14 DAY TRIAL // Researchers presenting their finds at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), in San Diego, announce that they found sleep deprivation to be contagious. The scientists explained that people losing sleep could influence others in their social network directly. The study found that those who slept less than they should have were also more likely to have friends that did the same. This habit has also been linked to an increased risk of drug use, the team that made the discovery reports, ScienceNow writes.
Sleep is only the latest type of behavior found to be spreading throughout social networks. Other investigations have revealed that things such as obesity, smoking, and happiness can spread among people based solely on their interactions. The new investigation showed that the same held true for real-world interactions, as well as for virtual ones, on sites such as Facebook and MySpace. The latest study was conducted by University of California in San Diego (UCSD) political scientist James Fowler.
At the AAAS meeting, the expert described in detail the results of an investigation he conducted on a fairly extensive social network, featuring about 8,000 children. All the test participants were in the seventh to twelfth grade, and they all had their sleeping and drug habits monitored. The research focused on the light drug marijuana, which is very common among teenagers. The scientists who conducted the work had to map highly-intricate social connections between each participant and his or her friends. The middle of the networks was dominated by the “cool” kids, those who had more connections to others.
The research showed that the more central a kid was the more likely he or she was to sleep less than 7 hours per night. In very much the same way, when it came to analyzing drug habits, children who were connected with participants who smoked pot were 42 percent more likely to smoke pot themselves. The influence exerted by the kids in the central knots of the social networks remained statistically relevant up to four degree of separation away, which translates into a friend of a friend of a friend’s friend feeling the influence of a “cool kid's” sleep and drug habits. The scientists now plan to move their research to Facebook, which will hopefully give them access to the teens themselves.