Ever feel like you’re wasting precious hours scrolling through your Facebook feed?

You may actually be banking more precious hours.

A new study of 12 million Facebook users suggests that people who are active on Facebook may live longer.

But before you log on for the rest of the day, take note: The study suggests that Facebook is associated with a longer life, but only if the time spent interacting online is “moderate,” and the “user’s online activities reflect strong social interactions” in real life.

To determine mortality status and cause of death, researchers measured the Facebook activity of 12 million users in 2011 and then cross-referenced them with California Department of Public Health vital records for 2012 and 2013. The users were all born between 1945 and 1989. Each was compared to users with the same age and gender.

To compare Facebook users to the general population, researchers also examined users and non-users on the California voter rolls.

The study, conducted by researchers at Yale, California, Northeastern universities found that the risk of dying in a given year was about 12 per cent lower for users than non-Facebook users.

The study also found that receiving and accepting “friend requests” over Facebook is associated with reduced mortality, while initiating friendships over Facebook is not.

In a statement, study co-author William R. Hobbs cautioned that the study does not show cause and effect. But it may support previous research that has shown a link between real-world relationships and better health.

“It could be that the more you have moderate interactions online, the more likely you are to be friends with your Facebook friends offline as well, reinforcing the relationships,” says Hobbs, who is a postdoctoral research fellow at Northeastern University.

Hobbs noted that when online interaction among Facebook users was “extreme, and when we didn’t see evidence of users being … connected to people offline, we saw associations with worse health.”

Political and computer science professor David Lazer, who is the co-director of NULab of Texts, Maps and Networks, worked with Hobbs on the study. He said the “identification” of patterns between Facebook behaviours and health and mortality outcomes will “hopefully spur further research on the nature of the relationship between our social networks and health-related outcomes.”

The research was published this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of United States of America.