We all love to capture the moments so that we can look back at them whenenever we wantg. But according to the a research taking photos of life’s enjoyable moments could actually lead to you enjoying them less.

 Led by Gia Nardini at the University of Denver along with researchers at Washington University in St Louis and the University of Florida. She was prompted to carry out the new research when she herself came back from a trip to a wildlife preserve thinking she had spent more time taking photos than actually living in the moment. The authors carried out a series of five different tests including a total of 718 participants to investigate it further.

Taking photos to distract from this enjoyment

The findings, published in the journal Psychology and Marketing shows that if the event is a highly enjoyable one, then stopping to take photos will distract from this enjoyment. In particular, the participants who watched a highly enjoyable video without snapping photos enjoyed the experience significantly more, at 72.6 on a 100-point scale, than those occasionally taking pictures, at 63.8 on the 100-point scale.

Sharing photo on social media hinders enjoyment

Sharing photos on social media appeared to hinder people’s enjoyment even further, with the team finding that when watching a highly enjoyable video, 83.7 percent of participants enjoyed the video when they just sat back and watched it, compared to 76.2 percent who watched and took personal pictures, and 73.5 who watched and took photos to share.