How Has the Rise of Social Networks Impacted Your Research on Social Relationships?

How Has the Rise of Social Networks Impacted Your Research on Social Relationships? (0:37)

It used to take a lot longer to gather information about peoples’ social networks, but thanks to Facebook it’s much easier. In this video, HealthMaker James Fowler, PhD, professor of medical genetics and political science at UCSD, explains.

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It's amazing. It's fantastic because when Nicholas and I started doing this work over 10 years ago, this is before Facebook was around. This was before there were these online repositories of human relationships, and so we had to go to people and individually ask them, who are your friends? Who are your friends? Who are your friends? And put all that information together, it was very laborious.

But now it's all there. It's all online. It's waiting to be linked to health records, to be linked to medical information, so that we can better understand how your behavior changes not just your own outcomes but the outcomes of your friends, your friend's friends, and even your friend's friend's friends.