People Who Love Sharing Cute & Funny Animal Videos Are Actually Doing You A Favor In 7 Specific Ways
MAYA LAB | Shutterstock We’re used to hearing about the bad effects of screen time, but it might not all be negative, especially if your preference is cuddly animals.
Anything that makes you laugh is great for your health, including funny videos. So, if you have a friend who’s always sending you cute animal videos, they’re actually helping you out, even if it feels a bit excessive.
Why people sharing adorable and silly animal videos with you are doing you a favor:
1. The videos boost your happiness
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It’s not hard to understand why a cute animal video would make you happier. It would be almost impossible to watch animals doing their thing and not feel like you got a mood boost from it.
There’s science to back that feeling up. When asked about research on the impact of positive videos, Professor Judith Moskowitz from Northwestern University said, “It’s great to have the science tell us what we sort of know intuitively — that if we look at positive content, we’re going to feel more positive and more hope.”
Watching animals behave adorably doesn’t sound like it’s a big deal, but it can have a big effect on your mood. That’s something to thank your friend who sends you five Instagram reels a day for.
2. Watching the videos can strengthen your relationships
It turns out there’s a surprising link between animal videos and relationship satisfaction. In a 2017 study, researchers found that couples who looked at pictures of their spouse “paired with positive stimuli,” like a picture of an animal, felt happier in their marriages.
The same concept could apply just as easily to being sent a cute video. The feeling that video gives you becomes associated with that person in your mind, and you have a stronger bond because of it. Maybe that explains why it’s usually your closest friends who share the most videos with you.
3. The videos can help you concentrate
This sounds really counterintuitive, because you would expect a funny animal video to be distracting. But Japanese scientists proved that seeing a cute video or picture, including ones with animals, helped people lock in and pay attention to the task at hand better.
Scrolling through animal videos for an hour probably won’t have the same effect on your concentration, of course. But taking a short break to watch a video from a friend might be just the thing you need to boost your productivity.
4. Seeing adorable animals improves your well-being
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Everyone forms an idea of their own well-being based on the good and bad experiences they’ve had. Researcher Barbara L. Fredrickson was able to build on this idea in her own work and discovered that anything that made someone feel positive emotions was “a means to achieving psychological growth and improved well-being over time.”
There are few things that can cause positive emotions as strongly as videos of adorable animals. They leave an impression that lasts long after you’ve stopped thinking about them.
5. Watching the videos makes you more empathetic
A lot of social media posts make you feel cynical, but not animal videos. Watching a cute clip of an animal has a similar effect to hanging out with a pet in person. Both increase the amount of oxytocin in your body, which makes you want to be more helpful.
Unlike a TikTok video about politics that makes you feel hopeless, animal videos actually make you want to make a difference in the world. They give you the empathy needed to connect with people on a deeper level and show up for them when it matters.
6. Viewing animal videos makes you healthier
According to a more recent study from the University of Leeds, the benefits of animal videos aren’t just emotional. They actually cause physical changes in the body as well by lowering your heart rate and blood pressure.
This obviously makes you feel better, but it also decreases your risk of developing certain chronic diseases. That makes all the notifications you get from friends sending you cute videos of animals feel a lot less annoying.
7. Watching funny animals gives you more energy
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There probably isn’t a single person on earth who doesn’t wish they had more energy, and animal videos might hold the key. Research on the effects of cat videos found that people really did feel like they got an energy boost from watching cats play.
This could definitely come in handy on a day that feels like it just keeps dragging on, meaning there’s yet another reason to thank the friends who provide you with all the animal videos you could ever need.
Mary-Faith Martinez is a writer with a bachelor’s degree in English and Journalism who covers news, psychology, lifestyle, and human interest topics.
