Impact of Social Interactions on Healthy Aging: A Review

This report provides a comprehensive review of the impact of social interactions on healthy aging, drawing on multiple journal articles and studies. The introduction highlights the physiological and psychosocial changes associated with aging and the concept of healthy aging, emphasizing the importance of social engagement, physical activity, and a healthy diet. The review analyzes several studies, including research from the Journal of Applied Gerontology, which examines the relationship between social behaviors, healthy behaviors, and physical health across different age groups. The report also discusses a study from The Korean Academy of Community Health Nursing, focusing on the reciprocal relationship between social activities and health in older adults. The review emphasizes the positive effects of social interactions on mental and physical health, cognitive function, and overall well-being, while also acknowledging the potential negative impacts of poor social relations. The report concludes that maintaining positive social interactions is crucial for promoting healthy aging, reducing age-related problems, and enhancing the quality of life for older adults.

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Effects of Social Interactions on Healthy Aging
Class
Institution

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Introduction
Aging is characterized by many changes in the body. These changes are affected by
biopsychosocial, social to cultural reasons. These reasons can be interrelated or not, varying from
one person to another. There are changes that do not affect one’s health such as development of
grey hair, while others have physical or mental health effects or both. Whereas these changes are
inevitable, an individual can still age in a manner that allows them to maintain their functionality
and well-being even in old age. This is known as healthy aging. To age healthily, one can engage
in activities such as social interactions, physical activities such as weight lifting and healthy diet.
This paper reviews some journals that discuss the topic of social interactions and how
they affect healthy aging. The review will show the importance of social interaction. These
interactions go along way in ensuring people leave happily and function better in old age.
Social interactions have too many health benefits to human beings. These benefits are
much needed by the older citizens living amongst us. In most cases these are individuals who
have already retired, so they lack the interactions that come with being in a working
environment. Their children, if they had any, are also highly occupied with work and building
their families too thus making the elderly lack enough interactions. This then creates the
necessity to try and make the aging population aware of the benefits of social interactions. There
have been numerous studies done to prove the fact that social interactions have positive effects in
relations to healthy aging. And from our general understanding help reduce mentally related
diseases and disabilities.
There has been a lot of studies over the years linking good health to a good social life.
For example, mingling with friends and family can help to boost a person’s feeling of self-worth.

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This is a very important aspect of a person’s well-being. In the journal the authors examine the
relationship between social behaviors, healthy behaviors and the physical health in adults
sampled from the ages of 21 years to the ages of over 90 years. The journal uses research
conducted over the years to establish this relationship (Cherry, 2013).
This journal has merit considering the authors have used well sourced information. The
authors are also experts in the field of psychology therefore giving a proper insight to the matter
from a point of knowledge.
The type of method used to acquire the research is self-sufficient. The participants were a
good number with a good range of years thus giving a more comprehensive look at the topic. The
measure of social engagement was defined as perceived social engagement which focused on the
participant’ satisfaction with the social interactions they had.
Social relations affect individuals differently depending on the type of the relation.
Positive relations help give individuals a positive physical and mental health as opposed to
negative relations which give negative effects on someone’s wellbeing (Cherry, 2013). This
finding was found to affect the older population this means that, the social connections affects
people of old age depending on the quality of the relationships (Cherry, 2013). People of older
ages were found to be respond more to non-emotional support than how they responded to
financial constraints as opposed to younger population who responded more to financial
constraints (N, 2005). This shows that people of old age are more concerned about emotional
support which comes from social interactions as opposed to material things.
Friends, family and other important people in individual’s life are the main source of
social interactions. These are the people can impact the older population positively if their

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interaction is positive. They can help their loved ones to have healthy habits, give them mental
support and make them happy generally (Cherry, 2013).
The journal of The Korean Academy of Community Health Nursing examines the
reciprocal causal relationship between social activities and health with reference to the cognitive
function level among community-dwelling older adults (Kim, 2017). The journal compares
social interactions to health but the focus of the study is the role played by the community in
general to the elderly living among them (Kim, 2017).
The journal analyses data from studies carried out in the past using the 4th and 5th waves
of the Korean Longitudinal Study of Aging (KLoSA) carried out after every two years since
2008 (Kim, 2017). This method of data collection is reliable since the data is timely. The study
was done to persons above the age of 45. In the 4th and 5th waves, a total of 3,721 people aged 65
years and above took part in the study, thus making it have more accurate results since the study
used a large number of the target group in the study. Also, the method used to select households
was a multistage stratified sampling method based on geographical area (Kim, 2017). This
increases the credibility of the data (Yoon, 2017).
The study uses measures such as using subjective health status, which is the self-
perceived level of status. They also use social activities partaken by the participants such as their
religious activities and other factors such as their ages, gender, household monthly income,
number of chronic diseases, and depression symptoms (Kim, 2017). The study finds out that
social interactions increases the wellbeing of the older people in the society; both physically and
mentally and helps in maintaining their cognitive function levels.

