Researchers from Brigham Young University have found that people with a large amount of close relationships have a better chance of living a long life, than those who do not have many friends or family. The study shows that people with strong relationships have odds of survival greater than 50 percent more than those who lead lonely lives. With this said, there could be a correlation between loneliness and alcohol/drug use though.

People who tend to be lonely turn to drinking, smoking and doing other harmful forms of drugs, which in turn shrink their life spans. Researchers still need to come up with a way of removing these factors from the study before they can claim that strong relationships directly influence a persons chances of living longer lives.

This study included 308,849 men and women who were followed for over seven years, on average. It included data from 148 previous studies performed in the past.