Failure to Kick Smoking Habit May Put a Drag on Social Life
Failure to Kick Smoking Habit May Put a Drag on Social Life
New study shows pattern of "quitting cascades" permeate social networks
By Nikhil Swaminathan
Smokers who fail to kick the habit are not only hurting their bodies but may also be missing a chance to make new friends or, in some cases, keep old ones, according to new research.
Researchers report in The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) that an analysis of more than 12,000 smokers (and their friends, families and colleagues) over a 30-year period shows that attempting to quit smoking can serve as a people magnet by becoming a phenomenon among social groups, like a gaggle of college students or co-workers at a small firm.
According to the study, quitting often involves networks of people who spread the word (and behavior) to other cliques with whom they interact. "In a deep way, there's an association between you quitting and the quitting of people that are two to three degrees away from you," says study co-author Nicholas Christakis, a professor of health care policy at Harvard Medical School. "People you don't know personally, their actions ripple through the network and affect you."
Christakis says the effect triggers "quitting cascades" analogous to lights going out down the line on a power grid until ultimately it goes dark. The parts of the grid that are not affected by the loss of power, as in an actual blackout, are usually those on the fringes of the web—in a quitting cascade, it is those who continue to smoke.
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Originally Posted by Pale Rider
