Can a photograph a day keep the doctor away?
Millions of people are involved in the #365 project — taking one photo every day for 1 year. A new study explores the potential benefits of this social media phenomenon. Can photo-a-day projects improve well-being?
According to Facebook's figures, in March 2018, they had 1.45 billion users who were active on a daily basis. That's around 1 in 5 people. Think about that for just a second — 1 in every 5 people on this green and blue sphere log in to the same website each and every day.
Incredible. So what do we do when we're there? We look at photos that people have posted. We might even post up some of our own now and again.
Some people make an effort to take and share one photo every single day. For instance, Instagram has over 1.5 million photos tagged as #356. Documenting a moment from every day of your life has become a habit and, for some, a passion. But is it a healthy pastime?
Because uploading photos to social media sites are so ubiquitous, it might be having an impact on our global well-being — but is it positive or negative?
Researchers from Lancaster University and the University of Sheffield, both in the United Kingdom, set out to answer these questions. Co-authored by Drs. Liz Brewster and Andrew Cox, their paper was recently published in the journal Health.
So what did they find? Spoiler alert: it's complicated.
The researchers focused on one photo-a-day website. Over a 2-month period, they followed eight users. They collated information about the subject matter of uploaded photos, text added to the pictures, and how the users interacted. Overall, taking a photo and firing it onto the Internet seemed to improve well-being via three main routes: self-care, community interaction, and the potential for reminiscence.
04.05.2018
We must not allow other people’s limited perceptions to define us
Satir
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