, but it is to say that maybe we should think a bit harder about our evaluations of others who choose to utilize the social media platforms differently than we do.

Information on Justin's research can be found on his website and be contacted via twitter @justincaouette

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When one researches within the domain of moral psychology their aim is mostly to investigate human functioning within a specific or general moral context. These investigations may impact wider debates being had in the domain of ethical theory. In this short post I'd like to think out loud a bit about the moral psychology of...

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Alain de Botton is a beloved (and prolific) pop philosopher, with a shelf-full of books and two very popular TED talks to his name. So when the Swiss-born author tweeted to his 443,000 followers on Monday night that they should delete Twitter for the sake of their "inner conversation," many took his words seriously - promising to delete the app from their phones, responding with impassioned defenses of the medium, and, ironically (!), retweeting de Botton's message in droves.

Not to be disloyal to the medium but deleting Twitter from at least your phone really improves mental health and inner conversation.
- Alain de Botton (@alaindebotton) June 2, 2014

Maybe that response isn't all that surprising. Increasingly, it seems like anxiety about social media is as much a hallmark of modern life as social media itself: We have "digital detox" retreats and summer camps, apps that force users to sign off Facebook - even a "National Day of Unplugging," celebrated (or not) on March 7. De Botton's critique of social media fits neatly into that tradition. It's crowding out contemplation, he suggests. It's filling our short lives with meaningless clutter.

But unlike the alarmists and technophobes preaching "unplugging," de Botton has a more nuanced take on the issues. He uses Twitter frequently himself - just not, apparently, from his phone. His so-called School of Life, an institution "devoted to developing emotional intelligence," teaches classes on Internet dating - in addition to more analog self-help topics, like "how to spend time alone." De Botton isn't opposed to technology, he's just an advocate for moderation. Which, when you think about it, makes lots of sense.

We contacted de Botton to further expand on his philosophy of social media. What he had to say was, frankly, pretty compelling:

Twitter is of course a wonderful thing, but it is also the most appalling distraction ever invented. It sounds so harmless. But it wants you never to be in touch with yourself again and never to have time to catch up on 'updates' from the person you really need to keep close to you: yourself. It denies us that precious non-specific time in which you can daydream, unpack your anxieties and have a conversation with your deeper self.

There are countless difficult things hiding away deep within us which we should give some thought to even though the desperate temptation is to keep tweeting and RTing. We need Twitter sabbaths. We need long train journeys on which we have no wireless signal and nothing to read, where our carriage is mostly empty, where the views are expansive and where the only sounds are those made by the wheels as they click against the rails. We need plane journeys when we have a window seat and nothing else to focus on for two or three hours but the tops of clouds and our own thoughts.

We need relief from the Twitter-fueled impression that we are living in an age of unparalleled importance, with our wars, our debts, our riots, our missing children, our after-premiere parties, our IPOs and our rogue missiles. We need, on occasion, to be able to go to a quieter place, where that particular conference and this particular epidemic, that new phone and this shocking wildfire, will lose a little of their power to affect us - and where even the most intractable problems will seem to dissolve against a backdrop of the stars above us.

We should at times forego the Twitter feed in order to pick up on the far stranger, more wondrous headlines of those less eloquent species that surround us: kestrels and snow geese, spider beetles and black-faced leafhoppers, lemurs and small children - all creatures usefully uninterested in our own melodramas; counterweights to our anxieties and self-absorption.

A flourishing life requires a capacity to recognise the times when Twitter no longer has anything original or important to teach us; periods when we should refuse imaginative connection with strangers and hashtags, when we must leave the business of complaining, insulting, haranguing, exclaiming to others, in the knowledge that we have our own priorities to honour in the brief time still allotted to us.

Agree? Disagree? You could leave a comment. Or you could let that all marinate, de Botton-style, in the vacuum of your own head.

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A noted philosopher's argument for signing off social media ... and enjoying 'the brief time' you have left

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Alain de Botton is a beloved (and prolific) pop philosopher, with a shelf-full of books and two very popular TED talks to his name.

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#LikeMinded

A special series about social media and well-being

This month, BBC Future is exploring social media's impact on mental health and well-being - and seeking solutions for a happier, healthier experience on these platforms. Stay tuned for more stories, coming soon...

Share your tips for a happy life on social media with the hashtag #LikeMinded on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

This story is featured in BBC Future's "Best of 2018" collection. Discover more of our picks.
Three billion people, around 40% of the world's population, use online social media - and we're spending an average of two hours every day sharing, liking, tweeting and updating on these platforms, according to some reports. That breaks down to around half a million tweets and Snapchat photos shared every minute.

With social media playing such a big part in our lives, could we be sacrificing our mental health and well-being as well as our time? What does the evidence actually suggest?

