I knew I wasn’t alone in my misery. Well that’s not true,  I thought I was alone in my misery. But according to a new paper in the January issue of Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, so do many other people.

The paper is based on a number of studies examining how College students evaluate their moods and the moods of their peers.

The leader of the studies, Alex Jordan, says that he got the idea from his friends’ reactions to viewing the profiles of others.  He noticed that people got pretty depressed after seeing the awesome photos, high-flying bios and overly cheery status updates of their friends.

It turns out that the students often underestimated how miserable their friends on Facebook were and, as a result, it made them more miserable. According to Jordan: “They were convinced that everyone else was leading a perfect life.”

This is all too familiar to me. So if you feel like your friend’s have perfect lives console yourself with the fact that they are probably scrolling through others’ profiles, weeping over their keyboards.

Go and read “The Anti-Social Network“, you will feel better. I know I did.

[Thanks to Wally Anderson]

[Source : Slate]