At the heart of friendships lies a concoction of emotions, where the warmth of companionship might sometimes be chilled by feelings of jealousy. Recent research published in Evolutionary Psychology delved into the study of this phenomenon, developing a novel measure to study social media friendship jealousy in particular.
“I work with a lot of young women as a university professor and soccer coach, and in this capacity, I noticed that friendship interactions on social media were not always positive. I undertook this study to see if what I was observing was widespread,” said study author Tracy Vaillancourt (@vaillancourt_dr), PhD, a Professor and Tier 1 Canada Research Chair at the University of Ottawa.
Indeed, platforms like Instagram and Facebook lend themselves to the surveillance of friendships and broadcasting of interpersonal dramas, practices that can deepen jealousy and affect mental health. The creation of the Social Media Friendship Jealousy Scale (SMFJS) marks a significant step in better understanding this phenomenon.
Study 1 included 491 participants aged 24-35, who completed the newly developed SMFJS, which was adapted from previous scales for the purpose of assessing jealousy in friendships, from social media posts specifically; higher scores indicate greater jealousy. Participants also completed measures of friendship quality and three dimensions of personality (extraversion, agreeableness, and conscientiousness).
The researchers found that SMFJS demonstrated strong psychometric properties, and was associated with poorer friendship quality (aligning with findings from romantic relationships). The SMFJS did not predict extraversion, but had a negative correlation with agreeableness and conscientiousness. The researchers observed no gender and age differences, suggesting social media friendship jealousy may be broadly experienced across these demographics.
Study 2 aimed to further validate the SMFJS, examine its links to trait jealousy and social media use, and further probe sex and age differences. Recruitment expanded the age range to 18-65 years, with a total of 494 participants. Participants completed the SMFJS, and measures of social media use and trait jealousy.
The researchers confirmed the strong psychometric properties of the scale, and found significant differences in social media friendship jealousy by sex and age, with women reporting more jealousy than men, and younger participants reporting more jealousy than older ones. These findings suggest variations in friendship dynamics and social media engagement across these demographics.
Study 3 drew from the McMaster Teen Study, a longitudinal project beginning in 2008 that is still ongoing, following individuals beginning at approximately age 10 (Grade 5). The final sample included 415 participants, who had at least some data on the SMFJS and internalizing symptoms (depression and anxiety) between ages 23-26. This study demonstrated the SMFJS’s reliability and stability over time.
As in Study 2, women consistently reported more jealousy than men. Higher-than-average jealousy was associated with higher-than-average internalizing symptoms. The authors suggest social media jealousy may have a negative mental health impact, particularly among those who are already prone to anxiety and depression.
“The take away from our study is that social media interactions between friends are not always positive. They can cause jealousy which impacts mental health. Accordingly, we should be as mindful with our online behavior as we are when we interact face-to-face with our friends,” Vaillancourt told PsyPost.
“It will be important to better understand the mechanisms linking feelings of jealousy in friendships with depression and anxiety. As we stated ‘the omission of tagging a friend on a social media post could be nefarious and intended to elicit jealousy or it could just be an oversight.’”
“The interpretation will depend on things like ‘selective attention to friendship threats, rumination, safety behavior (e.g., scanning and checking), and common thought distortions (e.g., mind-reading and catastrophizing)’ as well as ‘other factors that predict different attributions and behavior such as rejection sensitivity, fear of missing out, social comparison orientation, narcissism, hostility, or the use of indirect aggression,’” the researcher explained.
I asked Vaillancourt what questions still need to be addressed. She said, “We are currently looking at the flip side of this; not the hurt felt by social media jealousy but the reasons why friends do this in the first place. I suspect that some people purposefully manipulate their friends (e.g., they don’t tag a friend to make them feel jealous and insecure) and these individuals will be higher on indirect aggression use and dark triads like Machiavellianism than those who don’t engage in this type of behavior.”
The paper, “Social Media Friendship Jealousy”, was authored by Tracy Vaillancourt, Heather Brittain, Mollie Eriksson, Amanda Krygsman, Ann H. Farrell, Adam C. Davis, Anthony A. Volk, and Steven Arnocky.