Research shows correlations between excessive use of social media and mental health problems, such as depression , anxiety , loneliness and sleep deprivation. According to researchers, red flags that your social media use may be detrimental include:
The importance of losing sleep shouldn’t be underestimated, either. Lack of sleep can negatively impact social-emotional functioning and cognition, making healthy decisions increasingly difficult as you grow more fatigued with each passing night.
The promise of social media is the connection it offers. It allows far flung friends and family members to celebrate births, weddings and graduations. It offers platforms for learning and creates opportunities for like-minded people in disparate communities to interact and organize.
However, that relentless promise of connection and external reinforcement can activate the brain’s reward system in ways that are similar to gambling—with accompanying feelings of withdrawal or distress when you try to stop, according to a study in BMC Psychiatry . [4] Tullett-Prado D, Doley JR, Zarate D, et al. Conceptualising social media addiction: a longitudinal network analysis of social media addiction symptoms and their relationships with psychological distress in a community sample of adults . BMC Psychiatry. 2023;23:509. The unpredictable rewards of likes and comments or the possibility of stumbling on stories that boost your mood reinforce the impulse to continually check in or post online.
Social media platforms are engineered to keep you engaged through features like infinite feeds, push notifications and algorithms that can precisely predict what content will keep you captivated and scrolling.
If social media helped you deal with stress or loneliness in the past, turning back to it when you’re feeling down makes a lot of sense. The urge to check in can become habitual, and each time a click relieves negative emotions, odds increase that you will crave that source of relief again, night after night.
To break the pattern, consider the prompts below. I recommend physically writing down your answers. You can type them if you like, but many people I work with find that writing longhand helps them take their time and reflect on their answers more fully.
The insights you gain can help you find alternative ways to relieve stress and enjoy your evenings.
What are you gaining from time spent on social media at night? Is it entertaining? Distracting? Are you hoping to connect with other people? Is it how you get your news?
Once you understand the reasons you’re drawn to the phone, you can find other ways to meet those needs.
What are some of the negative repercussions of overusing social media? How is it affecting your life?
What might be different if you spent less time on your phone at night? How would you prefer to spend your evenings, and why? How would these changes positively impact you?
Answer in as much detail and as clearly you can.
You already have one of the most essential tools to dial back your social media use: self-awareness. You know when you tend to start scrolling (after work) and how long it goes on (most of the evening), as well as when it comes to an end (when you finally drift off to sleep).
In your case, it sounds like time of day is a trigger. There may be significant stressors playing a part earlier in the day as well. Are there other internal or external cues that make you want to pick up your phone? What contributes to that need for distraction or entertainment?
Odds are the desire for distraction or entertainment isn’t going away. You’re likely to need those things, so what are some alternative ways to get that relief? When the trigger sparks the craving to curl up and zone out, how might you respond? What are some healthier ways to cope or spend your time?
Get creative. Brainstorm anything and everything you can imagine, from big, ambitious changes (take an online fitness class or enroll in graduate school) to small ones that seem almost meaningless (step outside for a deep breath, start a load of laundry, turn on a movie or pick up a book with the goal of reading a single page). Call a friend. Pick up a new hobby. Give yourself as many options as possible.
Now you get to play. When you’re triggered, choose one specific option from your list of replacements and give it a try. If it feels good, repeat it to see if it can be the anchor for a new routine. If it feels unmanageable or irritating, try something else.
Keep experimenting until you find ways to fill your evenings that serve you better. When you get derailed, revisit the reasons you’d rather not spend all night on social media and how making a change could benefit you.
If you need external reinforcements, set boundaries around when and where social media is available to you. Put chargers on the other side of the room, use app timers to limit your hours online or remove the apps from your phone entirely so they can only be accessed from a computer browser.
These techniques can help, but in my experience as a coach, people often discard them over time because they feel too restrictive. Use them as needed, but if they make you feel rebellious, let them go. Remember: You’re scrolling on social media for a reason. The habit is filling a need.
Rather than blaming yourself or trying to prohibit unhealthy habits, see if you can find new and interesting ways to cope or to stay engaged, distracted and entertained—in your way, on your own terms.
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Sarah Hays Coomer is a Mayo Clinic and National Board Certified Health and Wellness Coach, certified personal trainer and author based in Nashville, Tennessee. She has spent nearly 20 years helping individuals and groups build personalized systems to ease chronic stress with self-selected, concrete behavioral changes. She has contributed to many publications, spoken at organizations and universities nationwide, and written three books: The Habit Trip, Physical Disobedience and Lightness of Body and Mind. You can find her on her website, LinkedIn or Instagram.
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June 17, 2024
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by Andrea Weber-Tuckermann, University of Ulm
Excessive use of social media can impair well-being and even cause disease. To help safeguard children and adolescents, an international research team coordinated by Ulm psychologist Professor Christian Montag has put together recommendations on social media use and published them in a consensus paper in the journal Addictive Behaviors .
The researchers advise abstinence from smartphones throughout the entire school day. Montag also suggests using EU fines imposed on digital companies violating the EU Digital Services Act to fund further research into problematic social media use (PSMU).
The team of researchers from the fields of social sciences, psychology and psychiatry suggest that parents should establish specific rules with their children for the use of social media apps, such as YouTube, TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram and the like, even before their first use. Beyond that, parents should also be role models and lead by example.
