Frequent Facebook users more likely to live longer
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Jonah Engel Bromwich
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NYT NEWS SERVICE
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Study Links More Friend Requests To Reduced Mortality
As our social lives have
moved on to social media sites like Face book over the past decade,
there's been a lot of hand-wringing over what all that screen time might
be doing to our health. But according to a new paper, time spent on
social media could be associated with a longer life. The paper,
published in the jour
nal PNAS on Monday , asserts that the health effects of active online
social lives largely mirror the benefits of busy offline social lives.
“We find that people with more friends online are less likely to die
than their disconnected counterparts,“ the paper says. “This evidence
contradicts assertions that social media have had a net-negative impact
on health.“
The study's methods was approved by three university and state review boards, but sceptics will note that Facebook itself was closely involved with it. William Hobbs, 29, a postdoctoral fellow at Northeastern University, worked at Facebook as a research intern in 2013. Another of the paper's authors, Moira Burke, worked on it in her capacity as a research scientist at Facebook. Hobbs, who conducted the research while he was a PhD student at the University of California, San Diego, said Facebook had not interfered with the paper's results.
“We had some things in writing that they couldn't interfere with the
publication of the research no matter what the result was,“ he said. He
noted, though, that some at the company had been “pretty confident that
we were going to find this result.“
A news release sent by a spokeswoman at the University of California,
San Diego, drives the point home. “The research confirms what scientists
have known for a long time about the offline world: People who have
stronger social networks live longer,“ the release said. The study was
based on 12 million social media profiles made available to the
researchers by Facebook, as well as records from the California
department of health. It found that “moderate use“ of Facebook was
associated with the lowest mortality rate, and that receiving friend
requests correlated with reduced mortality , but that sending friend
requests did not.
Hobbs and the paper's other authors matched records from California's department of public health with those of California Facebook users, preserving privacy by aggregating the data before analysing it, the release said. All of the subjects of the study were born from 1945 to 1989. The paper found that people with large or even average social networks lived longer than people who had very small social networks.
The paper itself acknowledges the study's “many limitations,“ saying that Facebook is unique among social media websites and that its data might not be more broadly applicable. It also points out that its findings represent a correlative relationship as opposed to a causal one: There is no evidence in the paper that using Facebook has any direct effect on a person's health. James Fowler, a professor of public health and political science at the University of California, San Diego, and another of the paper's authors, said he had been surprised that requesting the friendship of others was not found to be associated with a longer life span. “I had hoped we would find that reaching out to others was associated with better health,“ he said.
The study's methods was approved by three university and state review boards, but sceptics will note that Facebook itself was closely involved with it. William Hobbs, 29, a postdoctoral fellow at Northeastern University, worked at Facebook as a research intern in 2013. Another of the paper's authors, Moira Burke, worked on it in her capacity as a research scientist at Facebook. Hobbs, who conducted the research while he was a PhD student at the University of California, San Diego, said Facebook had not interfered with the paper's results.
“We had some things in writing that they couldn't interfere with the
publication of the research no matter what the result was,“ he said. He
noted, though, that some at the company had been “pretty confident that
we were going to find this result.“
A news release sent by a spokeswoman at the University of California,
San Diego, drives the point home. “The research confirms what scientists
have known for a long time about the offline world: People who have
stronger social networks live longer,“ the release said. The study was
based on 12 million social media profiles made available to the
researchers by Facebook, as well as records from the California
department of health. It found that “moderate use“ of Facebook was
associated with the lowest mortality rate, and that receiving friend
requests correlated with reduced mortality , but that sending friend
requests did not.Hobbs and the paper's other authors matched records from California's department of public health with those of California Facebook users, preserving privacy by aggregating the data before analysing it, the release said. All of the subjects of the study were born from 1945 to 1989. The paper found that people with large or even average social networks lived longer than people who had very small social networks.
The paper itself acknowledges the study's “many limitations,“ saying that Facebook is unique among social media websites and that its data might not be more broadly applicable. It also points out that its findings represent a correlative relationship as opposed to a causal one: There is no evidence in the paper that using Facebook has any direct effect on a person's health. James Fowler, a professor of public health and political science at the University of California, San Diego, and another of the paper's authors, said he had been surprised that requesting the friendship of others was not found to be associated with a longer life span. “I had hoped we would find that reaching out to others was associated with better health,“ he said.
