Emotional Uses of Facebook and Twitter: Its Relation With Empathy, Narcissism, and Self-Esteem in Adolescence

Abstract

Facebook and Twitter have change interpersonal relationships. Adolescents are the sector of the population who use most these networks. They use them in an emotional way, to express their emotions and to comment on those of others. Empathy, narcissism, and self-esteem may play an important role in the use of these networks. Using a sample of 503 Spanish adolescents (272 males, 231 females), this work studies the relationship between the Basic Empathy Scale, the Narcissistic Personality Inventory, the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale, and emotional and empathic use of Facebook and Twitter. The results showed that those who use Facebook and Twitter have higher scores in empathy. It has been observed that certain ways of using these two social networks are associated with narcissism. Greater use of Facebook and Twitter is associated with lower self-esteem.

Variability in Language used on Social Media prior to Hospital Visits

“…One-fifth of the world's population uses Facebook and Twitter 21 , and people are increasingly sharing information about their health on social media sites 22 . Social media has been used to study a wide variety of health-related outcomes including depression 4 , stress 17 , and schizophrenia 23 .…”

Social Media Use and Empathy: A Mini Meta-Analysis

“…Even though the associations were small, they trended positive. However, there may be some online behaviors that cultivate empathy (e.g., sharing emotions, expressing support [21]) more than others (e.g., updating profile photos [20]). In combination with emerging longitudinal evidence that social media use at one time point is predictive of higher levels of cognitive and affective empathy one year later among adolescents [42] and experimental work that shows that interdependent Facebook use can promote relational orientation [37], this study contributes to the growing literature on how social media can facilitate positive psychosocial development.…”

“…We included different SNSs (e.g., Facebook, Twitter) and media use activities (e.g., texting, commenting, emailing). However, to narrow the scope and strengthen interpretability, we only selected for relatively active but general uses of SNSs in everyday life (i.e., profile updates, chatting, instant messaging, emailing, posting, and commenting) as measured by frequency (e.g., Use of Facebook Questionnaire [UFQ] from less than once a day to three or more times a day [21]; never to very frequently [20]) or duration (e.g., not at all to more than 10 hours a day on a "typical day" [34]). That means that we excluded studies in a specific setting such as in an educational context (e.g., assessing course discussion boards [35]), only assessed specific forms of exposure (e.g., prosocial or antisocial media; for a review see [25]), cyberbullying [36], or manipulated use [37].…”

The Dark Triad and Facebook surveillance: How Machiavellianism, psychopathy, but not narcissism predict using Facebook to spy on others

“…Narcissists may also be more strategic and selective with the photograph they use to represent themselves (Kapidzic, 2013;Scott, Boyle, Czerniawska, & Courtney, 2017), choosing pictures which are more flattering. When posting material, narcissists may attempt to elicit responses from others to enhance their social capital (Ozimek, Bierhoff, & Hanke, 2018) by using emotion-laden content (Errasti, Amigo, & Villadangos, 2017). If they do not receive the reactions they are hoping for from these posts, narcissists may react in a volatile fashion, lashing out against their network (Carpenter, 2012).…”