Social media may be bad for your health

As reported by University at Buffalo, January 21, 2022:

Social media use has been linked to biological and psychological indicators associated with poor physical health among college students, according to the results of a new study by a University at Buffalo researcher.

Research participants who used social media excessively were found to have higher levels of C-reactive protein (CRP), a biological marker of chronic inflammation that predicts serious illnesses, such as diabetes, certain cancers and cardiovascular disease. In addition to elevated CRP levels, results suggest higher social media use was also related to somatic symptoms, like headaches, chest and back pains, and more frequent visits to doctors and health centers for the treatment of illness.

“Social media use has become an integral part of many young adults’ daily lives,” said David Lee, PhD, the paper’s first author and assistant professor of communication in the UB College of Arts and Sciences. “It’s critical that we understand how engagement across these platforms contributes to physical health.”

The findings appear in the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking.

For decades, researchers have devoted attention to how social media engagement relates to users’ mental health, but its effects on physical health have not been thoroughly investigated. Recent surveys indicate social media usage is particularly high for people in their late teens and early 20s, a population that spends about six hours a day texting, online or using social media. And though a few studies have found links between social media usage and physical health, that research relied largely on self-reporting or the effects of usage with exclusively one platform.

“Our goal was to extend prior work by examining how social media use across several platforms is associated with physical health outcomes measured with biological, behavioral and self-report measures,” said Lee, an expert on health outcomes related to social interactions.

Researchers recruited a diverse sample of 251 undergraduate students between the ages of 18 and 24 for the study. Blood samples were collected through finger sticks, and participants also completed questionnaires on physical health and social media usage on Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, and Instagram, the most popular platforms at the time the data were collected in 2017. Those responses were crosschecked with another survey that measured validity by determining the degree to which participants took their role in the study seriously.

“We were able to establish a correlation between the amount of social media use and these physical health indicators,” said Lee. “The more participants used social media, the more somatic symptoms they experienced and visits to the doctor they reported. They also showed higher levels of chronic inflammation.”

Lee says this study is just the beginning of understanding the relationship between social media and physical health.

“By looking at a biological marker in the blood, we were able to find a relatively more objective association between social media usage and physical health, but this correlational finding can’t rule out the possibility that poor health impacts social media usage,” said Lee.

Lee says the aphorism could hold true with social media use and physical health: The rich get richer while the poor get poorer. “In our previous research, we found those high in self-esteem benefited from using social media, but people low in self-esteem did not. So, the effect may be more nuanced.”

“There’s still work to be done,” said Lee. “But right now, I wanted to get the word out there that social media use may have a link to important physical health outcomes.”

Lee’s research team for the current study included colleagues from The Ohio State University: Tao Jiang, a graduate student; Jennifer Crocker, PhD, professor of social psychology; and Baldwin Way, PhD, associate professor of psychology.

Click on the link to see the original journal article Social Media Use and Its Link to Physical Health Indicators by David S. Lee, Tao Jiang, Jennifer Crocker, and Baldwin M. Way in Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking.

Mainstream media don't like Donald Trump

It must be true, because Harvard University says so. As reported by Heat Street, May 19, 2017 (links in original):

A major new study out of Harvard University has revealed the true extent of the mainstream media’s bias against Donald Trump.

Academics at the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy analyzed coverage from Trump’s first 100 days in office across 10 major TV and print outlets.

They found that the tone of some outlets was negative in as many as 98% of reports, significantly more hostile than the first 100 days of the three previous administrations:



The academics based their study on seven US outlets and three European ones.

In America they analyzed CNN, NBC, CBS, Fox News, the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal.

They also took into account the BBC, the UK’s Financial Times and the German public broadcaster ARD.

Every outlet was negative more often than positive.

Only Fox News, which features some of Trump’s most enthusiastic supporters and is often given special access to the President, even came close to positivity.

Fox was ranked 52% negative and 48% positive.

The study also divided news items across topics. On immigration, healthcare, and Russia, more than 85% of reports were negative.

On the economy, the proportion was more balanced – 54% negative to 46% positive:



The study highlighted one exception: Trump got overwhelmingly positive coverage for launching a cruise missile attack on Syria.

Around 80% of all reports were positive about that.

The picture was very different for other recent administrations. The study found that President Obama’s first 100 days got a good write-up overall – with 59% of reports positive.

Bill Clinton and George W Bush got overall negative coverage, it found, but to a much lesser extent than Trump. Clinton’s first 100 days got 40% positivity, while Bush’s got 43%:



Trump has repeatedly claimed that his treatment by the media is unprecedented in its hostility.

This study suggests that, at least when it comes to recent history, he’s right.

Click on the earlier link or here to see the original article News Coverage of Donald Trump’s First 100 Days by Thomas E. Patterson of the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy of Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, May 18, 2017.

