Lovers of Instagram, finally you are having the last laugh.
All those haters who mocked as you stood on a chair for the perfect brunch snap are about to get their come-uppance.
A new study suggests that posting personal experiences on social media, whether that be Facebook, Instagram or Twitter, actually makes those events much easier to recall.
In fact, lead author Qi Wang, says that putting experiences online is the “best” way for humans to remember these memories: “Social media - blogs, Facebook, Twitter, and others alike - provide an important outlet for us to recall memories, in the public space, and share with other people,” explained Wang.
Memory researchers have long known that people writing about their experiences in daily life (such as a diary) helps them recall them at a later date and share them with others with great accuracy.
But it seems posting pictures has the same effect, especially when it is substantiated by social feedback such as comments - not to mention Facebook constantly trying to make us feel old and boring by using Timehop to remind us of previous events and bring them back into our consciousness.
The experiment took 66 students and asked them to keep a diary for a week, describing daily events. The researchers found that if the event had also been posted about on social media, the likelihood of it being recalled at the end of the week was greatly enhanced.
Wang said: “This work is the first step toward a better understanding of the autobiographical self in the internet era where the virtual externalization of personal memories has become commonplace.”
Although maybe you don’t need to take so many selfies...