Study: Social networks are making you distrustful and unhappy

   

Facebook's 2012 experiment, while controversial, showed that what other people post on social media can alter moods. Apparently, though, that's not the only thing Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and others of their ilk can do: according to a study by two European researchers, social media could also affect how satisfied people are with their lives. Fabio Sabatini from the Sapienza University in Rome and Francesco Sarracino from STATEC, the government statistics agency of Luxembourg, paired up to crunch data from a huge survey (seriously, there were 50,000 responders) conducted in Italy. That survey asked participants how satisfied they are with their current lives, how often they meet with friends, whether they trust people and what they typically do on the internet.

Based on the answers they got, the duo concluded that people tend to feel more satisfied with their lives and to be more trusting of people if they often meet with friends in person. Obviously, that's not something you can do through the internet, so those who spend a ton of time on social networks are more inclined to be leery of other people. Sabatini and Sarracino also blame all the discrimination and hate speech online, in particular, for planting the seeds of distrust in social media users. In all, the study finds the overall effect of social networking on individuals to be "significantly negative" despite its power to keep people connected.

The new $350 Oculus Rift virtual reality headset is now shipping

     

We were expecting to see the new iteration of the Oculus Rift arrive on developer's doorsteps earlier this month, but unfortunately it hit a couple of delays. Road to VR points out a Reddit thread where pre-orderers confirmed their credit cards have been charged ahead of shipping. Community manager cyberreality confirmed in the thread that it's happening, and the "DK2" hardware we (and Mark Zuckerberg) were so impressed by is ready to roll. The initial production run is only supposed to cover some 10,000 of the 45,000 units ordered, so for some your wait is just beginning (until next month). In the meantime, you can check out our hands-on video of the latest and greatest in virtual reality after the break (or the new X-Men related Comic-Con demo) -- hopefully Sony's Project Morpheus team responds to this as quickly as they did on Blu-ray 3D.

William Shatner reviews Facebook's new VIP-only Mentions app

Whether you're a fan of Captain Kirk or Picard (we're Team Picard here), you have to admit that William Shatner reviewing the celebrity-exclusive Facebook app is apt -- he definitely loves some VIP prestige. The Priceline huckster gives a surprisingly in-depth feature-by-feature comparison between The Social Network's Mentions app and Pages, which everyone has access to, but not before throwing some shade toward the starshipEnterprise's yellow-shirted helmsman and all-around social-media-guy George Takei. Apparently, when you first sign into Mentions you can't proceed any further until you follow one of Facebook's suggested celebrity accounts.

"The first person on the list I was given was George Takei (rolling my eyes.) I ended up choosing Robert Downey Jr. to follow and then I hid his posts (sorry Robert!)."

That, he thinks, is a flaw because celebrities shouldn't have to follow other accounts unless they actually want to. Overall, Shatner is left unimpressed, but says he'll still keep using Mentions anyway, in tandem with Pages and the main Facebook app. Surprisingly, his review isn't half bad. Mr. Shatner, if you're reading this and would like to do this sort of thing on a regular basis, you can apply right here.