Facebook Can’t Make You Happy, but If You’re Already Happy, Perhaps It Can Help in Other Ways

I spend a lot of my free time with children — mine and other people’s. Children exhibit a seemingly boundless ability to love blindly and energy that is so singular to childhood and so beautiful. I love watching their minds evolve and seeing them learn how to make choices as they do. But, talking to kids nonstop isn’t always the most invigorating way for an adult to spend their time.

There are times, after an evening of fart jokes and endless requests for my attention and energy, when I long for the stimulation of adult conversation and engagement. In direct contradiction to this feeling is another equally valid recognition that I’m also at a phase in my life where my kid/s are small and I am genuinely tired and don’t want to put on pants or leave the house even after they are sleeping, even if I have childcare.

Facebook helps.

I know social media gets a bad rap largely because studies show that it creates an impulse in users, which I think has perhaps always existed in Western society, to keep up with the Joneses and to compare their normal to everyone else’s highlight reels. It would be untrue to suggest that I’ve never felt jealous of anyone’s fabulous vacation, wedding venue, or new baby, but for me, facebook provides something that outweighs those risks and has been invaluable to me in other ways.