Why Health-focused Social Networks Must Be Different in Order to Affect Behavior

Article Excerpt: A recently published paper by Professor Damon Centola of the MIT Sloan School of Management, entitled “Social Media and the Science of Health Behavior” suggests that networks effective for diffusing behavior are quite different from networks effective for diffusing information. A theory known as “the strength of weak ties” maintains that the best way to spread information through social networks is with a lot of connected people who aren’t very close friends, because that increases the likelihood that they’ll pick up a message from one person and spread it to a new person. However, in using a social network to encourage smoking cessation, for instance, it’s much more valuable for people to hear the same message over and over again from close friends than it is for many people to hear it once. This theory is being replicated in different types of social networks with various types of health behaviors.