Time in a Virtual World: Facebook Intrusion, Time Perspective, and Contents of Facebook Narratives

Online social networking sites are places where users spend a lot of their time and leave a huge number of narratives. In the virtual world of Facebook, moving in a space is limited to only a slight hand movement. The aim of this study was to examine the relationship between the level of Facebook intrusion, time perspective, and the contents of Facebook narratives. The participants were 83 Polish Facebook users, aged 18 to 62 years. We used the Facebook Intrusion Questionnaire, the Zimbardo Time Perspective Inventory, and the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count program. The results suggest that Facebook intrusion is connected with the low future perspective of Facebook users. Moreover, the stronger the Facebook intrusion, the more swear words in Facebook narratives. There were significant positive relationships between a present fatalistic time perspective and words expressing aggression in Facebook narratives. The results were interpreted in the context of the theory of embodied cognition.