How do you stay connected to people?
There are a myriad of ways - Twitter, Facebook, text, calls - the list is endless. And yet with the countless venues for social contact, this still isn't enough.
You would need intimacy, which would work to your advantage because people with healthy relationships live longer. In a new BYU analysis lead by author Julianne Holt-Lunstad, associate professor of psychology at BYU, people with greater social relationships are 50 percent more likely to live longer than their socially reclusive counterparts. In fact, a lack of friends is as damaging as smoking 15 cigarettes a day or being an alcoholic.
It's also twice as damaging as obesity and more harmful than not exercising. "We're not in any way trying to downplay the seriousness of these other risk factors, (which) are very important. Rather, we're trying to make the point that we need to start taking our social relationships just as seriously as we take these other factors."
The study explained that friends and social relationships are healthy not only because they help us buffer negative or stressful events in our lives, Holt-Lunstad said, but they also encourage us to make better choices, decrease our risk-taking behavior and provide meaningful roles in our lives. This does not compare to superficial online relationships because it only gives a sense of being connected without truly being intimate.
This should be taken as great news - it justifies going out, meeting people, trying new things, and hopefully gets you to exercise more. Think of it as doubling your chances of survival.
Does this new study includes social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter etc?
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