On Depression and Sparsely connected friendship networks
Link to article:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1449832/
The pervasiveness of depression amongst teenagers in recent years has incited widespread concern. The study conducted by Bearman and Moody revolves around several variables that could have induced depression, most notably, the strength of friendships within a network. Here are some quotes from the study that were of interest to me:
“Few longitudinal population-based studies have examined risk factors from multiple domains. We used data from a nationally representative sample of adolescents in the United States and examined the relative importance of various risk factors associated with both suicidal ideation and suicide attempts.”
They also “assessed the potential role that friendship patterns play in shaping adolescent suicidality. Because our sample was large, we were able to compare the patterns of risks for boys and girls separately and to model the risks of both suicidal thoughts and suicide attempts.”
Next, they outlined a hypothetical situation and connected it to the results to illustrate the effects of a densely or sparsely connected friendship network. “Consider 3 adolescents: if i names j as a friend, and j names k as a friend, then i and k are 2 friendship steps apart. If i also names k as a friend, the resultant triad (i, j, k) is transitive. If i does not nominate k, despite j’s friendship with i and k, then the triad is intransitive. Transitive relations reflect closed, dense friendship groups, in which an individual’s friends are friends with one another. Intransitivity indicates dissonant relations, where an individual’s friendship circle spans multiple disconnected members.”
“…Beyond the age effect, however, we found important gender differences in the effect of social network and relational variables. For girls, being socially isolated from peers (OR = 2.01) or having intransitive friendships (OR = 2.19) substantially increased the odds of thinking about suicide.”
A discussion of how the resource connects to some topic covered in the course:
The correlation makes sense for several reasons. In order to understand this relationship between friend networks and depression, we must scrutinize the nature of transitive and intransitive friendships, what they say about the person they stem from, and how they affect said person.
To reiterate, if “i names j as a friend, and j names k as a friend, then i and k are 2 friendship steps apart. If i also names k as a friend, the resultant triad (i, j, k) is transitive. If i does not nominate k, despite j’s friendship with i and k, then the triad is intransitive.” This closely aligns with the triadic closure property mentioned in the textbook, which states that “if two people in a social network have a friend in common, then there is an increased likelihood that they will become friends themselves at some point in the future [347].” Transitive friendships fulfill the concept of triadic closure, while intransitive friendships do not.
We can make a few assumptions about the reasons behind intransitive relationships by reviewing why triadic closure happens:
- A’s friends, B and C, have more opportunity to meet up
- The fact that they’re both friends with A gives them more basis to trust each other, common interests
- A has incentive to bring B and C together
In the intransitive relationship, B and C have A as a mutual friend but they are not friends with each other. We can also say that one or all of the reasons for triadic closure outlined above don’t apply in this situation. So, A’s friends, B and C either have few or no opportunities to meet up, have no have basis to trust each other despite the fact that they’re both friends with A, or A has no incentive to bring B and C together.
Which brings us to the question: How close is A to both B and C?
From this point on, much of this post is speculation, but I believe it’s reasonable to assume that A’s ties to B and C may not be very strong or genuine. Let’s look at this on a larger scale, in which A is involved in several intransitive friendships.
For all of A’s friends who aren’t friends with each other, why wouldn’t they have opportunities to meet up? Possibly for these reasons:
- They have different interests
- Because of different interests, they are all involved in different activities/classes/organizations. Because of varying commitments, they may not have time to meet up.
- It’s rare for A to simultaneously spend time with any two of her friends
It gets increasingly difficult for A to devote lots of time to each of her friends, many of whom don’t get to meet often or have no incentive to. The bigger her network grows with fewer and fewer relationships that fulfill the triadic closure property, the less likely it is that A shares deep connections with most of her “friends.”
According to an article published on the Huffington Post, “our strongest relationships — the ones where we actively keep in touch — are limited regardless of how we feel about the other people in our lives who we consider close.” And perhaps if we spread ourselves out too thinly, it’ll be hard to even give enough time to those who are close to us, thereby weakening strong ties in exchange for numerous weak ones. This can be potentially harmful, as described in another post published by The American Psychological Association, Anna Miller states that “In one meta-analysis of 148 studies comprising more than 308,000 people, for example, Brigham Young University psychologists found that participants with stronger social relationships were 50 percent more likely to survive over the studies’ given periods than those with weaker connections — a risk comparable to smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day and one double that of obesity…most research indicates that feeling isolated is more dangerous than being isolated, says psychologist John Cacioppo, PhD, co-author of the 2008 book Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection.”
“‘It’s not being alone or not that affects your health,’ Cacioppo says. ‘You can feel terribly isolated when you’re around other people.’”
The study of larger networks can shed light on issues for which we puzzle over and have no clear answer for. It certainly led to the interesting correlation between friendships and likelihood of depression, giving us another avenue of thought to consider and possibly a way of finding a solution that we haven’t considered before.