Connecting with family and friends, and having them comment on Facebook posts, can be as uplifting as getting married or having kids, according to a new study.

Facebook and our friends’ comments have come to inspire intense feelings of happiness, according to researchers at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU).

“We’re not talking about anything that’s particularly labor-intensive,” said Moira Burke, a research scientist at Facebook who earned a Ph.D. in human-computer interaction at Carnegie Mellon. “This can be a comment that’s just a sentence or two. The important thing is that someone, such as a close friend, takes the time to personalize it. The content may be uplifting, and the mere act of communication reminds recipients of the meaningful relationships in their lives.”

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