How children’s social networks affect their health status
Many of our habits are learned from family, friends, peers, and mentors, including those that affect our mental and physical health. The article “Social Capital in the Health Development of Children” discusses the influence children’s social capital has on their health and health behavior. To measure social capital, Klocke and Stadtmüller looked at where children build up generalized trust, which includes family environment, school climate, and their neighborhoods. To measure health, they looked at general health status, sleep, concentration, feeling fit and comfortable, as well as how often they drink sugary drinks and eat nutritious foods. Results showed that social capital has a strong association with health status and behavior for children; when social capital was high in volume, children had better mental and physical health outcomes. The impact that social capital had on health was even for children of all socio-demographic groups, demonstrating that higher social capital has a positive influence no matter the child’s background.
Networks are the instrument for how social capital gets accumulated. Social capital is ultimately the aggregate resources extracted from a network of acquaintances or, in this case, generalized trust. In this study, the ties, or edges, represent the delivery of information and health habits across all trusting relationships while the nodes represent the people involved, such as the children, their parents, peers, and neighbors with each cluster representing these different domains of influence. Therefore, for a child in a family, school, or neighborhood with low health literacy and access to resources, their network would be composed of edges transmitting a negative influence or inaccurate information on health behaviors and habits. In contrast, a child in a family, school, or neighborhood with healthy habits, health literacy, and accessible and affordable healthcare, then their network would be composed of edges transmitting positive, helpful health behaviors that would lead to better health outcomes for the child.
Social capital can be also related to positive and negative relationships in networks. Let us now assume that edges represent generalized trust (friendly relationships) and a lack of trust (hostile relationships). In unbalanced triadic relationships where there are three negative edges or one negative edge with two positive edges, habits and information on health won’t be transmitted as easily due to the social dissonance from a lack of trust or disagreement of trust toward a certain person(s). Furthermore, there may even be lower mental health outcomes as a stable support system is an important part of social capital that translates to health. However, in balanced triadic relationships where there are three positive edges or two negative edges with mutual distrust toward one node, there would be a steady, less stressful interaction of habits, as well as a stronger sense of bonding and community that is mentally less taxing.
While social capital is strongly associated with health status and outcomes, they also serve as a buffer against unfavorable environmental factors in early development. Therefore, a better understanding of social networks and the transmission of support, trust, and information in relation to one’s socioeconomic and demographic status could help inform public health policies and interventions for children and younger populations.
Source: Klocke, A., Stadtmüller, S. Social Capital in the Health Development of Children. Child Ind Res 12, 1167–1185 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12187-018-9583-y