7 Things Every Facebook User Needs to Know, Backed by Research

Ideas

November 28, 2014 12:01 AM EST

Barker is the author of Barking Up The Wrong Tree

Your Facebook profile probably reveals your true personality. It’s especially indicative of how extroverted and open to new experience you are but it can also tell people whether you have anxiety and even predict your job performance.

I wouldn’t get too paranoid though; most people just judge you off the photo. Then again that photo can predict how happy you’ll be 3.5 years from now. (Just from status updates, Facebook knows how happy the entire US is every day of the year.)

Your “relationship status” says a lot about how happy you probably are. What’s a really good sign? Men who listed their partnership status (“In a relationship with…”) and women whose profile picture displayed their partner both had happier relationships.

Facebook knows the days and months when you’re most likely to start a new relationship. Hell, Facebook can predict with a 33% accuracy who you’ll be dating next week.

Dunbar’s number says we can only sustain 100-230 friends. It holds up online too; despite how many “friends” you have you’re probably only active with about 100-200 of them consistently. Facebook promotes mainly weak, low-commitment friendships anyway. And the main reason for un-friending is because somebody posts too much uninteresting crap.

Only about 1/5th of your Facebook friends influence your behavior. You don’t end up blindly liking what your Facebook friends like; in fact, you look to them to find out what not to like. And it’s definitely worth reconnecting with old friends on the site.

On Facebook everyone shows the best and not the worst, leading to portraits of unattainable lives that can make us feel bad by comparison. Here are some great tips by experts for using Facebook to enhance your happiness. Overall, Facebook users get more emotional support than other people. Now there are definitely problems that have been caused by Facebook; for instance the site makes it quite difficult to be an undercover cop. :)

This piece originally appeared on B arking Up the Wrong Tree.

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