20 Mar How to find happiness on social networks
Given that…
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we know connectedness and positive relationships are key to happiness and wellbeing AND
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a substantial proportion of our activities here at The Happiness Institute involve, in some way or other, social networks such as Facebook and Twitter…
…we thought you might find the following article of interest
How to find happiness on social networks by Philip Moeller from US News
Beginning nearly 40 years ago, social scientists began to look deeply and regularly at the ways people related to other people—spouses, family, friends, and others—and how different people were affected by their own social networks. What they discovered, and have consistently found in later studies, is that the diversity and numbers of our social connections are directly related to our health, happiness, and longevity. Social networks certainly include close friends and family members. But they extend outward from these intimate relationships to encompass extensive and often intricate networks of human ties that influence us in ways we may not even know.
"We would ask people, 'Are you married?' 'Do you belong to social groups?' 'Do you belong to a church?' 'Do you have friends?'" says Sheldon Cohen, a relationship researcher and psychologist at Carnegie Mellon University. "The more they have, the better off they are," he adds.
Cohen rattles off a list of the ways social ties influence our well-being: "It predicts mortality. It predicts cardiovascular disease. It even predicts the recovery rates from cardiovascular disease. It predicts the progress of cancer. It predicts cognitive function [in later life]. It even predicts the common cold."
Cohen's own research group has exposed healthy people to a cold virus after first measuring the state of their immune systems. About a third of the people get sick. "It turns out that their social integration scale is a really good predictor of who gets sick and who doesn't," he says.
Claude Fischer, a sociologist at the University of California at Berkeley, divides network relationships into three roles: providing emotional support, giving practical help, and social interaction, such as going to the ball park together. "Our relationships tend to be reciprocal over the long run, in terms of there being a balance of giving and getting," he says.
Notably, family relationships can remain significant even if they are not balanced and reciprocal. A relationship with a dominating parent, for example, can continue to be meaningful even if it's not balanced or perhaps even reciprocal. Strained or hostile relationships among family members remain significant, even though the family members may never communicate or see one another. "An underappreciated thing about networks," Fischer says, "is the extent to which ties can be a mixed blessing."
However, Cohen says networks can have a positive affect on health regardless of whether the person's experiences are positive. "Every increment in the social network is related to an improvement in your health," he says. So, 10 ties are better than nine ties, which are better than eight, and so on. "There's just something about having these many social roles that is good for you, and the more you have, the better it is."
Researchers Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler, coauthors of Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives, found that social networks affect happiness over three degrees of relationships, which they call the "three degrees of influence." First come the people you know, then the people they know, and finally, the people this second group knows. Your happiness can be affected by people in all three sets of relationships, including people you do not know and likely will never meet. Likewise, you can influence people you've never met.
If people in your direct network are happy, the odds of you being happier as well will rise by 20 percent, Christakis and Fowler say. And if people in the second layer of the network are happy, the odds that you will be happier will rise by 15 percent. The happiness effect in the third degree of removal is 10 percent. The effect is not limited to happiness but can include behavioral influences. For example, if you're gaining weight, it can influence the weights of others in your network…
…keep reading HERE for the full and original article and then visit HERE (The Happiness Institute's Facebook Page) to post your thoughts on how and why happiness can be found on and within social networks