Study Shows Big-Time Facebook Users Are More Materialistic

Everyone has at least one annoying Facebook friend. That person who alternates between lot of lame quotes and piles of duck-faced selfies in places that aren’t interesting. Everyone has that friend. Everyone dislikes that friend. And while lots of studies have shown these friends are driven by a need to belong, or a desire to appear successful, a new study suggests they’re also more materialistic.

The study comes from Ruhr-University Bochum in Germany and suggests that materialistic people—that is people who “try to competitively have more than others”—use Facebook more frequently and intensely than anyone else. These people also accrue more Facebook friends, but not because they actually like them.

"Materialistic people use Facebook more frequently because they tend to objectify their Facebook friends—they acquire Facebook friends to increase their possessions," lead researcher Phillip Ozimek told Science Daily.

The study involved recruiting 242 Facebook users from around the Ruhr-University campus (54 males and 188 females) and asking them to rate their agreement with statements from one to five. The statements were things like, “I often compare how I am doing socially” and “I admire people who own expensive homes, cars, and clothes.” Other statements tested why users used Facebook, to explore the correlation between materialism and frequent use.

Unsurprisingly, people who spend a lot of time on Facebook were far more likely to admit to chasing consumer items. Even when the study was repeated, flipping the majority gender to male, the results were similar. Because the study observed, “Narcissists use Facebook for self-glorification, people with low self-esteem for interacting with others and feeling better, [and] materialists use it to acquire and promote possessions.”

However, having pointed that out, researchers were pretty keen to not blame social media. Instead they described social media as simply a tool that accommodates pre-existing human desires. "Social media platforms are not that different from other activities in life—they are functional tools for people who want to attain goals in life," Ozimek said.

Still, now you’ve got a scientific reason for disliking all those photos of idiots with their cars on your feed. So go ahead and feel annoyed.