This is scientific American's 60 second science. I'm Christopher Intagiyata.

Exercise and healthful eating are linked to better health, and so is having a decent circle of friends.

Now it looks like that link between friends and better health and so is having a decent circle of friends.

Now it looks like that link between friends and better health.

It's true for the major online social network, too.

Facebook.

Researchers compared the health records of 12 million Facebook users to non-users in California.

After controlling for things like age, race, and gender,

they found that being on Facebook was associated with a slightly lower risk of death in a given year.

Now some of that could be explained by the fact that Facebook users might be more affluent

or have better access to health care.

So the researchers did a second analysis by looking only at Facebook and non- Facebook users on the California voter rolls,

which is a sort of proxy control for socioeconomic status.

And the association still held up.

The studies in the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Of course, correlation does not equal causation.

Posting more photos, it's not going to increase your lifespan but the takeaway here is

that in some cases like when people tag you in their photos that online world

can reflect real world ties interactions on Facebook are thus reflective of your actual human relationships

and might even reinforce them, which certainly seems like a thumbs up.

Thanks for listening. For Scientific American 60 Second Science, I'm Christopher and Dunyata.