Published September 13, 2026. Last updated September 13, 2026.
You catch yourself mid-scroll doing the math again: their salary against yours, their relationship against yours, how far along they seem next to how far along you feel. Psychology has a name for that habit and a real body of research measuring how common it is, what direction of comparison does to mood, and what changes when the comparing runs through a phone screen with a reach no neighborhood ever had. This page lays out the social comparison statistics that come from named studies, each with its population and its data collection year attached.
Key takeaways
- Across 10 American samples totaling more than 4,300 people and 12 Dutch samples totaling more than 3,200 people, comparison tendency measured on the 11-item Iowa-Netherlands Comparison Orientation Measure formed a stable, normally distributed trait in both countries; fieldwork year not stated, publication is 1999 (Gibbons & Buunk, 1999).
- Among 500 American adolescents (mean age 14) and 692 American college freshmen (mean age 18) asked how often they compare their grades with others, 80 percent of each group scored above the midpoint of the frequency scale; fieldwork year not stated, publication is 1999 (Gibbons & Buunk, 1999).
- Among 2,079 working-age British adults surveyed for two weeks in late September 2011, average fear of missing out scored 1.89 on a 1-to-5 scale, and each one-point rise in FOMO predicted more social media engagement (Przybylski et al., 2013).
- Among 145 undergraduates (106 women, median age 19) at a Midwestern American university, heavier Facebook use tracked with lower self-esteem, and that link ran specifically through greater exposure to upward comparisons on the site; fieldwork year not stated, publication is 2014 (Vogel et al., 2014).
- In a University of Michigan laboratory study of 67 analyzed undergraduates randomly assigned to browse or post on Facebook for 10 minutes, only the browsing group showed a measurable mood drop by the end of the day; fieldwork year not stated, publication is 2015 (Verduyn et al., 2015).
- Among University of Michigan students tracked five times daily for two weeks (14 days) in 2014, passive Facebook use predicted rising envy, and envy in turn predicted a drop in mood strong enough to statistically explain the passive-use effect on its own (Verduyn et al., 2015).
- Among 1,000 UK social media users aged 16 to 24 surveyed by Censuswide for the Cybersmile Foundation between May 23 and May 26, 2023, 89 percent said they compare themselves with others online and 59 percent said they do it daily (Cybersmile Foundation, 2023).
- That same 2023 UK sample of 1,000 16-to-24-year-olds reported 93 percent felt pressure to compare themselves online and 93 percent experienced a negative consequence from doing so (Cybersmile Foundation, 2023).
Cite this page
APA: Eduard, S. (2026, September 13). Social comparison statistics: How common it is, and what the envy and FOMO research shows. StumbleTowardTheLight. https://stumbletowardthelight.com/social-comparison-statistics/
MLA: Eduard, Sebastian. “Social Comparison Statistics: How Common It Is, and What the Envy and FOMO Research Shows.” StumbleTowardTheLight, 13 Sept. 2026, stumbletowardthelight.com/social-comparison-statistics/.
The source table
| # | Statistic | Data collected | Source type | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Comparison-orientation scale administered to more than 4,300 Americans across 10 samples and more than 3,200 Dutch across 12 samples, ages ranging from adolescents to adults | Not stated in the paper; publication 1999 | primary study | Gibbons & Buunk, 1999, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology |
| 2 | 80% of 500 American adolescents and 80% of 692 American college freshmen scored above the midpoint of an academic comparison-frequency scale | Not stated; publication 1999 | primary study | Gibbons & Buunk, 1999 |
| 3 | Downward comparison lifted mood for participants low in self-esteem; upward comparison lifted mood more for participants already high in self-esteem | Not stated; publication 1989 | primary study | Gibbons & Gerrard, 1989, Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology |
| 4 | Fear of Missing Out scale (FoMOs) built and validated on 1,013 international adults recruited online, mean age 28.5, 41% United States, 36% India | Not stated; publication 2013 | primary study | Przybylski et al., 2013, Computers in Human Behavior |
| 5 | Nationally representative Great Britain sample of 2,079 working-age adults (22-65) averaged 1.89 of 5 on the FoMO scale; FOMO fell with age and rose with social media engagement | Fielded over 2 weeks in late September 2011 | primary study | Przybylski et al., 2013 |
| 6 | 87 first-year university students high in FOMO used Facebook more, reported more ambivalent (both positive and negative) emotion while using it, and were more likely to use it during lectures | Not stated; publication 2013 | primary study | Przybylski et al., 2013 |
| 7 | 145 undergraduates (106 women, median age 19) at a Midwestern US university: heavier Facebook use linked to lower trait self-esteem through more exposure to upward comparisons | Not stated; publication 2014 | primary study | Vogel et al., 2014, Psychology of Popular Media Culture |
| 8 | 67 analyzed University of Michigan undergraduates randomly assigned to 10 minutes of passive (browsing) or active (posting) Facebook use; only the passive group’s mood dropped by end of day | Not stated; publication 2015 | primary study | Verduyn et al., 2015, Journal of Experimental Psychology: General |
| 9 | University of Michigan students surveyed 5 times a day for two weeks (14 days): passive Facebook use predicted a same-interval mood decline mediated by rising envy | 2014 (two-week sampling period; exact calendar dates not given) | primary study | Verduyn et al., 2015 |
| 10 | 1,000 UK social media users aged 16-24: 89% compare themselves to others online, 59% do so daily, 93% feel pressure to compare, 93% report a negative consequence from it | May 23-26, 2023 | advocacy org | Cybersmile Foundation, 2023, Comparison Culture Report |
| 11 | Live aggregator page listing an unattributed statistic that 88% of women compare themselves to images they see on social media, among 65 uncredited figures on the page | No collection year given; page stamped published Feb. 12, 2026, updated June 28, 2026 | derived (circulation-chain investigation) | wifitalents.com comparing-yourself statistics |
What is social comparison?
