Facebook undermines the social belonging of first year students

We examined whether an online social networking technology (Facebook) influenced students' perceptions of their peers' social connections as well as their own feelings of belonging. In this experiment (N = 601), students were assigned to view Facebook profiles with high or low social content. Students then estimated the number of friends their peers had and self-reported their own feelings of belonging and intentions to socialize with other students. Overall, there were no between-condition differences on these measures. However, first-year students responded differently than other students: they expressed reduced feelings of belonging after viewing the Facebook profile with high (vs. low) social content, whereas students from other years expressed marginally higher feelings of belonging after viewing the Facebook profile with high (vs. low) social content. These findings suggest that people who are new to a social network may be particularly susceptible to negative impacts of Facebook.