Social Networks and Happiness
December 16th, 2008 
Health, Research, Social Media 
Paul Fayngersh
A fabulous article over at Edge sheds light on research regarding individuals’ happiness as a function of their social networks. Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler demonstrate in a study published this month by British Medical Journal that “social networks have clusters of happy and unhappy people within them that reach out to three degrees of separation. A person’s happiness is related to the happiness of their friends, their friends’ friends, and their friends’ friends’ friends—that is, to people well beyond their social horizon. We found that happy people tend to be located in the center of their social networks and to be located in large clusters of other happy people. And we found that each additional happy friend increases a person’s probability of being happy by about 9%.”
When you're smiling...the whole world smiles with you
Working off this study they also explored 1700 college students and their connections on Facebook. In addition to verifying that happy people tend to have more friends, more interestingly they found that happiness is contagious; when visualized you can actually see clusters of “happy nodes.” They conclude that emotions are a deeply collective phenomena.
Edge: Social Networks and Happiness
Tags: Edge, Facebook, Happiness, Health, Research, Social Media
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