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Social interactions according to the journal leads to successful aging. This is
characterized by prevention of diseases, disability and maintaining physical cognitive functions.
Social interactions are important to the elderly in helping them stay aware of their surroundings
(Yoon, 2017). Religious activities too have positive impact on the spiritual aspect of the elderly.
Also, social interactions help people make good decisions in old age, have good judgement, good
problem-solving skills and proper reasoning.
The journal (Hodge, 2013) looks at the relationship between IQ and occupational status
and whether it affects people at old age. The study makes a comparison between people with
lower IQ compared with those with higher over a period of 30 years. The study takes note of
participants’ intelligence levels and monitor’s them over the said period. The goal was to note if
there would be a difference in progression in the careers of those with higher intellect as
compared to those with lower.
The journal also looks at the effects of IQ in general health and how it affects how easily
it is for people with different IQ levels to perform both academically and socially. The study
finds out that people with high IQ ;70 and above, can easily integrate into a classroom setup and
excel academically. This journal however fails to give any concrete relations to how social
interaction help to improve the wellbeing of people in the old age. It only shows how IQ status is
related to health issues and social status (Yoon, 2017).
The journal health and quality of life outcomes identifies the sociopsychological factors
influencing aging and examines their socio-economic demographic (Han, 2015). The study had
171 adult Koreans aged 45 to 77 years participants. The study used self-reporting questioners
then descriptive statistics and multiple regressions as inferential statistical analyses.

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The study used measures such as ones perceived health status, self-esteem levels,
depression levels, ego integrity, self-achievement, participation in leisure activities, and
loneliness to assess the levels of heathy aging of an individual. These measures are good as they
cover every aspect of a human’s social life.
The study found out that the factors that affected healthy aging positively were the
positives: in how one’s perceived health status was, their self- esteem, self-achievements and
leisure activities. Also, healthy aging was found to be negatively affected by loneliness and
depression. This shows that a positive social life leads to a healthy aging, thus leading to a good
wellbeing both physically and psychologically.
Conclusions
From the four articles discussed above, social interaction or a luck of it can affect people
of old age either positively or negatively. From the evidence, it is better for people of old age to
have social interactions. These can be in terms of leisure activities, religious activities, and other
social gathering and especially have a strong relationship with their friends and family.
Whereas social relations are important, these relations should be positive. Negative
relations will negatively affect the wellbeing of the people of old age in the society (Finch JF,
1989). This therefore means that family and close people to the elderly should help them foster
good social relationships to reduce the problems of old age such as physical illness, memory
loss, and depression but help them flourish both psychologically, spiritually and physically
which leads to healthy aging.

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References
Cherry, K. E. (2013). Social engagement and health in younger, older, and oldest-old adults in the
Louisiana Healthy Aging Study. Journal of applied gerontology : the official journal of the
Southern Gerontological Society, 51–75.
Finch JF, O. M. (1989). Positive and negative social ties among older adults: Measurement models and
the prediction of psychological distress and well-being. American Journal of Community
Psychology, 585–605.
Han, K. L. (2015). Psychosocial factors for influencing healthy aging in adults in Korea. Health and Quality
of Life Outcomes, 31.
Hodge, A. E. (2013). Social connectedness and predictors of successful ageing. Maturitas, 361-366.
N, K. (2005). Exploring age difference in the stress-buffering functions of social support. Psychology and
Aging., 714–717.
Yoon, E. D. (2017). The reciprocal causal relationship casual relationshipbeyween social activities and
health withreference to the cognitive function level among community-dwelling older adults:A
cross-lagged panel analysis. Journal of The Korean Academy of Community Health Nursing, 13-
22.