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Admit it.  Seeing 50 likes on our Facebook post thrills us(I'm lucky to see five!). But a new study has found that, for kids, liking something is a lot less stressful than being liked.  Huh? According to newswise.com, liking on Facebook is good for teens' stress levels, but not so much being liked. In fact, teens who have more than 300 Facebook friends have higher levels of cortisol, the stress hormone, researchers say. As we all know, Facebook can have positive and negative effects on us, and teens' levels of the stress hormone, say researchers at the University of Montreal and the Institut universitaire de santé mentale de Montréal.  Too many likes hikes the levels of cortisol.  But teens who act in ways that support their Facebook friends – for example, by liking what they posted or sending them words of encouragement – decreased their levels of cortisol.  Makes sense.  I've always found that it makes me feel good to help others feel the s...

It all started when I stopped getting "g+1" on my blog posts. For quite a while everything I wrote had this symbol pop up on it.  I didn't know what it stood for but I figured it was something good. I got used to seeing it after every post, even the ones I thought were average ("See Jesus in Toast? You're Not Hallucinating"). But all of a sudden, they stopped.  Had my writing declined?  Was there only one person out there stamping my posts with the graphic and now he/she's stopped reading them?  Or, worst of all, was I now boring the "g+1"ers? I try to keep my posts interesting and up to date, and well, kind of out there, like "Avoid Breast Cancer. Don't Pump Gas," and one of my favorites, "Married and Depressed? There May Be A Connection."   But suddenly it's seeming I'm not quite the good read I once was. Then I saw Bruce Feller's essay in The New York Times, "For the Love of Being ' Like...

OK, I'll admit.  I love it when I see likes on stuff I write.  The good news is, if someone likes something online, chances are it will induce others to like it, too. Found this out today in a story in the NYT by Kenneth Chang, who writes, "If you 'like' this article on a site like Facebook, somebody who reads it is more likely to approve of it, even if the reporting and writing are not all that great." We'll skip that last part! But it's true.  How many times have you checked out something on Facebook a friend "liked"?  Even more insane, even if a friend dislikes something, Chang reports, "An unfair negative reaction will not spur others to dislike the article. Instead, a thumbs-down view will soon be counteracted by thumbs up from other readers." Wish I could say I've seen that happen.  I remember writing several years ago an essay on parenting in which I talked (anonymously) about a friend and her humorous, I thought, way ...

So now I get it.  It's that electric jolt I get when my views top 75 (OK, only once, but come on, people, tell your friends about this blog!).  Facebook is our high. An op-ed in The Sunday Review put it the best:  we love the instant approval we get when we post something and our friends immediately respond.   The essay was mostly about the bad things Facebook encourages us to do, like pose in a thong, when  mommy panties make more sense, or post how much you hate your boss, or, to me, the worst, deface places like the Grand Canyon or saguaros in the desert just so you can post it online.  But as Jenna Wortham puts it, "That feedback loop of positive reinforcement is the most addictive element of social media." Whether you're a mom posting your son's championship baseball win, or your latest cedar-planked salmon, let's face it.  It feels good when friends come back with praise and accolades. “For people who get a lot of motivation out of knowi...