Friendship

[Diana Jones]

Hi Ann,

Dr Jacob Moreno was reported in the New York times in 1933 estimating from
his research that there were 10,000,000
to 15,000,000 isolated individuals in America. Given his early research
findings, how new are these recent findings?

Last year, Lynne C. Giles et al of Flinders University in Adelaide,
Australia, had their research reported in 2005 in NEW YORK (Reuters
Health)under - 'Looking for the secret of a long life? Look closely at your
friends. New research
suggests that having a strong network of friends helps people live longer.'

"Older people with better social networks with friends were less likely to
die over a 10-year follow-up period than older people with poorer friends
networks,"  Giles said. "Of course, that is not to say that social networks
with children and other relatives are not important in many other ways,"
Giles said. Study after study has shown that elderly people who are
connected with lots of people tend to live longer lives. Giles's team set
out to examine the relationship between various types of social networks and
longevity in a group of almost 1,500 Australians who were at least 70 years
old. Volunteers answered questions about their social networks and then were
followed for 10 years.

The researchers took into account several factors that could have influenced
how long a person lived, including sex, age, health and smoking status.

What the study showed was that older people who reported better social
networks of friends were more likely to be alive at the end of the study
than people with fewer friends. Similarly, people who reported strong
networks of confidants -- people with whom participants shared a close,
confiding relationship -- tended to live longer. Full article in the Journal
of Epidemiology and Community Health, July 2005. full reprint at
http://jech.bmjjournals.com/cgi/reprint/59/7/574

I think people have more connections with more people via email and txting,
however the nature of these connections are new. Email enables more frequent
contact with more people, however what remains unclear is the signficance of
these connections with people's social and cultural atom. Are they
strangers, aquaintances, entertainers, friends, confidants, intimate
partners?  I know I get a lot of email from strangers offering odd things
which I don't want. No mirroring or doubling in these emails.

regards, Diana