Facebook Users Live Longer, Study Finds

Are Facebook friends just as good as "real" friends?

A new study from the University of California, San Diego, suggests that at least one of the benefits of real friends may come along with a healthy use of online social networks. Facebook users, it turns out, have lower rates of mortality — that is, are less likely to die — than those who haven't signed up for the site.

The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, was written by a team led by UCSD researchers William Hobbs and James Fowler in concert with researchers at Yale and Facebook. They examined data from nearly 180,000 Facebook users and cross-referenced it with publicly available voter mortality data.

An average Facebook user is 12 percent less likely to die than a non-user in any given year, according to the data, controlling for age and gender.

This isn't particularly surprising, though — the researchers say this finding is their "crudest measure." This may simply be evidence that people who have higher life expectancies, such as people with higher socioeconomic status, may use Facebook at high rates, rather than suggesting that social media improves your lifespan.

But the researchers' other findings, while not conclusive, do suggest the stronger finding that online social networks may be good for our health.

Looking at the number of Facebook friends, frequency of posts and amount of messages sent, the researchers found that the people with moderately sized social networks performed better on measures of longevity than others. People with social networks somewhat above average in size, in between the top 50 and 30 percent, live longer than those in the bottom 10 percent.

"Interacting online seems to be healthy when the online activity is moderate and complements interactions offline," said Hobbs in a press release. "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."

In other words, Facebook usage seems to be good for you, as long as it's not an obsession and you have a healthy social life in the "real" world.

These findings are consistent with decades of research showing that people with strong ties to other people are healthier and live longer than those with weak ties. Humans, in other words, need connection in order to survive.

What the new study suggests is that online relationships, in many ways, may be just as real and beneficial as offline relationships.

Related: Kids and Social Media: How Young Is Too Young?

"The association between longevity and social networks was identified by Lisa Berkman in 1979 and has been replicated hundreds of times since," said Fowler.

He continued: "In fact, a recent meta-analysis suggests the connection may be very strong. Social relationships seem to be as predictive of lifespan as smoking, and more predictive than obesity and physical inactivity. We're adding to that conversation by showing that online relationships are associated with longevity, too."

Previous research found that social interactions online may contribute to our happiness in the same way the in-person connections do. Perhaps, in the face of all the commentary bemoaning the social media age, our online connections aren't as ephemeral as the critics believe.

But the news isn't all rosy. While people who receive the most friend requests on Facebook live the longest, there doesn't appear to be an association between sending friend requests and decreasing mortality.

So it would be misguided to look at this research and simply conclude that reaching out to more people online will make you healthier.

"What happens on Facebook and other social networks is very likely important," said Fowler. "But what we can't do at this time is give either individual or larger policy recommendations based on this first work."

Because the data is correlational, the researchers are unable to make strong claims about Facebook use causing longer life spans. Those kinds of claims are typically best shown be randomized controlled trials, rather than observational studies like this one.

In the larger context of the research on social relationships and human health, however, it's not too far a leap to believe that online interactions can contribute to emotional welfare and overall well-being.

At the very least, this data can help quell fears that online life will be the downfall of the younger generation's health.

"Happily, for almost all Facebook users, what we found is balanced use and a lower risk of mortality," said Fowler.

Read the full study here>>

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