It has long been known that quality of life and longevity are linked to our offline social networks (ie those who maintain healthy friendships tend to live longer). However, when it comes to online social networks, studies in the past have usually pointed to all sorts of negative feelings, ranging from a fear of missing out when seeing posts about all the amazing parties we’re not at to jealousy upon seeing fabulous holidays snaps of picture-perfect families.

These studies analyse the effect of social media use from a passive viewpoint, whereas new research has examined how people actively use these platforms by comparing 12 million Facebook users to non-users. It was found that mortality rates were lowest for people who used the platform in moderation while having plenty of active friendships offline.

Lower mortality rates were also associated with people who received plenty of friendship requests whereas those who initiate friendships on Facebook don’t enjoy the same benefit. However, as usual, the golden rule is that correlation does not equal causation so it is difficult to know whether the way we use Facebook can impact upon our quality of life or whether our quality of life dictates how we interact on Facebook.

[ http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2016/10/25/1605554113.fullOpens in new window ]