Beware Of Facebook Friends: They Make You Fat And In Debt

Carl Lowe | Jan 16, 2013 | Comments 2

If you have close friends on Facebook, you may be doomed, say researchers at the University of Pittsburgh and the Columbia Business School. It’s a slippery slopefrom posting cute cat pictures online to addictive binge sessions at the cookie jar and out-of-control credit card spending.

Folks with especially good friends on Facebook are in the greatest danger. “(Our) results suggest that greater social network use is associated with a higher body-mass index, increased binge eating, a lower credit score, and higher levels of credit-card debt for individuals with strong ties to their social network,” the researchers write in the Journal of Consumer Research.

The researchers claim that the problem with good Facebook friends is that they increase your self-esteem. That’s right, an increase in self-esteem is the first step in your downfall. From there, you are bound to lose your self-control. After all, who needs self-control when your self-esteem is riding high? Without self-control over your eating and spending, both your waistline and your credit card bills are bound to bulge.

How do these researchers know this? They found that greater social network use among this category of users with strong ties to their friends is associated with individuals having higher body-mass indexes and higher levels of credit-card debt.