Social media can be a huge influence in our lives. It’s used for entertainment, distraction or even for business or job perspectives. But does social media also have influence on our everyday lives: the way we think, do things, our emotions, or even our weight gain?
Nicholas Christakis, a Harvard professor, examined the way our private social networks (so not our social media networks) affect our everyday lives. One of his studies is even solely focused on ‘The spread of obesity in social networks’.
Christakis is also a speaker for TED, where he has made some speeches about the obesity subject, but also how social networks can predict epidemics. But more interesting is his speech about the hidden influence of social networks:
http://www.ted.com/talks/nicholas_christakis_the_hidden_influence_of_social_networks.html
This phenomenon made me think about an old clip about a social psychological experiment which was about peer pressure. In this short clip it’s shown how people are influenced by other persons in an elevator (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKipwt9YnOM). These people are not even part of their social network. So if these random people are already influenced by each other, what does this mean for the influence from people around us?
