A new study of over 12 million social media users has found, using Facebook may help you live longer but only when it serves to maintain and enhance your real-world social ties.
It documents, for the first time that, what happens online may matter as well as people who have stronger social networks live longer – as for scientists.
It documents, for the first time that, what happens online may matter as well as people who have stronger social networks live longer – as for scientists.
“Interacting online seems to be healthy when the online activity is moderate and complements interactions offline”, said a doctoral student at University of California San Diego at the time of the study, now postdoctoral.
He added, “it is only on the extreme end, spending a lot of time online with little evidence of being connected to people otherwise, that we see a negative association”.
The researches matched California Facebook users with vital records from the California Department of Public Health.
They studied counts of online activity over six months, comparing the activity of those still living to those who had died.
All of those studied were born between 1945 and 1989, and all the comparisons were made between people of similar age and gender.
The first finding is that those who are on Facebook live longer than those who are not. In a given year, an average Facebook user is about 12% less likely to die than someone who does not use the site.
Among people who do use Facebook, the researchers looked at numbers of friends’, numbers of photos, and status updates, numbers of wall posts and messages sent, to see if people who were more active lived longer.
