FROM THE EDITORS November 16, 2009 Issue

SOCIAL NETWORKING AND THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT

ONLINE SOCIAL NETWORKING is a phenomenon that's changed the entire landscape of communication, from marketing products and sharing news, to keeping up with friends and family. The ability to spread information quickly and broadly has incredible appeal—and power. And its influence is worth some scrutiny.

A new book, Connected, by Dr. Nicholas Christakis, professor at Harvard University, and James Fowler, associate professor at the University of California, San Diego, examines years of research and concludes that "social networks, both offline and online, are crucial in understanding everything from voting patterns to the spread of disease" (Elizabeth Landau, "Obesity, politics, STDs flow in social networks," cnn.com).

The book focuses on any number of ways networking with a broad group of friends can affect the overall population. The authors maintain that finding the hubs of social networks can be invaluable from a public health point of view. For example, they put forth the idea that "instead of vaccinating everyone in a population against a disease, it may be just as effective to choose people at random and ask them to name their closest friends, then vaccinate those friends." Or, try this on for size: "If a mutual friend becomes obese, it nearly triples a person's risk of becoming obese." The book maintains that geography doesn't matter and that you can still gain weight even if a friend 1,000 miles away gets bigger.

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