How Facebook Gets Marriage Wrong

Take a look at your friends Facebook photo albums: see any unhappy marriages there? Probably not.

Now think about what you know of their relationships, or, even more simply, the national divorce statistics.

Does Facebook present a realistic portrait of marriage and family? Of course not: on Facebook everyone looks good, standing next to your partner in a self-portrait taken with one of his arms around you and the other holding out the camera. Kids are at their cutest. Even pets seem idealized.

A friend's recent status update was, "My husband is the greatest." The status was followed by a long string of comments, most of which were along the lines of, "How sweet!" The final comment was from the owner of the status update: "Guess I shouldn't log into Facebook on my husband's computer." He had posted the update himself.

So if Facebook convinces us that every other marriage is constantly happy, how does it make us feel about our own? The marriage where I'm wearing the same saggy sweatpants I bought four years ago?

Researchers now say social media is making us sad.
"The human habit of overestimating other people's happiness is nothing new, of course. Jordan [Alex Jordan, Stanford researcher] points to a quote by Montesquieu: "If we only wanted to be happy it would be easy; but we want to be happier than other people, which is almost always difficult, since we think them happier than they are." But social networking may be making this tendency worse. Jordan's research doesn't look at Facebook explicitly, but if his conclusions are correct, it follows that the site would have a special power to make us sadder and lonelier. By showcasing the most witty, joyful, bullet-pointed versions of people's lives, and inviting constant comparisons in which we tend to see ourselves as the losers, Facebook appears to exploit an Achilles' heel of human nature."

So should we stop using Facebook? Or post status updates that more accurately reflect reality: "Decided to watch Jon Stewart instead of having sex. Again."

Maybe. But probably not. The best antidote is to remember that Facebook profiles are likely to be a carefully crafted image of how people want to be seen - not as they really are. (Run your profile through the reality litmus test. Is your life as rosy as it appears?)