Social comparison is measuring your own opinions, abilities, or situation against another person’s when no fixed external standard is available to measure against, a concept the psychologist Leon Festinger formalized in 1954 as an evaluative drive people carry into ambiguous situations (Festinger, 1954). Why comparing your life to others feels so automatic traces that mechanism in full. Frederick Gibbons and Bram Buunk later built a way to measure how much of this any one person does, calling it comparison orientation. Their 11-item Iowa-Netherlands Comparison Orientation Measure splits into two closely related parts: comparing how you are doing (abilities, accomplishments, social skills) and comparing what you think (opinions, reactions to a shared situation) (Gibbons & Buunk, 1999). Scored this way, comparison stops being a single event you can point to and becomes a trait with a distribution, some people sitting high on it and some low, the same way height or extraversion has a range.
How common is social comparison?
Comparison orientation is close to universal, though the amount varies person to person. When Gibbons and Buunk asked 500 American adolescents and 692 American college freshmen how often they checked their test scores against other students’, 80 percent of both groups landed above the midpoint of the frequency scale, on a scale anchored by “never” at one end and “a lot” at the other, with the average response sitting close to the “a lot” end (Gibbons & Buunk, 1999). The scale itself, administered across 10 American samples (more than 4,300 people) and 12 Dutch samples (more than 3,200 people) ranging from high schoolers to cancer patients, produced a normal distribution in both countries every time, meaning most people cluster in a broad middle of the distribution. Social comparison is described elsewhere as automatic, something that happens before a person notices they are doing it, which tracks with why the habit shows up quietly, mid-scroll, without announcing itself. It is also the same territory covered by the psychology behind feeling lost in life, since uncertainty about where you stand is the condition both experiences share.
Is social comparison good or bad?
Direction decides the effect more than the act itself. Frederick Gibbons and Meg Gerrard found that comparing yourself with someone doing worse lifted mood specifically for people who already had low self-esteem, while comparing yourself with someone doing better lifted mood more for people who already felt secure (Gibbons & Gerrard, 1989). A high frequency count on Gibbons and Buunk’s comparison-orientation scale describes a habit; a person’s overall happiness with their life is its own separate measure. The direction of the comparison and the uncertainty underneath it carry more weight than the frequency count alone. Festinger’s original theory ties the whole mechanism to missing external standards, which is part of why building a fixed personal quest gives the mind a reference point that does not depend on watching someone else.
What do social media comparison statistics show?
Facebook use tied to lower self-esteem in a 2014 study of 145 Midwestern American undergraduates, and the mechanism ran specifically through upward comparison: students who used the site more were exposed to more content that made others look better off, and that exposure predicted the self-esteem drop on its own, independent of overall time spent on the site (Vogel et al., 2014). A separate line of research isolated the manner of Facebook use, active or passive, as the variable that mattered on its own. Randomly assigning 67 University of Michigan undergraduates to spend 10 minutes either browsing Facebook passively or posting and commenting actively, only the browsing group showed a measurable mood decline by the end of that day; the posting group’s mood held steady (Verduyn et al., 2015). A follow-up tracking University of Michigan students five times a day for two weeks found people spent about 50 percent more time browsing passively than posting actively, putting most of a typical Facebook session into the behavior the study linked to a mood cost. That pattern connects directly to the feeling-lost-in-life statistics this site tracks, since the two habits share the same underlying uncertainty.
What do envy and FOMO statistics show?
Fear of missing out, FOMO, measures a specific anxious flavor of comparison: the sense that others are having rewarding experiences you’re not part of. Andrew Przybylski and colleagues built a validated 10-item scale for it and gave it to 2,079 working-age British adults through a nationally representative panel fielded over two weeks in late September 2011; the average score sat at 1.89 on a 1-to-5 scale, and FOMO fell as age rose while it climbed with heavier social media engagement (Przybylski et al., 2013). In a smaller sample of 87 first-year university students from the same research, students scoring high on FOMO reported more ambivalent feelings while using Facebook, more use of it during lectures, and more phone-checking behind the wheel. Envy operates as a documented pathway from passive comparison to lower mood specifically. Tracking University of Michigan students across two weeks in 2014, researchers found passive Facebook use predicted rising envy, and that envy, statistically, accounted for the entire measured link between passive use and the mood decline that followed it (Verduyn et al., 2015).
