You probably have at least one Facebook friend who is constantly posting pictures of themselves at bars and commenting on everybody’s wall and regularly updates their status with “smart” comments and checking in to every place they go and just seem irresistibly cool. Don’t be fooled by the glamorous Facebook life your friend is living. He or she probably has a self-esteem issue according to new research described by ShockMd.

York University psychologist Soraya Mehdizadeh analyzed the Facebook pages of 50 male and 50 female student participants after having the students answer questions about their demographics, facebook activity, self-esteem, and narcissism. Mehdizadeh looked at the “About Me” section, the profile photo, the first 20 pictures in the “View Photos of Me” section, the notes, and the status updates of each student, rating each page based on extent it self-promotes the user.

Mehdizadeh found that Facebook users who were highly narcissistic with low-self esteem tended to spend the most time on Facebook and were highly self-promoting than those with high self-esteem and low narcissism regardless of gender. In other words, those “cool” Facebook friends you have who keep spamming your news feed with constant information about themselves and how awesome they are may not be too awesome after all.

Do you think self-promotion on Facebook increases their self-esteem?
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Natasha Murashev is the author of Psychworld.com, a digital publication focused on applied psychology.

Article image via greg martin.