See also Michael Goodwin's column American Journalism is Collapsing Before Our Eyes in the New York Post, August 21, 2016.

The mainstream media coverage of Donald Trump reminds me of a comment made by white liberal South African comedian Pieter-Dirk Uys in an interview with TVOntario early in 1988. The apartheid regime was still in power in South Africa, and Mr. Uys said that the media coverage of anti-apartheid Anglican Bishop Desmond Tutu was so biased against him that if he walked on water, it would be reported as "Bishop Tutu cannot swim."

HT: Infogalactic News

Ice cream melts and beer gets warm in hot weather

And now for something completely different: An item about a major discovery by a reporter rather than by a scientist. The Edmonton Journal is a giant advertising flyer masquerading as a newspaper that's heading in the same direction as the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and Tucson Citizen; it will likely fold as a print newspaper and exist as an online-only collection of blogs. An example of the kind of story that frequently gets put on the front page is this ice cream "scoop" by Manisha Krishnan, published on July 11, 2012:

EDMONTON - With temperatures soaring Tuesday to 31 C in Edmonton, concerns about heat stroke and power shortages were top of mind for many.

But the Journal set out to address a couple of other important issues. Specifically, ­what type of ice cream can beat the heat? And how long does it take before a beer sitting in the sun becomes undrinkable?

Armed with samples, a thermometer and cameras, we captured the results of two experiments.

Here is what we discovered:


Experiment 1: Battle of the cones

Objective: Find out how long it takes for ice cream to melt in the sun.

Hypothesis: Treats that are frozen solid, such as Creamsicles, last the longest.

Results: Ice cream is usually great but the sweet, sticky remnants of it running down an enclosed fist is not...

...Experiment 2: Beer blues

Objective: Determine how long it takes for beer to become undrinkably warm.

Hypothesis: Around 15 minutes. Having said that, there are some people who might never find beer undrinkable.

Results: Drinking a cold beer is one of the most enjoyable activities to indulge in on a scorcher. But at what point do those rays start to ruin a delicious drink?

We settled down with a pint of Mill Street Organic Ale on a sunny patio at The Pourhouse Bier Bistro to find out. It was 31 C at 4:15 p.m.

The plan was to record temperature increases every few minutes and ask tester Jorge Lima, 19, to share his thoughts on the taste of the beverage.

The beer came out of the tap at 4 C. Eight minutes later it was up by 11 C.

“It’s still drinkable. It’s not at the temperature you’d want it to be,” Lima said.

By 4:40 p.m., the beer had reached about 20 C.

“It’s getting to the point where it’s not enjoyable any more. You’re just finishing it because you already spent the money,” said Lima, adding that the beer smelled a lot stronger and had a metallic after-taste.

Exposure to dumbed-down content in the media can dumb you down

As reported by Misty Harris of Postmedia News on June 15, 2011:

A new study suggests that when people don't think critically about their media consumption, they're in danger of assimilating some of the mental characteristics on display. Specifically, researchers found that if the main character in a screenplay was a total imbecile, and people weren't expressly asked to identify differences between themselves and that protagonist, the participants' own cognitive skills were compromised.

In other words, stupidity appears to be contagious - if only temporarily.

"It's not like a disease, where once you have it, you have it for a long time; we're not saying you'll be impaired the day after reading a stupid story or watching TV," says study author Markus Appel, an associate professor at Johannes Kepler University of Linz in Austria. "But we do show that performance in knowledge tests is susceptible to fictional characters."

Just as video games put players at the centre of the action, Appel says storytelling implicitly asks people to identify with the characters on some level. And just as video games have been (controversially) linked to behaviour, stories can have a transformative effect on people's thinking.

"People are scared of being influenced by aggressive content but there are many other things to consider," says Appel. "There's much more to narratives than just entertainment."

In experiments with 81 people, Appel had different groups read a screenplay that featured either a protagonist whose intellectually abilities were undetermined or one in which the star was an alcoholic, aggressive and intellectually feeble soccer hooligan (think Europe's answer to the cast of Jersey Shore).

Half of those given the latter story were directed to think about ways in which they differed from the protagonist, while the others were given no such instruction before reading the tale.

Afterward, all participants took a general knowledge test, and those who read the story about the idiotic thug did significantly worse, on average, than those who read the story in which the main character's intellect wasn't addressed. The exception was the group that was asked to actively think about the imbecilic character's traits - a process Appel says kept the contagion effect from occurring, and ultimately underscored the value of critical thinking.

Go here to see the abstract of Dr. Appel's article A Story About a Stupid Person Can Make You Act Stupid (or Smart): Behavioral Assimilation (and Contrast) as Narrative Impact in Media Psychology, Volume 14, Issue 2, 2011, pp. 144-167.