Discovery: Click your worries away

New study says Facebook comments boost happiness, overall satisfaction

NEW YORK: A total of 60 Facebook comments in a month (two per day) can impact one’s feelings of well-being and overall satisfaction with life, suggests a new research. The impact is equal to that of getting married or having a baby.

What makes people feel good is when those they know and care about, write personalised posts or comments. Passively reading posts or one-click feedback, such as ‘likes’, does not make much of a difference, the findings showed. “It turns out, when you talk with a little more depth on Facebook, you feel better,” said Robert Kraut, professor at the Human-Computer Interaction Institute of Carnegie Mellon University, Pennsylvania. “That also happens when people talk in person,” Kraut noted.

The study, published in the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, was based on 1,910 Facebook users from 91 countries who were recruited via Facebook ads. Each agreed to take a monthly survey for three months. By considering mood and behaviour over time, the study revealed that Facebook interactions with friends predicted improvements in such measures of well-being as satisfaction with life, happiness, loneliness and depression.

“We’re not talking about anything that’s particularly labour-intensive,” Moira Burke, a research scientist at Facebook, said. “This can be a comment that’s just a sentence or two. The important thing is that someone like a close friend takes the time to personalise it. The content may be uplifting and the mere act of communication reminds recipients of the meaningful relationships in their lives,” Burke noted.

The findings run counter to many previous studies based on user surveys, which often have shown that time spent on social media is associated with a greater likelihood of loneliness and depression. “You’re left to wonder if it is unhappy people using social media or is social media affecting happiness?” Kraut stated.

The new study was able to resolve this ‘chicken-or-egg’ dilemma by using Facebook logs to examine counts of participants’ actual Facebook activity. The new findings suggest that people who are feeling down may indeed spend more time on social media but they choose to do so because they have learned it makes them feel better.  “They’re reminded of the people they care about in their live,” Burke said.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 8^th, 2016.

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