Surprise: Having a social life is just as important to your health as exercising and eating well. The more friends people have at the beginning of their lives, the healthier they will be later on—and the longer they'll live, according to a new study conducted by researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Researchers had previously shown that adults live longer if they have ample social connections toward the end of life, but this is the first study to make the connection between having a lot of friends as an adolescent and staying healthy for the rest of your life. The researchers gathered data from four nationally representative surveys of the U.S. population that included information on people's blood pressure, waist circumference, body mass index, and a protein that's a common marker of inflammation. The researchers then compared how respondents described three aspects of their social lives: "social integration," "social support," and "social strain."
During both adolescence and late age, the number of friends you have is crucial for maintaining good health. For young people, isolating themselves socially resulted in the same amount of inflammation in the body as a sedentary lifestyle. During old age, social isolation resulted in worse health effects than having diabetes or hypertension. During middle age, researchers found that the quality of your friendships matters more than the number you have. Overall, cancer was the most prominent disease correlated to a lifetime of poor social connections. "Based on these findings, it should be as important to encourage adolescents and young adults to build broad social relationships and social skills for interacting with others as it is to eat healthy and be physically active," says Kathleen Mullan Harris, one of the researchers, in a press statement. Now we don't have to feel bad next time we miss a workout because we'd rather finish binge-watching a show on Netflix with our friends.
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