There is a book out there that made me think,

Will Active Rain and Social Networking Make You Live Longer?

The book is Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. In it there is discussion of research done on the small rural Pennsylvania town of Roseto. The people there just die of old age, not heart attacks, cancer, etc. There was no suicide, alcoholism, drug addiction and very little crime. The researchers wanted to know why. They looked at diet, and they ate sausage and eggs. Some even smoked heavily and had obesity problems. Then they looked at genetics and they tracked their relatives across the U.S but those from Roseto were the only healthy ones.

Then they looked at the two nearby towns of Nazareth and Bangor. Similar size in population but their heart disease was three times that of Roseto.

The researchers finally concluded it was all about lifestyle. Connectedness if you will. People talked to each, they met in the street, they sat out on their front porches, they had three generations of family nearby, they cooked in each others' backyards, they had 22 separate civic organizations in a town of just under 2,000. Somehow there was a powerful, protective social structure with all this connectedness insulating them from all the stresses and pressures of today's high paced world.

So in the virtual connected world of Active Rain, Facebook, and Twitter, will we see the same thing? Maybe. When those don't blog or comment or tweet for awhile, we email or call them up if they are one of "us" and check in on them.Maybe beyond building your business or connecting with your high school buddies, social networking should be done just like daily dental flossing to

LIVE LONGER !!!!

Maybe just maybe, being a part of something like Active Rain, an Outlier, you will live to a ripe old age, into your 80's, 90's, or 100. Bloggers don't just die of a heart attack. Instead they just fade away. But they leave a legacy out on the net for future generations to read! Here's to everyone taking advantage of this probably most overlooked benefit of Active Rain!!