Being popular is like, SO stressful

Insightful Scottish researchers claim negative effects of Facebook outweigh the benefits. Apparently.

It sounds to me like Scottish researchers have come up with the perfect excuse for our poor, overworked schoolchildren/students to skip lessons/lectures - Facebook stress.

According to research carried out by psychologists from Edinburgh Napier University, which quizzed around 200 students on their use of the social networking site, the more friends you have, the more ‘stressed out' you feel.

Oh for God's sake.

Yep, Dr Kathy Charles, who led the study, said users with the most contacts, or who invest the most time in the site were the ones ‘most likely to be stressed'.

We even have some figures here to back up the claims.

A total of 12 per cent of respondents said Facebook made them feel ‘anxious'. Bless.

A further 63 per cent delayed replying to friend requests; 32 per cent said rejecting friend requests led to feelings of guilt and discomfort (most of them have never met half their ‘friends' anyway) and 10 per cent admitted to disliking receiving friend requests.

Other causes of tension in this ultra-serious study including getting rid of unwanted contacts, pressure to be inventive and entertaining and having to remember different etiquette for different friends.

Wow, I can hardly cope with this level of stress.

"Like gambling, Facebook keeps users in a neurotic limbo, not knowing whether they should hang on in there just in case they miss out on something good," adds Charles.

Here's an idea - how about being friends with just the people you actually know and like, rather than trying to appear ridiculously popular with 600+ friends?

I dread to think how these poor 'stressed out' students will cope when they have to hold down a full-time job, manage their finances without the bank of mum and dad, and juggle all the bills.

Status update: Get a life!