Social Networking Is Healthy

• Tweet
• Sharebar

• Tweet

For the second half of my sales career and well before I became a Professional Life Coach, I worked exclusively in a team environment. I’m a fairly social person and like a good chat so that always worked out well for me.

Sales can be lonely if you’re out on the road all the time as I often was. I had one job in particular where my patch was almost 200 miles long and half the width of the England. So being able to catch up with colleagues on the phone and occasionally in hotel meet-ups was crucial for me, but I never knew how crucial it was until fairly recently.

I’m going to throw some facts at you in this post, but the key word here is facts. If I’m drawing conclusions I’ll let you know, otherwise presume I am talking about established research that I’m just too lazy to track down and link to.

I had a conversation with John Strelecky my ‘How To Be Rich And Happy’ co-author yesterday. He had sent the latest draft back to me with two huge queries on it. I had referred to some mind blowing facts and he was asking me if I was sure they were true?

I’m anal about this stuff, I really am. About a month after we moved to Orlando an old guy stopped me to ask directions. He wanted to go to the Holyland Theme Park. I thought I knew roughly where it was and when he said it was on Vineland Rd, I knew exactly where and directed him accordingly.

A day or so later I was driving across Apopka-Vineland Rd when it dawned on me I’d sent the poor guy in exactly the opposite direction to where he wanted to be. Vineland and Apopka-Vineland were not one and the same.

I’ve no idea whether he ever got to ride the Jesus Christ It’s High, Roller Coaster, or even if there is such a thing, but I felt terrible for a few days as I imagined the old guy wondering round Pine Hills (not the best place to be lost in, trust me) looking for God, Jesus or any number of assorted Prophets.

I am a stickler for facts which is why I’m always rather annoyingly pointing errors out on other peoples blogs. It’s also why I like people pointing mine out to me because I hate to misinform people.

So when John asked me whether I was sure what I said was right, I was incredulous, because I wouldn’t have used it if I wasn’t sure.

Brevity may indeed be the soul of wit, but I only have a passing relationship with it and that was a ridiculously long-winded way of saying, trust me I’m a doctor (in the non-medical, none PhD sense that is), and what I’m saying is true.

There has been much talk across the Internet about the damage that excessive use of Social Networking may be causing, especially to youngsters who are spending increasingly long periods of time on sites like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and The Discomfort Zone.

I have to be honest and say that as we don’t have kids I haven’t paid much attention to it because I don’t consider it a problem for me. In fact, when I consider the benefits of human bonding and interaction I’m dubious it’ll be a problem to many people that stay this side of addiction and obsession.

Of course there should probably be barriers. Tweeting whilst sat on the toilet at 3.00am, at a funeral or during sex would be pushing things a tad too far in my opinion, although I bet any money you like, all have been done many times.

As human beings we are social animals and on the whole we like the company of others. If you doubt this, ask yourself why solitary confinement is about the worst punishment you can inflict on a person other than sleep deprivation?

Here are some of the facts I spoke about that back up the benefits of socialization and you can draw your own conclusions as to what they mean or even argue about their validity if you so wish.

• Loneliness is as much a risk to your health as high cholesterol and smoking
• Women that contract breast cancer have a much higher chance of survival if they are part of a support network of people who are going through or have been through a similar situation.
• People with lots of friends are less likely to be involved in accidents
• People with lots of friends are also less prone to almost every serious medical condition you can think of
• Having a large network of friends increases your life expectancy significantly (as does being optimistic by the way)

If you are a loner that thinks people suck and you may as well just end it all now, think again. The good news is due to an effect called Animal-Human bonding, pets can have the same effect. Hurrah!

• Pet owners have a faster recovery rate from surgical procedures.
• People with pets (ones they like I think this means) tend to have lower blood pressure.

Note: When I found a hole the size of a tennis court in my backyard the other day with two tunneling Dobermans in it, I’m pretty sure my cortisol levels and blood pressure went up. Especially as we rent.

This is where I start to make suppositions and I’m really intrigued to know whether you agree or disagree with where I am going with this.

The thing I miss most about sales is the camaraderie with the people I worked with. In particular I worked with some brilliant people at Yellow Pages. We’d whine about stuff, congratulate each other when deals got closed and have a drink or two when we were working away from home. It was like an extended family in many respects, and on reflection the only thing that kept me sane.

On moving to the US in February of 2006 we were pitched into a completely alien environment. We had no friends here, no support network and I had no business. Fortunately for the both of us, my wife was working in a hospital and soon began to make friends and we developed a social network over time.

Prior to that, I would toil away by the pool, in my office day after day trying to build a business from the ground up. It was really tough and a lot of the time very lonely.

Telemarketers would avoid calling me for fear that I’d never let them leave, Jehovah’s Witness’s would steer clear of my house through lack of time and the dog would insist she didn’t need to hear the story about the time I won salesman of the month yet again.

During those first few months I contracted several small infections. Nothing too serious, just coughs and colds, but the funny thing is, prior to moving to the US I had gone almost 5 years without getting anything.

Is that any form of proof? No of course not, it’s purely anecdotal evidence, but it’s interesting to me nonetheless.

My contact with people on a daily basis is still low compared to somebody that works in an office environment. I don’t deal with more then three clients per day and even then it’s primarily a business relationship. Having said that, I’m very fortunate in so much as I only seem to attract people I like working with and that definitely helps remove any feeling of isolation.

Just over a year ago I found Twitter. Since then I have formed a lot of what I consider genuine friendships. Some are people that I would happily down tools for and meet up for a beer if they came to town, and I have spoken to a good number over the phone.

About once per month I clear out people that I never talk to or never talk to me. That way I feel like I am interacting with friends, not just people trying to sell me something. Yeh they may be trying to sell me something too, but that’s ok because they’re buddies.

On days like today when I am ‘supposed’ to be writing for most of the day, Twitter allows me an outlet to ‘talk’ to people. I don’t even need to get into conversations as such to feel better. Just being able to post random garbage and knowing somebody is reading it is often enough.

I think that Social Networking either online or in person is neither healthy nor unhealthy in and of itself, I think it is the individuals approach that decides its effectiveness.

If you are on Twitter all day purely to get as many followers as your ego can stand and throw spammy links at people, then I don’t see how that can be anything other than stressful and damaging to your health and sanity.

That is not Social Networking or even Social Marketing as I see it, because there is no ‘social’ element. That would be like going to a face-to-face networking event, shouting your company details from the doorway and hoping people will rush over to hug you and give you their hard earned.

Society is changing quickly and we can’t alter that fact. Many people are terrified of change they don’t understand and can’t control. As such they will do what they can to try and slow it down even to the point of undermining it. Our lives will be completely different in 10 years time and not one person on the planet can predict with any degree of accuracy what it will look like.

Social networking is what it is. To me it is a really cool way of making contact with people, having fun and it would appear, staying healthy by reducing my stress levels. If I pick up clients intro the bargain, then I just see that as a huge bonus, because even if I were a multi-millionaire I’d still be lurking around insulting spammers and throwing asinine comments out there, that if nothing else, make me laugh.