More Facebook friends may mean longer life

Having more friends on social media can have benefits for patients—namely, being less likely to die in the next two years.

The Los Angeles Times reported on a new study that compared Facebook activity and mortality rates of registered voters in California. People who received many friend requests over a two-year span were less likely to die than those who did not.

While the benefits of social interactions on health have been known for years, some researchers had been worried that networks like Facebook could have the opposite effect.

“There was definitely a concern about this that the authors point to in motivating their research,” Michael Macy, a computational social scientist at Cornell University who was not involved in the study, said to the Times. “And, of course, their finding is that it’s just the opposite.”

Sending friend requests, however, didn’t have the same positive effects on mortality rates.

For more on the implications of this study and whether physicians need to start telling patients to get more Facebook friends, click on the link below: