Smiling for your health
Smiling isn't something anyone should tell you to do. But when it's genuine? Science says it can actually boost your mood, reduce stress, and support your immune system.
Let’s explore why smiling matters, how it shapes us in the age of social media, and why it’s worth practicing more often—while avoiding “happiness on demand” or curating the “perfect” version of yourself online.
What if you smiled more often?
Smiling more often has many benefits. “It can improve your mood and reduce stress, making you feel happier and relaxed,” says UKCP registered psychotherapist Mark Vahrmeyer, co-founder of Brighton and Hove Psychotherapy. “Smiling also makes you appear more approachable and friendly to others, which can strengthen your relationships and create positive interactions.”
In addition to stress relief, research suggests that smiling can boost your immune system and even lower your blood pressure. It’s a simple, approachable way to signal to your brain and the rest of your body that you feel good and you’re having a positive experience. University of Essex research shows that “smiling for just a split second makes people more likely to see happiness in expressionless faces.”
In the age of social media, there’s plenty of content designed to inspire a smile without much effort, like funny memes or videos of the funniest fails. Smiling can uplift your mood and shift emotions. Even a posed smile can uplift your mood. In fact, a global collaboration led by Stanford research scientist Nicholas Coles shows scientifically that even a posed smile can improve your mood.
Why so serious?
The fundamental difference between talking to another person in person and being in front of a camera is that our facial expressions match our emotions, at least if we are communicating authentically.
“Emotions are embodied, in that they are expressed through the body and therefore on the face,” says Dr. Rebekah Wanic, a mindset psychologist, university lecturer, and self-optimization coach at Venttoreinvent. “We use our bodies and faces to communicate how we're feeling and thinking. It makes up the majority of our communication with others, even if it is non-verbally.”
When we're in front of the camera, we're not communicating with another person, at least not in the immediate sense. “That is to say, we may well adopt a pose and facial expressions to communicate something retrospectively; however, communication is not as seamless as it is during live conversation,” Dr. Wanic adds.
Smiling into the camera is a relatively modern phenomenon. Historians cite many reasons for the lack of smiles in the early days of photography. Cameras had very slow chemical reactions, and that meant subjects had to be perfectly still, which resulted in stoic posture and serious facial expressions. Before cameras, painting was the go-to method, and the subject had to pose for many hours, making a constant smile simply unsustainable.
Dentistry was rare and underdeveloped, so many people didn’t want to show their teeth. And in class-based societies, smiling was relegated to the “fools,” not the elite, who apparently believed smiling was "more-or-less a formal breach of etiquette,” according to essayist Nicholas Jeeves in The Smile in Portraiture: The Smirk and the Serious.
Even more interesting, there was a social component: Most people were lucky to have one photograph, or portrait, taken of them in their lifetime. Because it was such a significant event, many believed it warranted a serious expression. Culturally, most people believed it was essential to represent their face as it’s seen most often, without a smile.
Vahrmeyer also examined our desire to look “perfect” in pictures: “Smiling presents us in our best light, and in modern culture, it is seen as attractive. This has not always been the case, and for a period during the early 20th century, the preferred photographic pose was to have one’s mouth closed and pursed to suggest a small mouth.”
Do photos change how we smile in modern times?
When considering how we pose for a photograph, it is important to ask the question, who is the photograph for? Taking photographs has evolved dramatically from a formal (and exclusive) experience to one that is virtually cost-free and comfortable.
“Photography and social media have also become inextricably linked in that we now take pictures of ourselves, which was unheard of until the advent of smartphones, and we publish these personal pictures en masse for others to see,” Vahrmeyer explains.
Smiling in social media photos has adopted an external purpose: letting others know we're having a good time, in line with cultural expectations around beauty. In many ways, we have become advertisements for our lives.
Does location affect smiling?
Smiling varies both in its frequency and in its cultural meaning across the world. Research shows that Americans are more likely to smile at strangers than are people from Japan. Japanese culture often values respect towards others over perceived friendliness, which in turn influences how and whether people smile for pictures.
“Thanks to globalization and the borderless nature of social media culture usurping local customs, smiling for pictures that are posted on social media is becoming ever more ubiquitous,” Vahrmeyer adds. “Using social media makes people want to smile more in pictures, as the photographs are no longer being taken as ‘keepsakes’ and are instead a form of broadcast to the wider world.”
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Does self-esteem affect how we smile in pictures?
“Feeling good about ourselves doesn’t necessarily change how we smile in a picture if we are used to smiling for the selfie, without meaning or connection behind it,” explains Vahrmeyer. “If we feel good then we are likely to spontaneously smile.” If this is captured in a candid photograph, it’s likely the smile was a genuine expression of emotion rather than a pose.
Vahrmeyer believes smiling for the camera is learned behavior in keeping with the cultural expectations of that era. That’s because when we smile for a picture, the smile is often posed and not an embodied expression of feeling. Many people have learned the art of posed smiles, and young children are being taught from the beginning. (One photographer offers insight on why that’s not always a great idea.) While we might accept the photographed smile as genuine, during in-person communication, an inauthentic facial expression can be more easily detected. Humans can pick up on the incongruence.
People don’t naturally smile more at a camera, but they respond to the expected behavior to show a smile for the photo being taken by themselves or someone else.
So, why smile?
Whether spontaneous or posed, a smile carries power. It can lower stress, support health, improve relationships, and, yes, even make photos more engaging. In a world of constant digital sharing, choosing to smile authentically—when it feels genuinely comfortable to do so—reminds us that joy is not just for the camera, but for those around us, and most importantly, for ourselves.
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Hazra Khatoon is an independent journalist with a Master’s degree in journalism, who writes about health, climate, tech, travel, and culture. Her work has appeared in Well+Good, Insider, Giddy, South China Morning Post, Sentient Media, StyleCaster, Discover, Evening & Standard, and Chatelaine, among others.
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