Facebook and friends can influence your health

A study has found that Facebook and friends can influence health behavior and may trigger changes in personality.

The study performed at University of Southern California (USC), found that a better understanding of human interactions, both face-to-face and online is able to promote general health and prevent disease.

Dr. Thomas W. Valente, Ph.D., Professor of Preventive Medicine at the Keck School of Medicine of USC is of the opinion that whether the goal is to curb smoking at a local school or to check the spread of sexually transmitted diseases within a community, understanding of the social structure of the group and the dynamics of influence at play is essential.

"If I want to go into a high school and change physical activity or other obesity behaviors, I have to understand there are cliques and subgroups of students that exhibit different risks," Valente has been quoted as saying.

"I would design different interventions for the different groups. We constantly are concerned about how ineffective our interventions are, this is a big reason why those interventions are not working. We can do a much better job promoting healthy behaviors if we understand the social network contexts and design these interventions with those cues in mind," he said further.

Valente, whose research focuses on social networks and influence, has compiled a collection of methods that public health advocates use to stimulate changes in behavior and explains why certain methods may be more effective than others in particular situations.

The findings of the research is scheduled to appear in the July 6 edition of the peer-reviewed journal Science, the world's leading outlet for scientific news, commentary and research.

-with inputs from ANI

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