Why Facebook Is Good for Your Health

By Theresa Tamkins January 6, 2009
My mom’s on Facebook. In fact, she was on Facebook before I was and now she’s on the social networking site pretty much every day.

Go ahead and laugh—everyone else does. You see, my mom is a white-haired, apple-pie-making lady in her mid-70s whom several dozen people call “Aunt Bea.”
But will all due respect to Opie, she’s no Mayberry matron. She’s tech savvy, and she’s pretty much got a black belt in social networking—she’s utterly relentless at forming and maintaining of social contacts. You think you’re six degrees of separation from Kevin Bacon? No, you’re probably six degrees of separation from my mother. She can locate a third cousin or long lost pal in nearly every city in America. Hence, the leap to online socializing, at an age when some of her peers probably couldn’t find the computer’s on button.

But what seems like a quirky personality trait may in fact be good for her health. Research has shown that strong social networks are a key reason some people survive into their 80s and beyond, while others don’t. Read More