Social Media Angst and Blue Zone Longevity. Can Being Nice Help You Live a Long Life?

My last few posts have focused on social media.   How its misuse generates and spreads anxiety and unhappiness; both in the instigators and the recipients of the negativity. 

I have also mentioned about Dan Buettner’s Blue Zones and his philosophy on longevity.  I love one of Buettner’s ‘must do’s’ everyday .... ‘say something nice to the first person you see in morning.’   

We have probably all experienced how 'being nice' is infectious and gives you a warm feeling inside. 

Chatting with a stranger on a genuine level about things that are good in the world; or helping someone, without them asking; just because you can.  Getting a hug from someone you love, donating to a charity, etc... the good karma comes galloping in and can make the rest of the day wonderful.  How can this not be good for you?

Buettner’s importance of community and family belonging (nice-ness) rings true on so many levels. 

If you have a stressful job, when you go home to a family that is full of love and laughter, understanding and hugs, it is an escape into a healing environment. 

If you have friends to listen and laugh with you, to accept and share with; you always feel better for having caught up with them.

Doing something you love, every day, is good for the soul.  Especially if the effects of this are good for others around you too. (For example; exercise=endorphins=makes you feel good=happy with those around you).  Is this why so many people keep a pet?  

Many of the health surveys on the internet (Dr Oz etc.) have questions such as ‘Are you married?' and 'Do you have a strong family, social or friendship group?’  

The Blue Zone octogenarians, apparently, lack social anxiety, understand the importance of family and community and live in areas where the western world has only recently been introduced, or is shunned. 

Of the current generation of social media users: Those who read the hype, those who write the hype and those who believe the hype: I wonder what their level of social anxiety is. 

It will be interesting to see if the advent of the computer age coincides with a lowering of the average life expectancy in humans.  If the current younger generation living in Blue Zone areas carry on the legacy of longevity that their grandparents and great grandparents have established.