Being Facebook friends with better-off people means you are less likely to suffer a fatal heart attack or stroke, according to new research.
Better economic connectedness on social media is linked with lower rates of dying young from heart disease, say scientists.
Previous research has shown that poverty or low socioeconomic status increases a person’s risk of heart disease and premature death.
The new study is the first to assess health outcomes using Facebook friendships as a measure of economic connectedness.
The findings suggest that being connected with people of higher-than-average socio-economic status, as measured via a machine learning algorithm based on individual and neighborhood Facebook data, could help to lessen the effect of poverty on health.
It could also potentially help predict individual health risks or inform efforts to improve health at the community level, according to the research team at Cleveland Medical Centre.
Study lead author Doctor Tabitha Lobo said: “Social networks are important for health outcomes.
“Mechanisms to improve social networks could be established through youth mentorship programs, internships or school-based programs for connecting people, and these may have long-lasting effects on neighbourhood characteristics with respect to cardiovascular mortality.”
Researchers estimated economic connectedness at the neighbourhood level across the USA by adapting a method recently developed to estimate the proportion of Facebook users in a specific area who have a large number of Facebook friendships with people of a higher socio-economic status than themselves.
The method tracked friendship status only and did not measure the level of engagement via posts or messages.
Areas with more highly connected people were considered to have high economic connectedness, while those where people had fewer connections to those of higher socio-economic status were considered to have low economic connectedness.
The research team compared neighborhood economic connectedness figures with rates of premature death from heart disease at the county level.
To assess rates of premature death, the team analyzed records from more than 900,000 deaths among people between the ages of 25 and 65 that occurred between 2018 and 2020 and listed heart disease as an underlying cause.
The results showed that places with higher economic connectedness tended to have lower rates of premature cardiovascular death, a pattern that held true both nationally and regionally.
After adjusting for factors including race and sex, social media-derived economic connectedness was estimated to explain more than half (57 per cent) of the variability in premature cardiovascular death rates.
Researchers said that the social media-based measure of economic connectedness may help to quantify a person’s opportunity for economic growth.
Dr. Lobo believes relationships with people of a higher socio-economic status, whether in person or online, could improve a person’s awareness of and access to educational opportunities, job opportunities, healthy lifestyle habits and other benefits, with implications not only for economic prospects but also long-term health.
She says the findings suggest that economic connectedness derived from social media could be a valuable measure for predicting heart disease risk and designing interventions to improve health.
Dr. Lobo, an internal medicine resident at University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Centre, added: “If we can predict a person’s risk, we can use that information to guide medical treatments.
“Traditionally, we’ve focused on individual-based interventions, but this gives us the opportunity to work at more of a community level, for example, by giving policymakers information to improve the overall health of a community and not just focus at an individual level.”
Dr Lobo will present the findings at the American College of Cardiology’s annual Scientific Session in New Orleans next month.
Produced in association with SWNS Talker.
