The Humans of Tumblr website was launched in 2013 and since then, it has been posting memes and interactions from the site for people to enjoy. The creators of this project are very clear about their aims: “Our mission is to help people laugh, find entertainment from our content, and … take the time to relate to the fun and stressful situations we all go through in life.” 

Needless to say, Tumblr is a perfect site to witness some of the most entertaining memes, back and forth exchanges, and generally wholesome pictures that can brighten your day. Usually, when you stumble upon an interesting thread, you don’t know where it’s going and don’t expect things to take a surprising twist. Yet, it happens quite often. 

That’s why this site is appreciated by many—such surprises are what’s bringing humor and relief into our daily lives, and a lot of people think that it’s worth their time.

Speaking of jokes and memes, it seems that looking at a couple of funny images a day can improve your mood and general wellbeing. A study published in the Psychology of Popular Media journal revealed that memes helped people better cope with the everyday stresses of life during the COVID-19 pandemic. Researchers with Pennsylvania State University and the University of California Santa Barbara found that “viewing memes generated higher levels of positive emotions, which were positively related to COVID-19 coping efficacy.”

Researchers surveyed 748 people online to study whether viewing different comical photos influences emotions, anxiety, information processing, and the way they’re coping with the pandemic stress. The participants looked at a variety of memes and were asked to rate the cuteness, humor, their emotional response, and to report if these jokes made them think about COVID-19. 

Jessica Myrick, associate professor at Pennsylvania State University and the lead author of this study, is researching the psychology of how media messages can affect us. “As the pandemic dragged on, I got more and more interested in how people were using social media—and memes featuring cute and funny pics, in particular—as a way to think and communicate with others about life during a global pandemic,” she wrote.

The professor partnered up with a few colleagues and went through hundreds of real memes they found floating around social media. “We developed two pools of memes using the same images: One set had captions about COVID-19 and another set had captions unrelated to COVID-19.”

Then they asked the participants to look at the images: “One group saw the COVID-19 memes, while a second group saw the memes not about COVID-19. A third group saw image-free plain text that summarized the general idea of the memes, but was not in the least bit funny.”

After that, people had to answer questions about how they felt at that particular moment. “People who viewed just three memes rated themselves … as calmer, more content and more amused compared with people who didn’t see the memes,” the author of the study explained. “For instance, people who saw memes scored, on average, a 4.71 on our positive emotions scale, compared with an average of 3.85 for those who did not see a meme.” 

So the research revealed that viewing comical images on social media gave a quick boost of positive emotions. However, the topic of the memes mattered. Those who saw COVID-19 related memes “rated themselves as less stressed about life during a global pandemic” and “reported thinking more deeply about the memes and their meaning.” 

“More information processing was related to more confidence in their abilities to handle pandemic-related stress,” Myrick explained. “It’s possible that exerting more effort thinking about the topic could lead to mentally rehearsing ways to cope with the related stress, instead of avoiding it entirely.”

It seems that spending time on the internet or scrolling through your social media feeds is not always a waste of time as so many people think. It all depends on the content you’re watching and consuming. So take a break, look through what the Humans of Tumblr has to offer, and tackle your everyday stress with laughter.