A new study, set to be published in the journal Psychological Science, reveals that Facebook users with low self-esteem may be pushing their friends away by posting too many dreary comments and pessimistic updates. 

"We had this idea that Facebook could be a really fantastic place for people to strengthen their relationships," says researcher Amanda Forest, a graduate student at the University of Waterloo in Canada, in a press release last weeek.

But rather, in three separate studies on undergraduate students, researchers revealed that those with low self-esteem use Facebook "counterproductively" – rather than strengthening and building much-needed friendships, they tend to use the site "in a manner that may push others away," they wrote.

Forest and Wood also found that people with low self-esteem get more responses from their Facebook friends when they post "highly positive updates, compared to less positive ones. People with high self-esteem, on the other hand, get more responses when they post negative items, perhaps because these are rarer for them, the researchers noted.

"We do not advocate being inauthentic," the authors wrote. But if you lack confidence and self-esteem and want to use Facebook to overcome social anxieties, try switching your focus. "Rather than posting phony positive updates, [those with low self-esteem] might try sharing more of the positive things that do happen to them, and try being selective about what negative things they post."

This study follows another announced last year that claimed Facebook and similar social networking sites can leave some feeling depressed. Stanford University researchers showed that because people tend to publicize only good moments, photos, and events in their lives, while hiding the negative ones, users are left with a skewed view of their friends' lives, feeling sad or dull by comparison.