title: Online social integration is associated with reduced mortality risk.
abstract: Social interactions increasingly take place online. Friendships and other offline social ties have been repeatedly associated with human longevity, but online interactions might have different properties. Here, we reference 12 million social media profiles against California Department of Public Health vital records and use longitudinal statistical models to assess whether social media use is associated with longer life. The results show that receiving requests to connect as friends online is associated with reduced mortality but initiating friendships is not. Additionally, online behaviors that indicate face-to-face social activity (like posting photos) are associated with reduced mortality, but online-only behaviors (like sending messages) have a nonlinear relationship, where moderate use is associated with the lowest mortality. These results suggest that online social integration is linked to lower risk for a wide variety of critical health problems. Although this is an associational study, it may be an important step in understanding how, on a global scale, online social networks might be adapted to improve modern populations' social and physical health.
authors: Division of Social Sciences, University of California, San Diego, CA 92093; whobbs@ucsd.edu fowler@ucsd.edu.|Network Science Institute, Northeastern University, Boston, MA 02115.|Institute for Quantitative Social Science, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138.
authors: William R
authors: WR
authors: Hobbs
authors: Facebook, Menlo Park, CA 94025.
authors: Moira
authors: M
authors: Burke
authors: Department of Sociology, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06520.|Department of Medicine, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06520.|Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06520.|Department of Biomedical Engineering, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06520.
authors: Nicholas A
authors: NA
authors: Christakis
authors: Division of Social Sciences, University of California, San Diego, CA 92093; whobbs@ucsd.edu fowler@ucsd.edu.|School of Medicine, University of California, San Diego, CA 92093.
authors: James H
authors: JH
authors: Fowler
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D002140:California / Q000453:epidemiology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009026:Mortality; D016016:Proportional Hazards Models; D012306:Risk; D061108:Social Media; D060756:Social Networking
keywords: health; longevity; social media; social networks; social support