The study by two German universities found visits the Facebook website triggered feelings of misery and loneliness in many users.
As many as one in three Facebook users reported feeling worse and more dissatisfied with their lives after viewing the website.
“We were surprised by how many people have a negative experience from Facebook with envy leaving them feeling lonely, frustrated or angry,” said researcher Hanna Krasnova from the Institute of Information Systems at Berlin’s Humboldt University.
Facebook, the world’s largest online social network, now has over one billion users – and so Facebook Envy may now be a problem for hundreds of millions of people.
“From our observations some of these people will then leave Facebook or at least reduce their use of the site,” said Dr Krasnova,
The researchers Humboldt University and from Darmstadt’s Technical University found that holiday photographs were the biggest cause of resentment, causing more than half the recorded “envy incidents.”
Facebook users were also likely to compare how many birthday greetings they received to those of their Facebook friends, and the number of “likes” or comments on photographs and postings.
People in their mid-30s were more likely to envy family happiness, and women were more likely to envy physical attractiveness.