Social Contagion

Last night Paul and I watched a movie called Adventureland. A period film (the 80’s, which was altogether depressing) about a young man who comes back from college and finds summer work at a low budget amusement park, the film shows a lot of scenes of early 20 somethings drinking, smoking pot and doing nothing.

My husband and I chuckled throughout the movie but in the end, I left feeling like a complete voyeur watching escapades that I not only did not understand but never experienced. I told him I thought the whole lot of them were pretty pathetic and couldn’t understand why anyone would want to piss away their time like that. He grinned and said, “That was my life every weekend for almost 15 years before I met you.” He wasn’t joking and he wasn’t ashamed. Classic Paul.

I told him I would be highly distressed if any of my kids ended up like this, even for a short period of time. He looked at me as if to say, “get ready for disappointment.” I know he’s right.

Last week, The New York Times published an article in the Sunday Times Magazine about the theory of “social contagion”and explained that the company you keep can influence factors from wealth to weight as well as success and happiness. For example, the study posited that a person is 36% more likely to smoke if their friend is smoking. Happiness is said to be more contagious than unhappiness. Being around happy people is said to raise your good cheer by 9%.

In the end, I know that trying to influence the company my kids keep will be as difficult as Glen Beck trying to behave like a rational human being. I can only hope that my kids make good decisions and surround themselves with people that make them healthy and happy, even if a little experimentation is involved.