Recent decades have shown a population level decline in smoking, and the person to person spread of smoking cessation may be the reason. You may be influenced to start smoking by your surroundings, but can your social network (friends, neighbors, coworkers, family members) help you successfully quit smoking? The answer is yes.

A study just published in the New England Journal of Medicine ("The Collective Dynamics of Smoking in a Large Social Network" May 22, 2008) looked at 12,000 people over 32 years. They found that decisions to quit smoking are not solely made by individuals but may reflect choices made by groups of people widely connected to each other at up to three degrees of separation. Could Dailystrength.org play that role? I think so.

This study suggests that if one person in the social network is exposed to, for example, smoking cessation campaigns that cause them to quit, that process may "spread" from person to person. A change in the smoking behavior of more than one contact is helpful and it appears that the affect may be additive (the more people around you trying to quit the more likely you are to quit). Additionally, people in the social network who remained smokers become outsiders in that group.

Social networks have a significant effect on smoking behavior, the new results suggest. For those of us participating in online social networks like Dailystrength.org, you now should know that your behavior influences the behavior of those you reach out to. Smoking cessation appears to spread through distant as well as close social ties, with interconnected groups of people quitting in concert."People are connected, and so their health is connected," the researchers write. That sums it up well.

Dr O.