> I would sit there staring at how awesome people's lives were and wonder why I wasn't doing such awesome things myself.
I felt this way with Facebook, but then worked out what was going on. It's a multiple-endpoints situation. The status updates you read aren't coming from a random distribution of your friends. They come from a self-selected population that is doing something interesting at that particular time. People (mostly) don't post status updates about an average workday or lazy weekend.
If you have 52 friends, who each go on vacation one week out of the year, then every week Facebook will be showing you somebody's awesome vacation updates. That doesn't mean that your own life is worse or less interesting for not being on vacation that particular week.
I felt this way with Facebook, but then worked out what was going on. It's a multiple-endpoints situation. The status updates you read aren't coming from a random distribution of your friends. They come from a self-selected population that is doing something interesting at that particular time. People (mostly) don't post status updates about an average workday or lazy weekend.
If you have 52 friends, who each go on vacation one week out of the year, then every week Facebook will be showing you somebody's awesome vacation updates. That doesn't mean that your own life is worse or less interesting for not being on vacation that particular week.