Why Facebook Is Good for Your Health

My mom’s on Facebook. In fact, she was on Facebook before I was and now she’s on the social networking site pretty much every day.

Go ahead and laugh—everyone else does. You see, my mom is a white-haired, apple-pie-making lady in her mid-70s whom several dozen people call “Aunt Bea.”

But will all due respect to Opie, she’s no Mayberry matron. She’s tech savvy, and she’s pretty much got a black belt in social networking—she’s utterly relentless at forming and maintaining of social contacts. You think you’re six degrees of separation from Kevin Bacon? No, you’re probably six degrees of separation from my mother. She can locate a third cousin or long lost pal in nearly every city in America. Hence, the leap to online socializing, at an age when some of her peers probably couldn’t find the computer’s on button.

But what seems like a quirky personality trait may in fact be good for her health. Research has shown that strong social networks are a key reason some people survive into their 80s and beyond, while others don’t.

Seem far-fetched? Take this longevity quiz. When you get to question No. 8 (How many friends have you made in the past year?), maybe you’ll do what I did and fudge it. Yes, after rounding up on my daily exercise, mentally whittling away a few pounds, and lowball guesstimating my cholesterol, I also added a few imaginary friends.

You see, in old age, social networks are thought to protect against memory loss and early mortality. So that motley crew of drinking pals, college chums, and coworkers-turned-lifelong-friends may actually help you live a longer, better life—that is, if you still have them in your 50s, 60s, and 70s.

Which brings me back to Facebook. In the past year, Facebook has helped me reconnect with grade-school pals, at least three second-cousins, and a close friend who bounces around the globe. (Last known sighting? Thailand.)

And I’m glad. Sometimes my old and new social networks seem as fragile as a spider’s web—after each job change, graduation, or move, they seem to abruptly vanish overnight, or perish from a lack of nourishment. And I’m not alone in my aloneness.

With a highly mobile population and rapidly changing workplaces, social networks are easily broken. John-Boy Walton and George Bailey didn’t need Facebook—they lived a life (albeit fictional) in a single town, forging relationships. The rest of us, however, have friends, parents, siblings, and children scattered to the four corners of the earth.

I know not every Facebook friend is a true friend (read this poor sap’s account of a dismal Facebook experience), but they can be.

So, I like to think of Facebook as a high-tech way to replace low-tech social interactions, which in previous generations, I might have achieved with each trip to the grocery store or bank. I don’t see it as wasting hours of time online; I’m visiting a digital Bedford Falls, if you will, my online Walton’s Mountain.

And that’s good for my health.

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