Women Lie On Social Media More Than Men Do

If you've ever rolled your eyes at a friend's blatantly fake status update on Facebook or squinted past the three filters they've applied on Instagram, you're not alone.

A new study commissioned by the Works Sydney Advertising agency says we're all guilty of embellishing the truth on social media: but women even moreso than men.

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To reach the conclusion, researchers analysed hundreds of thousands of public posts on Facebook, Twitter, TripAdvisor and Instagram. They then devised a "deceit algorithm" which is based around certain terms and emoticons.

The results are quite interesting: according to the data, women lie most on Twitter, followed by Facebook and then Instagram - while men (in particular, those from Sydney!) lie most on Facebook, followed by Twitter and Instagram.

But the big difference between the two sexes is that women lie to "make others feel good" (eg, they're more likely to post a positive TripAdvisor review) while men lie "to make themselves look good" (eg, that car in the photo is probably not theirs).

Whether the findings are tenuous or not, the research indicates that your friends are probably lying in some way or another on social media - so the next time you feel bad about their amazing holiday snaps or baby photos, rest assured you're only seeing a small portion of what's really going on.