Becoming a mother turns women in compulsive Facebook users, a new study has found.
Researchers from Ohio State University interviewed 154 mothers and 150 fathers and found that 44 percent of mothers reported using Facebook more after giving birth than before.
Around 29 percent estimated they used the social networking site the same as before they gave birth, while 27 percent said they used it less.
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For anyone who is friends with a new mother on Facebook, it will come as no surprise to hear that most of them spend a lot of time online posting photos of their new babies.
The study found that 93 percent of mothers used the site to upload and share images of their new addition.
New fathers, on the other hand, showed far less pronounced changes in their Facebook habits, with 31 percent saying their usage had increased, 51 percent reporting it had stayed the same and 19 percent saying it had decreased.
The results surprised the researcher, who expected new mothers to report they had no time for things like Facebook.
“Given all the stress that new parents are under and everything they have to manage, it wouldn’t have been surprising if we had found a decrease in Facebook usage, but that’s not what we found,” study co-author Sarah Schoppe-Sullivan said in a media release.
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Study leader Mitchell Bartholomew thinks new mothers might be using the social networking site as a source of support at a very stressful time.
“These mothers may be taking time off from work, and may be far from family, so this network they created for themselves on Facebook can be very valuable in helping them cope,” he said.
This study was published in the journal Family Relations.
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