You all know I do twitter. It’s right there on the sidebar. Most of my readers are my friends on facebook. Since I’ve started being active on Facebook (which is synched to my tweets) I have noticed a dive in  my blog readership.

Is it because my readers get their writtenbymurphy fix over there and don’t feel the need to come over here anymore?

NOW there is a social networking site at work that encourages us to join groups, “colleague” people, and have a work blog.

That’s a lot of virtual reality relationships to keep up with. It is worth it?

Well, I posted this on my work blog:

Health is catching

This story about how the company we keep affects us. This story talks about some studies that show being fat or smoking is influenced by the company you keep:

good behaviors — like quitting smoking or staying slender or being happy — pass from friend to friend almost as if they were contagious viruses. The Framingham participants, the data suggested, influenced one another’s health just by socializing. And the same was true of bad behaviors — clusters of friends appeared to “infect” each other with obesity, unhappiness and smoking. Staying healthy isn’t just a matter of your genes and your diet, it seems. Good health is also a product, in part, of your sheer proximity to other healthy people.

I have noticed that certain friends will be bad influences on eating choices, and we all know people who are downers to be around. It makes a lot of sense that our social network sets the levels of what is acceptable.

I’m not exactly sure how to use this information; should I avoid my friends who are unhealthy? Should I try to be the one who gives positive peer pressure? Maybe just knowing that unhealthy behaviours are not ‘normal’ and should not be emulated is enough.

It explains a lot about how the level of obesity that is common in America came to be. Watching old re-runs of television shows that show ‘real’ people gives a shocking example of how we have changes as a population.

Personal responsibility has a lot to do with our levels of health.

 Expounding further on the idea that social networks affect our health and happines…Maybe the more the merrier, huh? Maybe it is a good idea to just spew inane tweets and blogposts about daily unimportant happenings, for the very reason that people like to be included.

MORE BIGGER FASTER!

(again)