Since social media is relatively new to us, conclusive findings are limited. The research that does exist mainly relies on self-reporting, which can often be flawed, and the majority of studies focus on Facebook. That said, this is a fast-growing area of research, and clues are beginning to emerge. BBC Future reviewed the findings of some of the science so far:
STRESS
People use social media to vent about everything from customer service to politics, but the downside to this is that our feeds often resemble an endless stream of stress. In 2015, researchers at the Pew Research Center based in Washington DC sought to find out if social media induces more stress than it relieves.

In the survey of 1,800 people, women reported being more stressed than men. Twitter was found to be a "significant contributor" because it increased their awareness of other people's stress.

But Twitter also acted as a coping mechanism - and the more women used it, the less stressed they were. The same effect wasn't found for men, whom the researchers said had a more distant relationship with social media. Overall, the researchers concluded that social media use was linked to "modestly lower levels" of stress.

MOOD
In 2014, researchers in Austria found that participants reported lower moods after using Facebook for 20 minutes compared to those who just browsed the internet. The study suggested that people felt that way because they saw it as a waste of time.

A good or bad mood may also spread between people on social media, according to researchers from the University of California, who assessed the emotional content of over a billion status updates from more than 100 million Facebook users between 2009 and 2012.

Bad weather increased the number of negative posts by 1%, and the researchers found that one negative post by someone in a rainy city influenced another 1.3 negative posts by friends living in dry cities. The better news is that happy posts had a stronger influence; each one inspired 1.75 more happy posts. Whether a happy post translates to a genuine boost in mood, however, remains unclear.
ANXIETY
Researchers have looked at general anxiety provoked by social media, characterised by feelings of restlessness and worry, and trouble sleeping and concentrating. A study published in the journal Computers and Human Behaviour found that people who report using seven or more social media platforms were more than three times as likely as people using 0-2 platforms to have high levels of general anxiety symptoms.

That said, it's unclear if and how social media causes anxiety. Researchers from Babes-Bolyai University in Romania reviewed existing research on the relationship between social anxiety and social networking in 2016, and said the results were mixed. They concluded that more research needs to be done.

DEPRESSION
While some studies have found a link between depression and social media use, there is emerging research into how social media can actually be a force for good.

Two studies involving more than 700 students found that depressive symptoms, such as low mood and feelings of worthlessness and hopelessness, were linked to the quality of online interactions. Researchers found higher levels of depressive symptoms among those who reported having more negative interactions.

A similar study conducted in 2016 involving 1,700 people found a threefold risk of depression and anxiety among people who used the most social media platforms. Reasons for this, they suggested, include cyber-bullying, having a distorted view of other people's lives, and feeling like time spent on social media is a waste.

However, as BBC Future will explore this month in our #LikeMinded season, scientists are also looking at how social media can be used to diagnose depression, which could help people receive treatment earlier. Researchers for Microsoft surveyed 476 people and analysed their Twitter profiles for depressive language, linguistic style, engagement and emotion. From this, they developed a classifier that can accurately predict depression before it causes symptoms in seven out of 10 cases.

Researchers from Harvard and Vermont Universities analysed 166 people's Instagram photos to create a similar tool last year with the same success rate.
SLEEP
Humans used to spend their evenings in darkness, but now we're surrounded by artificial lighting all day and night. Research has found that this can inhibit the body's production of the hormone melatonin, which facilitates sleep - and blue light, which is emitted by smartphone and laptop screens, is said to be the worst culprit. In other words, if you lie on the pillow at night checking Facebook and Twitter, you're headed for restless slumber.

Last year, researchers from the University of Pittsburgh asked 1,700 18- to 30-year-olds about their social media and sleeping habits. They found a link with sleep disturbances - and concluded blue light had a part to play. How often they logged on, rather than time spent on social media sites, was a higher predictor of disturbed sleep, suggesting "an obsessive 'checking'", the researchers said.

The researchers say this could be caused by physiological arousal before sleep, and the bright lights of our devices can delay circadian rhythms. But they couldn't clarify whether social media causes disturbed sleep, or if those who have disturbed sleep spend more time on social media.

ADDICTION
Despite the argument from a few researchers that tweeting may be harder to resist than cigarettes and alcohol, social media addiction isn't included in the latest diagnostic manual for mental health disorders.

That said, social media is changing faster than scientists can keep up with, so various groups are trying to study compulsive behaviours related to its use - for example, scientists from the Netherlands have invented their own scale to identify possible addiction.

And if social media addiction does exist, it would be a type of internet addiction - and that is a classified disorder. In 2011, Daria Kuss and Mark Griffiths from Nottingham Trent University in the UK have analysed 43 previous studies on the matter, and conclude that social media addiction is a mental health problem that "may" require professional treatment. They found that excessive usage was linked to relationship problems, worse academic achievement and less participation in offline communities, and found that those who could be more vulnerable to a social media addiction include those dependent on alcohol, the highly extroverted, and those who use social media to compensate for fewer ties in real life.
SELF-ESTEEM
Women's magazines and their use of underweight and Photoshopped models have been long maligned for stirring self-esteem issues among young women. But now, social media, with its filters and lighting and clever angles, is taking over as a primary concern among some campaigning groups and charities.

