Have a large number of friends to improve your health and fitness. If you have more friends you will have more physical activity, which results in fitness to a larger extent. New US research suggests that having a large network of friend can be a good influence on your fitness.
Led by Greg Ver Steeg department of Computer Science, Ver Steeg started his research after a 2007 study suggested that obesity might be contagious.
Wondering if positive health traits such as fitness could also be contagious, Ver Steeg partnered up with Google and Evidation Health, a company that aims to quantify health outcomes using digital technology, to explore the issue further.
Together the research team analysed more than 44,000 Fitbit users, finding that people with larger and more active social circles have higher levels of physical activity.
As part of the study the team also looked at the relationship between social networks and physical activity for those with chronic conditions.
Here they found that the increase in activity among those with larger social networks was even more significant for users with chronic diseases, specifically depression and diabetes.
Participants with these conditions walked an 36 additional steps for each new social link, compared with 6.5 steps for users overall.
“When you’re burdened by a chronic condition, your social network may have an especially high influence on your behavior,” said Luca Foschini, co-founder and chief data scientist at Evidation. Users with chronic diseases might have more overlap between online and offline friend groups.
