When you’re scrolling through your Facebook news feed, what are you really looking at?
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While many of us are ostensibly there for updates, others come and stay for the likes. This is completely normal. Consent is a wonderful thing. Desire can be a powerful diagnostic tool.
A 2018 study in the journal Frontiers in Psychology suggests that narcissism may predict how much we enjoy Facebook.
If you’re wondering how to spot a narcissist, or looking for signs of narcissism in yourself or someone else, assessing how much you or they use Facebook is a great place to start.
Social media and mental health often go hand in hand, and by looking at this relationship, you may be able to see the effects of social media on narcissistic personality traits and vice versa.
Related: How I (Barely) Survived My Narcissist Mother
The researchers found that students with adaptive narcissism—high levels of self-esteem without clinically concerning symptoms—reported enjoying social media significantly more than non-narcissists and maladaptive pathological narcissists.
In short: the higher your self-esteem, the more likely you are to love social media.
“A large number of studies have shown that narcissistic people use social networking sites (SNS) more frequently and more widely than non-narcissistic people.
But few studies have examined whether narcissists actually enjoy using social media sites. “The answer depends on the degree of adaptability of a given individual’s narcissism… Adaptive and maladaptive narcissism predict better and worse emotional experiences in SNS, respectively.”
Narcissism is generally characterized by self-importance, perceived uniqueness, entitlement, and arousal.
Before the advent of social media, there were limited places for narcissists. But now, selfies and cell phones have given everyone a platform, and narcissists participate in it with impunity.
Previous studies have shown that narcissists are more active on social media than the general population. But do they enjoy social media, or are they simply committed to showing off?
Related: 4 Unusual-But-Scary Narcissistic Traits That Often Go Unnoticed
To answer this question, the authors of the current study interviewed nearly 700 college students in China. They asked them about their social media habits and administered a questionnaire testing healthy (adaptive) and unhealthy (maladaptive) narcissistic traits.
“We hypothesized that adaptive narcissism would predict better emotional experiences in SNS, whereas maladaptive narcissism would predict worse emotional experiences in SNS,” the authors wrote.
The results support this hypothesis. Students with healthy narcissistic personality traits (high levels of self-importance and exhibitionism, but not the kind that is detrimental to their quality of life) were more likely to report enjoying social media.
Those with unhealthy narcissism and negative personality traits reported the opposite: They used social media to show off and did not enjoy it as much.
