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 Researchers stop short of saying that using the social networking
website will either hasten or delay illness or death, but they
conclude that how a person interacts on the site might say a lot
about their level of risk.
"We can’t say using Facebook is good for you, but I think the study
provides evidence that it’s probably not bad for you," said James
Fowler, the study's senior author, from the University of
California, San Diego.
Past studies have found that people with more friends and social
ties in their community tend to live longer, Fowler and his
coauthors, which include a representative from Facebook, write in
the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Social
connections may promote healthy behaviors, improve immunity and
reduce inflammation, the research team writes.
But past studies focused on real-life interactions, and it’s been
less clear if the same was true for online social connections.
For the new study, the researchers used anonymized data on about 12
million Facebook users living in California. All joined the site
before October 2010 and were in their 20s through 60s during the
first six months of 2011, the period of Facebook activity the
researchers analyzed.
The study team tracked deaths and causes of death in the next couple
of years by matching subjects to California Department of Public
Health records of deaths in 2012 and 2013.
In one analysis, the researchers looked at mortality rates among
Facebook users and 89,597 non-users matched from California voter
records and found that Facebook users were 12 percent less likely to
die during that time.
For their other analyses, researchers focused solely on Facebook
users and analyzed online activities like sending and accepting
“friend requests,” posting photos and "liking" other people's
updates.
People who were popular and accepted the most friend requests were
about 34 percent less likely to die than those who accepted the
fewest requests. There was no benefit in sending the most friend
requests, though.
That result is a bit disappointing since it suggests seeking out new
friendships may not lead to health benefits, Fowler told Reuters
Health.
The types of activities that did or did not seem to come with a
lower risk of dying were telling, the researchers write, because the
ones tied to a benefit seemed to point to an active social life
offline.
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They found that people who posted the most photos and the fewest
"status updates" were about 30 percent less likely to die over the
study period than the average Facebook user, for example.
But there was no decreased risk of death for those with the most
online-only activities, such as writing wall posts or messages.
“We didn’t see any relationship between Facebook 'likes' and
health," said lead author William Hobbs, of Northeastern University
in Boston.
The findings suggest real-life interactions drive any possible
decrease in a person's risk of death, according to the researchers.
Their analysis suggests the lowest risk of death was among people
tagged in the most Facebook photos and those who engage on the
website a moderate amount.
Knowing the signs of healthy behavior or risk might lead to ways of
using Facebook to identify people at risk and promote healthy
interventions, according to Fowler.
For instance, knowing that certain activities on Facebook are tied
to an increased risk of death from causes like suicide or heart
disease can help researchers design programs that will flag the risk
and allow a user's friends to intervene, he said.
"These are really inexpensive interventions that can reach hundreds,
thousands and possibly even millions of people," said Dr. Michael
Thase, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania
Perelman School of Medicine in Philadelphia.
Similar programs could possibly be run through other social media,
too, said Thase, who wasn't involved with the new study.
"The monitoring function that’s possible with social media - to know
risks - is a good thing," he told Reuters Health.
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/2e5RIGP Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences, online October 31, 2016.
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