Where an unsourced comparison statistic comes from
A site called wifitalents.com carries a page of comparison statistics, stamped published February 12, 2026 and updated June 28, 2026, stating that 88 percent of women compare themselves to images they see on social media. That figure sits among 65 statistics on the page spanning body image, career, financial, and FOMO categories. Two facts about it are checkable directly on the page. First, the 88 percent line names no study, no survey firm, and no collection year, so a reader cannot learn who was asked or when. Second, the page states only that its claims were pulled from 71 sources shown as a logo list, with no mapping of which logo backs which of the 65 numbers, so the 88 percent figure cannot be traced back to a named survey at all.
A comparison statistic that does carry both a population and a date is the Cybersmile Foundation’s Comparison Culture Report, based on 1,000 UK social media users aged 16 to 24 surveyed by the research firm Censuswide between May 23 and May 26, 2023, where 89 percent said they compare themselves with others online and 59 percent said they do so daily (Cybersmile Foundation, 2023). Those two figures describe a different, named population surveyed on a stated date, the pattern every statistic on this page follows.
Methodology
Every statistic on this page traces to a study or survey report read directly, in full, at the primary source. Academic sources were checked against their published abstracts, methods and results sections; the Cybersmile figures were checked against the foundation’s own report page. Where a paper reported a mean or a percentage without stating the year data was collected, this page says so explicitly next to the number, leaving the publication year in its own place. The aggregator page discussed above was opened directly to confirm it carries no per-statistic sourcing before being named here. Sources last verified September 13, 2026.
Cite this page
APA: Eduard, S. (2026, September 13). Social comparison statistics: How common it is, and what the envy and FOMO research shows. StumbleTowardTheLight. https://stumbletowardthelight.com/social-comparison-statistics/
MLA: Eduard, Sebastian. “Social Comparison Statistics: How Common It Is, and What the Envy and FOMO Research Shows.” StumbleTowardTheLight, 13 Sept. 2026, stumbletowardthelight.com/social-comparison-statistics/.
Frequently asked questions
How common is social comparison?
Close to universal but variable in degree: in two 1990s samples of 500 American adolescents and 692 American college freshmen, 80 percent scored above the midpoint of a comparison-frequency scale (Gibbons & Buunk, 1999).
Is social comparison good or bad?
Its effect depends on direction and on who is doing the comparing: downward comparison lifted mood most for people with low self-esteem, while upward comparison lifted mood most for people who already felt secure (Gibbons & Gerrard, 1989).
What is social comparison, in psychological terms?
It is evaluating your opinions, abilities, or situation against another person’s when a fixed external standard is missing, a drive Leon Festinger described in 1954 and that later researchers learned to measure as a stable individual trait (Festinger, 1954; Gibbons & Buunk, 1999).
What do social media comparison statistics show?
Among 145 Midwestern American undergraduates, heavier Facebook use tracked with lower self-esteem specifically through greater exposure to upward comparisons on the platform (Vogel et al., 2014).
How common is FOMO, and what does it do?
Among 2,079 British adults surveyed in late September 2011, average FOMO scored 1.89 of 5, falling with age and rising with social media use; among a separate sample of University of Michigan students tracked across two weeks, FOMO’s cousin envy statistically explained the mood decline that followed passive social media browsing (Przybylski et al., 2013; Verduyn et al., 2015).
Related reading
References
Cybersmile Foundation. (2023). Comparison culture report.
Festinger, L. (1954). A theory of social comparison processes. Human Relations, 7(2), 117-140.
Gibbons, F. X., & Buunk, B. P. (1999). Individual differences in social comparison: Development of a scale of social comparison orientation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 76(1), 129-142.
Gibbons, F. X., & Gerrard, M. (1989). Effects of upward and downward social comparison on mood states. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 8(1), 14-31.
Przybylski, A. K., Murayama, K., DeHaan, C. R., & Gladwell, V. (2013). Motivational, emotional, and behavioral correlates of fear of missing out. Computers in Human Behavior, 29(4), 1841-1848.
Verduyn, P., Lee, D. S., Park, J., Shablack, H., Orvell, A., Bayer, J., Ybarra, O., Jonides, J., & Kross, E. (2015). Passive Facebook usage undermines affective well-being: Experimental and longitudinal evidence. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 144(2), 480-488.
Vogel, E. A., Rose, J. P., Roberts, L. R., & Eckles, K. (2014). Social comparison, social media, and self-esteem. Psychology of Popular Media Culture, 3(4), 206-222.