Research shows that your relentless pursuit of likes on social media is making your life much worse

A new survey looked at the habits that people have when it comes to making the perfect social media post, and it turns out that we're making a mistake when trying to capture the moment.

The survey asked 1,623 people to detail how they use social media in their every day lives, and the results showed that the majority of people are pretty obsessed with "trophy hunting" on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, as well as other platforms.

Joseph Grenny and David Maxfield are the men behind the study, which aimed to look at what lengths people would go to in order to get "likes", and how that affected their lives. 58% of those surveyed said that "posting the perfect picture has prevented them from enjoying life experiences", while a whopping 91% said that they've seen toursits miss a great moment because they were too concerned with trying to get a great picture. 3 out of 4 people also admitted that they were rude to others when they were using social media.

Maxfield dubs this "trophy hunting", as "they want to kill it [the moment] and stuff it and put it on their wall". Speaking to Mashable, Maxfield revealed that "14% of respondents say they've risked their own safety to get a like-worthy post" also, which is an even more worrying trend.

Further disturbing findings showed that parents were even more concerned with likes than their kids at times, with 79% saying that seen parents "undermine their own experience in a child's life" in order to get a good post. One such story came from a respondent to the survey who said that "I disciplined my son and he threw a tantrum that I thought was so funny that I disciplined him again just so I could video it. After uploading it on Instagram I thought, 'What did I just do?'".

Grenny warns that fishing for likes in this way is a "low-effort way of producing a feeling of social well-being that takes more effort to get in the real world", and that while you might get a lot of people on your posts giving you feedback, you're actually going to feel more empty as a result.

They did however, produce an infographic that gives a few simple tips to help you overcome your love of likes, comments and shares.