Social media sites make more than half of users feel inadequate, according to a survey of 1,500 people by disability charity Scope, and half of 18- to 34-year-olds say it makes them feel unattractive.

A 2016 study by researchers at Penn State University suggested that viewing other people's selfies lowered self-esteem, because users compare themselves to photos of people looking their happiest. Research from the University of Strathclyde, Ohio University and University of Iowa also found that women compare themselves negatively to selfies of other women.

But it's not just selfies that have the potential to dent self-esteem. A study of 1,000 Swedish Facebook users found that women who spent more time on Facebook reported feeling less happy and confident. The researchers concluded: "When Facebook users compare their own lives with others' seemingly more successful careers and happy relationships, they may feel that their own lives are less successful in comparison."

But one small study hinted that viewing your own profile, not others, might offer ego boosts. Researchers at Cornell University in New York put 63 students into different groups. Some sat with a mirror placed against a computer screen, for instance, while others sat in front of their own Facebook profile.

Facebook had a positive effect on self-esteem compared to other activities that boost self-awareness. Mirrors and photos, the researchers explained, make us compare ourselves to social standards, whereas looking at our own Facebook profiles might boost self-esteem because it is easier to control how we're presented to the world.
WELL-BEING
In a study from 2013, researchers texted 79 participants five times a day for 14 days, asking them how they felt and how much they'd used Facebook since the last text. The more time people spent on the site, the worse they felt later on, and the more their life satisfaction declined over time.

But other research has found, that for some people, social media can help boost their well-being. Marketing researchers Jonah Berger and Eva Buechel found that people who are emotionally unstable are more likely to post about their emotions, which can help them receive support and bounce back after negative experiences.

Overall, social media's effects on well-being are ambiguous, according to a paper written last year by researchers from the Netherlands. However, they suggested there is clearer evidence for the impact on one group of people: social media has a more negative effect on the well-being of those who are more socially isolated.

RELATIONSHIPS
If you've ever been talking to a friend who's pulled their phone out to scroll through Instagram, you might have wondered what social media is doing to relationships.

Even the mere presence of a phone can interfere with our interactions, particularly when we're talking about something meaningful, according to one small study. Researchers writing in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships tasked 34 pairs of strangers with having a 10-minute conversation about an interesting event that had happened to them recently. Each pair sat in private booths, and half had a mobile phone on the top of their table.

Those with a phone in eyeshot were less positive when recalling their interaction afterwards, had less meaningful conversations and reported feeling less close to their partner than the others, who had a notebook on top of the table instead.

Romantic relationships aren't immune, either. Researchers at the University of Guelph in Canada surveyed 300 people aged 17-24 in 2009 about any jealousy they felt when on Facebook, asking questions such as, 'How likely are you to become jealous after your partner has added an unknown member of the opposite sex?'.

Women spent much more time on Facebook then men, and experienced significantly more jealousy when doing so. The researchers concluded they "felt the Facebook environment created these feelings and enhanced concerns about the quality of their relationship".

ENVY
In a study involving 600 adults, roughly a third said social media made them feel negative emotions - mainly frustration - and envy was the main cause. This was triggered by comparing their lives to others', and the biggest culprit was other people's travel photos. Feeling envious caused an "envy spiral", where people react to envy by adding to their profiles more of the same sort of content that made them jealous in the first place.

However, envy isn't necessarily a destructive emotion - it can often make us work harder, according to researchers from Michigan University and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. They asked 380 students to look at "envy-eliciting" photos and texts from Facebook and Twitter, including posts about buying expensive goods, travelling and getting engaged. But the type of envy the researchers found is "benign envy", which they say is more likely to make a person work harder.
LONELINESS
A study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine last year surveyed 7,000 19- to 32-year-olds and found that those who spend the most time on social media were twice as likely to report experiencing social isolation, which can include a lack of a sense of social belonging, engagement with others and fulfilling relationships.

Spending more time on social media, the researchers said, could displace face-to-face interaction, and can also make people feel excluded.

"Exposure to such highly idealised representations of peers' lives may elicit feelings of envy and the distorted belief that others lead happier and more successful lives, which may increase perceived social isolation."
CONCLUSIONS?
It's clear that in many areas, not enough is known yet to draw many strong conclusions. However, the evidence does point one way: social media affects people differently, depending on pre-existing conditions and personality traits.

As with food, gambling and many other temptations of the modern age, excessive use for some individuals is probably inadvisable. But at the same time, it would be wrong to say social media is a universally bad thing, because clearly it brings myriad benefits to our lives.

We'll be exploring this tension more over the next month, in a series of articles and videos in our special series #LikeMinded - and hopefully providing solutions that could help us all live a happier, healthier digital life.
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Is social media bad for you? The evidence and the unknowns

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A special series about social media and well-being This month, BBC Future is exploring social media's impact on mental health and well-being - and seeking solutions for a happier, healthier experience on these platforms. Stay tuned for more stories, coming soon...

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Quit social media | Dr. Cal Newport | TEDxTysons