Connected

Konnikova uses data gathered by scientists to show that as focus turns toward online friendships, people start to lose the number of meaningful real life relationships that they once had. She references the Dunbar number frequently. There are multiple stages to the Dunbar number but the largest is around one hundred and fifty. She defines this as, “people we call casual friends—the people, say, you’d invite to a large party” (236). This number was seen as the max number of friendships that someone could maintain. However, with social media, people have hundreds of friends. As people expand their range of friends, it is believed that they will lose time to interact with their real tangible friends. From this point of view it is viewed as a bad change.

The essay Stephen Marche wrote “Is Facebook Making Us Lonely” is talking about with the technology what the society looks like now, and social media like Facebook and twitter have made us more densely network than ever.

Social media allow persons from all over the world to remain contact and communicate with their friends, family, at the same time make new connections. As stated by Amedie, social media sites are known for allowing people to make new connections with people who share similar interests, creating new relationships, and people end up being good friends (4). In fact, people create groups that accommodate subscribers who have similar interests or life goals where they assist each other. Again, there are friends or family members who are a thousand miles away; and through the use of social sites, it is easy to often communicate with them, increasing intimacy at a reduced cost. Furthermore, social networks have encouraged the users to come up with an online persona, which establishes a personal network of friends who connect to an open worldwide community.

In his article, “Is Facebook Making Us Lonely?” Stephen Marche argues that Facebook is the vital cause for loneliness and is luring people away from social capital. According to Marche, social networking isolates individuals and creates distance, mostly amongst family members. For some, it is not only isolation but rather social loneliness. The author claims that health can also be effected by loneliness. Nowadays, due to very little verbal person to person communication, he writes that people have never been so separated from one another because of social media. Facebook users, Marche argues, have an addiction to profoundly visit their account constantly leading to the feeling of loneliness and in most cases depression. The author claims that social networking, instead of demolishing isolation, is unknowingly spreading it. Ultimately, However, Stephen’s argument fails to convince due to his abundant false assumptions and the articles confusing organization.

In Stephen Marche’s ”Is Facebook Making us Lonely”, the author starts with an grabbing or interesting story that made headlines about a women named Yvette Vickers. He uses this anecdote to grasp the reader’s attention. Moreover, the writer is trying to appeal to the audience about loneliness. In the text it says “Social Media-from Facebook to twitter- has made us more densely networked than ever. Yet for all this connectivity, new research suggests that we have never been lonelier”. The author presents his argument and gives some factual evidence for the argument. Moreover, he compares his views with others. He gives the readers a problem that many people face nowadays is loneliness. Marche informed “Despite its deleterious effect

Environment factors, including sedentary lifestyles, high energy intake and social aspects enhance the risk for obesity. A recently published evaluation of the Framingham Study provides an interesting alternative explanation for the worldwide increase in the prevalence of obesity, by demonstrating that the chance of a person to become obese is significantly higher when a friend, sibling or spouse are obese (Christakis and Fowler, 2007). Thus the social net work could be a relevant factor in the obesity epidemic.

There are both positives and negatives to social networking. After reading his article, I began to reflect on my own experiences and looked further into the information he presented. I found Thomas’s piece to be extremely accurate and I agree with the majority of his claims. Thomas goes deeply into the limited privacy these websites provide, the ambient awareness that brings a whole new meaning to knowing someone, and how your “weak ties” may be stronger, but also impacting your real life relationships. The article made me realize how much this social media craze is affecting our population and myself.

Formal and informal social networks, families, work colleagues, friendships influence individual’s decisions. Opinions people have of others can have a huge influence on how someone lives their lives, for example, if an individual hears negative comments about their body image the individual’s opinion of themselves will change and its usually in a negative way. This also links with interpersonal factors such as the characteristics of an individual, including their knowledge, behaviour and attitude. An individual with a lot of knowledge regarding obesity is more likely to try and avoid becoming obese and will have a negative attitude towards the subject because they are aware of the impact it will have on their health. This will differ with someone with a lack of knowledge about obesity as they may not understand or know about the severity of the health conditions that are associated with

“Then finally they connect with the people around them. They put family first, raise their children, watch after the elderly. They come from faith based communities, which all together adds about fourteen years on one life, if you do it weekly! Also who you associate with plays a part, if you hang around people who sit around all day eating and drinking, you will probably gain weight, the opposite is also true, if your friends are into bicycling, running, or walking you stand to stay trim.

