Social Network In Social Networks

The spread of behavor in social networks

In recent years, many studies have been published on the use and influence of social networks. One of the aspects that has been studied is how social networks affect the spread of health behavior through artificially structured online communities [1]. This paper has been divided into four parts. The first part deals with two conflicting theories about the spread of health behavior trough social networks, the second part will examine the spread of alcohol consumption behavior in a large social network, the third part deals with the spread of obese in a social network, and the last part is a conclusion. This paper examines what the effects of social networks are in our current society, with the emphasis

(2010) investigated how social networks affect the spread of health behavior through artificially structured online communities, according to Centola et al. (2010) there are two conflicting theories about the spread of health behavior, the “strength of weak ties” hypothesis and the “clustered-lattice networks” hypothesis. The first one, the “strength of weak ties” hypothesis states that networks with many “long ties” will lead to the fastest way of spread of behavior. Infectious diseases are a good illustration of “long ties”, just a single contact with a contaminated person can cause transmission. In this way, the behavior will spread to many zones in the network because people who do not know each other will be connected. The other hypothesis states that behavioral changes occur faster in “clustered-lattice networks”. When participants received social amplification of several neighbors in the network, the spread of conduct seems to be faster and further. Centola’s study et al. (2010) presented evidence that the “clustered-lattice networks” hypothesis is

(2007) found that ‘social distance plays a stronger role than geographic distance in the spread of behaviors or norms associated with obesity’. Over the recent past the amount of people suffering obesity has increased with 7 percent in the United States. At this moment 31 percent of the inhabitants suffer from obesity, and 66 percent are overweigt. Possible reasons for the increase in weight are consumtion of unhealthy food and physical inactivity. Being physically inactive is responsible for one in ten deaths among the adults in the United States. The increase in obesity has to do with environmental and social changes. There has been done research to determine wheter obesity might spread from person to person in social networks. And if obesity spreads from person to person, wat the cause of distribution is. Obesity is based on voluntary choices, people are part of social networks, and people are likely to copy behavior of others. These three facts suggest that weight gain for one person might influence the weight gain of others around them in a social network. The tolererance for obesity might change when a person has close relations with other obese people, because the attitude towards a behavior changes in this way. 12,000 people have been examined over a period of 32 years. Christakis’ et al. (2007) study revealed that clusters of obese persons in a network has a mojor impact. In addition,