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Facebook statues are sentences that people see almost everyday. Even though people might not think twice about someone else's update, a new study found that these statuses could greatly influence one's moods. The researchers concluded that Facebook has a contagious effect on people's moods.

"Online networks can spread emotions just like the real world," said lead researcher James Fowler, professor of political science and medical genetics at the University of California, San Diego according to HealthDay. "For every one happy post you write, it causes friends in other cities to write an additional one or two happy posts. I was surprised by the magnitude of the effect."

Fowler and his research team analyzed one billion status updates taken from 100 million anonymous Facebook users. The posts were written between 2009 and 2012. The team utilized software that could measure the emotions of each individual post. The posts were then categorized as positive or negative. After grouping the posts, the researchers also analyzed the types of posts that were written on rainy days.

The team discovered that on rainy days, the number of negative statuses increased by 1.16 percent while positive posts decreased by 1.19 percent. The researchers then looked at posts written by Facebook friends who lived in different areas of the country. They found that when one friend posted something negative on a rainy day, his or her friend who did not have a rainy day posted something negative as well. The team calculated that for every negative post someone writes, the number of negative posts written by that person's Facebook friends increases by an additional 1.29. For every additional positive post, there was an addition 1.75 positive posts written by others.

"These results imply that emotions themselves might ripple through social networks to generate large-scale synchrony that gives rise to clusters of happy and unhappy individuals," the authors wrote according to BBC News. "New technologies online may be increasing this synchrony by giving people more avenues to express themselves to a wider range of social contacts. As a result, we may see greater spikes in global emotion that could generate increased volatility in everything from political systems to financial markets."

The experts noted that the software would not be able to pick up negative words used in a light mood. For example, when people posts jokes that contain negative words, the software would only be able to identify the negative words as opposed to the tone of the sentence.

The study was published in PLOS ONE.