It's not just the highlights reel, but rather the aggregate. So for example if you have say 52 friends (52 weeks in a year to put emphasis on the point) then the odds are that on any given week someone is on a trip. In other words it looks like all your friends are travelling all the time but it's not true, it just feels that way.
Now if you increase your friends to 100, 200, 500, or more than this perception is even worse!! You'll be seeing multiple friends travelling each week. And on the holidays it will be even worse. However individually each friend is about the same on average.
To make things even more skewed you will probably have a few friends that will indeed have a better highlight reel, and possibly a better life, so of course you'll compare yourself to them more than your average friends cause that's how humans work. And God forbid one is a prolific facebook poster!
Also another thing to remember is that the more a post is liked the more feeds it showed up in. In other words really cool news will appear in a lot more feeds and negative news dies fast. This further skews our perceptions of how great things are.
The key is that comparing in facebook is a bad thing. The data is all skewed and not really comparable, but we still do it because it's in our nature. The best advice is to try and appreciate and remember this and as a result avoid those kinds of comparisons. Well that and like everything else such as TV, etc., limit your time to something reasonable. Oh and if you have friends that are really just acquaintances that fall into these categories then don't be afraid to hide their feeds ;)
Now if you increase your friends to 100, 200, 500, or more than this perception is even worse!! You'll be seeing multiple friends travelling each week. And on the holidays it will be even worse. However individually each friend is about the same on average.
To make things even more skewed you will probably have a few friends that will indeed have a better highlight reel, and possibly a better life, so of course you'll compare yourself to them more than your average friends cause that's how humans work. And God forbid one is a prolific facebook poster!
Also another thing to remember is that the more a post is liked the more feeds it showed up in. In other words really cool news will appear in a lot more feeds and negative news dies fast. This further skews our perceptions of how great things are.
The key is that comparing in facebook is a bad thing. The data is all skewed and not really comparable, but we still do it because it's in our nature. The best advice is to try and appreciate and remember this and as a result avoid those kinds of comparisons. Well that and like everything else such as TV, etc., limit your time to something reasonable. Oh and if you have friends that are really just acquaintances that fall into these categories then don't be afraid to hide their feeds ;)