Facebook and friends can influence your health behavior, finds study

Washington, July 6 (ANI): Facebook and friends can influence health behavior and stimulate changes in one's personality, a new study has found.

According to a study by University of Southern California (USC), public health researchers claim that a better understanding of human interactions, both face-to-face and online, can help prevent disease and promote general health.

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

"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 said.

"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 added.

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 analysis is set to appear in the July 6 edition of the peer-reviewed journal Science, the world's leading outlet for scientific news, commentary and research. (ANI)