Just two nice comments a day keeps worries away
An apple a day keeps the doctor away is an old saying.
Now, it’s ‘just two comments a day keeps worries away.’
A new research suggests that just two comments a day can impact your feelings of well-being and satisfaction with life just as much as getting married or having a baby.
What really makes people feel good is when those they know and care about write personalised posts or comments.
However, the research also showed that passively reading posts or one-click feedback such as ‘likes’ do not make much difference.
‘It turns out that when you talk with a little more depth on Facebook to people you already like, you feel better,’ said one of the researchers Robert Kraut, Professor at Human-Computer Interaction Institute, Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Kraut also noted that ‘That also happens when people talk in person.’
The study was based on 1910 Facebook users from 91 countries and published by the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication. The users were recruited with Facebook ads.
Users agreed to take a monthly survey for 3 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 labor-intensive,’ Moira Burke, a research scientist at Facebook who earned a PhD in human-computer interaction at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, said.
‘This can be a comment that’s just a sentence or two. The important thing is that someone such as 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 – is it that unhappy people are using social media, or is social media affecting happiness?’ Kraut said.
The new study was able to resolve this ‘chicken-or-egg’ dilemma by using Facebook logs to examine counts of participants’ actual Facebook activity over a period of months.
The new findings suggests 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, Burke said.
‘They are reminded of the people they care about in their lives’, Burke added.
Although the study was restricted to Facebook, nice comments received on any social medium should be able to keep worries away!