Maria Konnikova, a New York Times best-selling author, is known for contributing scientific and psychological factors into her works, which has been published on several online publications such as Salon, the Atlantic, the New Republic, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, etc. (Konnikova 235). In her essay “Limits of Friendship”, she goes into depth about the number of friends that one can have overall based off Robin Dunbar theory and how technology is impacting not only his theory, but our social lives also. Based on Robin Dunbar research, he believes that a typical individual has one hundred and fifty people in their social group in which he differentiates in his “rule of three”. As technology advances, the way individuals interact with one another is through social media and their smart devices, but we’re slowly losing our focus on how to socialize with one another. Technology is making it easier to build relationships with those around the world, but harder with those around us.

The epitome of a Good Life is the strong relationships humans are able to construct over time, but this can be affected by social media. Even though it connects individuals around the globe, social media can have a devastating effect on the establishment of communication in solid relationships. In Robert Waldinger’s “What makes a Good Life,” TED talk, he believes strong relationships are the framework of achieving a good life. Dr. Waldinger debates that the development of inter-social relationships could highly influence our life in a healthy manner, more than wealth and career success could. The need for relationships is seen through: (a) the Harvard Study, and (b) a healthy lifestyle. Clive Thompson’s article, “A Brave New World: I’m so Totally Digitally Close to You,” discusses how social media has revolutionized the way our community interacts. Instead of having one-to-one interaction with someone in person, now with just a “tweet” or “DM” a person easily contacts another person. He argues that the advancements of technology have led to our society developing an endless addiction to

In our society where every mundane act seems to be presented by users on social network platforms for the rest of the world to see, a new phenomenon has began called “fitspo”. Fitspo stands for fitness inspiration, which is what users are doing when they post photo updates of their workouts, and diets, along with joining online groups to encourage each other to maintain healthy lifestyles. Interesting to note, “The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have identified a lack of encouragement, support, or companionship from family and friends as a major barrier to physical activity. To overcome this barrier, online social networks are now actively leveraging principles of companion social support in novel ways.” (Nakhasi, A., Shen, A. X., Passarella, R. J., Appel, L. J., & Anderson, C. A. M., 2014) Overcoming this barrier can be much

In our first unit of sociology, I felt I could relate with the term social network, " The term social network refers to the people who are linked to one another(Henslin,116.)"Social networks include everyone you know. I can relate to social networking because I 'm on a social salsa team. When I joined my dance team , we all had the same passion, the love of dance. After a few years of performing and hanging with the same clique all the time for they have the same interests as me. After a while we all seemed to cluster together and they are now more than just a clique to me they are my fiends.

First of all, as I have been mentioned at the last paragraph ,the use of high technology also contribute to the feeling of loneliness and less contact with others. For example, the more use of Internet and TV, the less participation in communication with family members and others (Robert et al. 1998, p. 1017). Moreover, according to Moody (2001, p. 393) using internet with high frequency is related to high levels of emotional loneliness and the use of internet can decrease social well-being. Second, lack of physical activity and sedentary lifestyle may lead to dissatisfaction of life and suicide. It is a truth that most of western individuals prefer sitting in their house and enjoying the sedentary lifestyle. For instance, according to Jepsen et al. (2013, p. 10), by the study of 51 invited obese patients, the conclusion is that physical activity has a close relation to life satisfaction. Furthermore, because a sedentary lifestyle can make people overweight, which may bring about discrimination and suicide. For instance, in American culture, people tend to focus on their body size and weight, so by analyzing a wide range of students with different races and different social background, Eisenberg et al. (2003, p.733, 736) point out that laughing at overweight people may make them feel dissatisfied with themselves and depressed deeply and have high tendency of committing suicide. In addition, obesity is in connection with higher

In the example of Obesity, an individual’s obesity can be wrongly viewed as their own personal trouble but when viewed at a broader spectrum, it is noted that there is a variety of social issues involved which transforms it from a personal trouble to a social phenomenon. In addition to Mills’ ideas, there has been a significant amount of research which suggests obesity is a social phenomenon.