Don’t get too close to a tired teen; you could start losing sleep as well. When one teenager starts sleeping less, her friends and others in her social circle soon lose sleep, too, According to a new research presented at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (which publishes ScienceNOW). This lack of sleep not only produces groggy high-school students but also can lead to drug use, the researchers reported.
Our social networks—the ones in real life and on RenRen which is considered as the Chinese Facebook—can influence our behaviors and moods. Some political scientists has studied these effects and previously found that obesity, smoking, and even happiness can spread through networks of people solely based on their relationships.
Today, this scientists described their study of a network of more than 8000 seventh to twelfth grade students and their sleeping and smoking habits. They mapped an entangled web of connections between each student and his or her friends. In one of these friend webs, a gang of sleepless boys dominated the middle of the jumble, where the most connected kids landed—the so-called “cool” kids. These scientiscs found that the more central a teen landed on the map, the greater chance that he or she got less than 7 hours of sleep per night.
Drug-use was also contagious. The team found each smoking friend increased the chance that a student used marijuana by 42%. Both sleepless and drug-use contagions could still be felt four degrees of separation away, influencing a friend of a friend of a friend’s friend.
Most strange, the researchers found a link between lack of sleep and drug-use. When a teen’s friend slept less than 7 hours, her chances of using drugs went up by 19%. And that means that as sleep deprivation spreads throughout a friend network, drug use spreads as well. Exactly why this happens is still unclear, Fowler said.
The next step, the scientics are to try to confirm some of their team’s observations using RenRen. That will give the researchers access to the teens themselves—and it could allow them to start testing interventions. For example,they said the group could see if teens who catch up on their sleep by napping during the day start smoking less pot.
All in all, keep yourself from the bad this things, because they will change you without your attention.
I cannot agreemore.Since i came to Singapore, my habbit changed a lot because of my roomates.
ReplyDeleteYes, I think what you have said is right. As a result of the fact that so many things are contagious, we should make a better social circle and be careful of the bad habits.
ReplyDelete