Your circle of friends may help you get a better reading of your overall health and wellness rather than just using wearable devices such as a Fitbit, according to researchers.
The study, published in the journal PLOS ONE, analyzed what the structure of social networks says about the state of health, happiness and stress.
"We were interested in the topology(拓扑学) of the social network—what my position within my social network predicts about my health and well-being," said Nitesh V. Chawla, an educationalist at the University of Notre Dame in the US.
"What we found was that the social network structure provides a significant improvement in predictability of wellness states of an individual over just using the data obtained from wearables, like the number of steps or heart rates," Chawla said.
For the study, participants wore a Fitbit to capture health behaviour data about walking, sleeping, heart rates and overall activity level. They also completed surveys and self-assessments of their stress, happiness and positivity.
Chawla and his team then analyzed the data with a machine learning model, alongside the association and characteristics of an individual's social network.
The study showed a strong correlation(关联) between social network structures, heart rates, the number of steps and level of activity.
Social network structure provided extraordinary improvement in predicting one's health and well-being in contrast to just looking at health behaviour data from the Fitbit alone.
For example, when social network structure was combined with the data from wearables, the machine learning model achieved a 65 percent improvement in predicting happiness.
The model also achieved a 54 percent improvement in predicting one's self-assessed health prediction, a 55 percent improvement in predicting the positive attitude and a 38 percent improvement in predicting success.
This study asserts(断言) that without social network information, we only have an incomplete view of an individual's wellness state. "To be fully predictive or to be able to obtain intervention(干预), it is critical to be aware of the social network," Chawla said.