The research team also advocates for hard and fast rules at school. In a Comment published in Nature Reviews Psychology , they advise teachers to collaborate with researchers—ideally with the active involvement of the pupils—in order to draw up a clear-cut code of practice for the use of smartphones within the school environment, which would then apply to both pupils and teachers. In addition, children and adolescents should ideally refrain entirely from using their smartphones throughout the school day.
"An evidence-based approach is crucial in order to deal with this challenging topic responsibly. We need guidelines grounded in scientific insights, and further research is undoubtedly required," explains Montag. However, the situation is urgent, and there is already compounding evidence.
The "problematic use of social media," a term for excessive social media use that is harmful to health and well-being, can take on addictive-like forms. Although addictive-like social media use is not yet an official diagnosis in the World Health Organization's ICD-11, current discussions focus on whether the diagnostic criteria of Gaming Disorder can and should be extrapolated to excessive social media use.
Children and adolescents with PSMU are more likely to suffer from depression and anxiety. Even eating disorders and self-harm have been observed more frequently. This list continues with emotional and social disorders as well as problematic body image. This said, causality between the associations need to be better established, because much research is hampered by cross-sectional findings.
Why are some people unable to put their smartphones down while others don't need TikTok or YouTube at all? "Not all young people are equally susceptible to problematic social media use. The risk is particularly high among young adolescents . Girls are potentially more susceptible than boys," explains Professor Montag, "but current figures also show that the gap between the genders is closing.
"Emotionally unstable adolescents with little self-esteem and self-control, and therefore psychosocial problems, are especially at risk. Situational and contextual factors, however, also play a role: Have the parents and school established clear rules and binding guidelines for dealing with social media?"
The researchers also looked into the whys behind young peoples' excessive smartphone and social media use. The current assumption is that deeper psychological and social mechanisms are at play.
"Social media might be a means to regulate negative feelings and compensate for unfulfilled needs. The underlying desire seems to be a sense of belonging, recognition and admiration as well as the fear of missing out," explain the researchers.
"Problematic social media use is not yet recognized as an addiction disorder. Nevertheless, it is important to identify the driving forces behind this excessive online behavior. Not least in order to limit problematic behavior and develop suitable coping strategies.
"For me, the most important question seems to be: To what extent can problematic social media use cause functional impairments and health problems?" says Professor Montag.
Yet there are still significant research gaps. Additional neuroscientific work is needed in particular in order to gain more insights into the neurobiology involved in social media use. What happens to the brains of young people when they consume social media excessively?
Children and adolescents unfortunately quite often encounter non-age-appropriate content on social media—such as pornography and depictions of violence—which can be quite harmful to healthy child development.
In another article, this one a Correspondence published in Nature , in which Professor Montag was also involved, the authors expressly welcome the European Union's initiative to regulate digital services and markets. The EU Digital Services Act package creates an effective, legally binding basis for regulating social media platforms and their responsible use.
Together with Professor Benjamin Becker from the University of Hong Kong, Professor Montag shows how independent, interdisciplinary research on PSMU could be financed on a larger scale by using fines imposed by the EU on companies violating the EU Digital Services Act.
In mid-May, Montag presented the new scientific findings on the use of social media by children and adolescents to members of the Committee on Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth in the German Bundestag.
Christian Montag et al, Safeguarding young users on social media through academic oversight, Nature Reviews Psychology (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s44159-024-00311-2
Christian Montag et al, Use fines from EU social-media act to fund research on adolescent mental health, Nature (2024). DOI: 10.1038/d41586-024-01040-5
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The dark side of social media, a new study finds spending less time on social media leads to greater well-being..
Posted June 21, 2024 | Reviewed by Ray Parker
In a previous post , my team and I explored how social media use can negatively impact body image in youth. As young people are on their phones more and more, constant exposure to unrealistic beauty standards can leave them particularly vulnerable to low self-esteem and unfavorable social comparisons. However, evidence suggests that poor body image is not the only impact of social media on youth.
As rates of anxiety and depression in teens have been growing alongside an increase in social media usage, we have to wonder how closely the two are connected. In 2021, Statistics Canada reported that 36% of youth experience clinically concerning symptoms of depression, and 23% experience elevated levels of anxiety. At the same time, 81.3% of Canadian youth reported spending more than two hours on social media daily, and 96% reported regular use of at least one social media platform, rates that are similar or higher among teens in the US. Multiple studies have found a correlation between social media use and poor mental health, and it makes sense why.
We all know that people tend to share just the highlights of their lives on social media, rarely sharing the challenges or low points they may be experiencing. Scrolling through social media, it seems like everyone is going on a beach holiday, showing off their perfectly airbrushed bodies, or sharing the great news of their newest accomplishments. We can't help but compare ourselves to these seemingly “perfect” lives, even when we know they are fabricated. This constant comparison can make a young person feel inadequate or worthless, leading to feelings of depression and anxiety. On top of this, the more we scroll, the more we see all the things we are missing out on. Imagine going on Instagram and noticing pictures of all your friends at a party you weren’t invited to. It hurts, right? And yet, we keep wanting to check for updates. Who is at the party? Are they having fun without me? This unhealthy cycle of fear of missing out (FoMO) can impact your self-esteem, trigger your anxiety, and make you feel incredibly alone.
In addition to negative social comparisons, displacement theory provides another answer as to why screen time and social media have a negative impact on health and mental health. The theory posits that spending large amounts of time on social media allows an individual less time to spend on other mental-health-promoting activities like sleep, physical activity, recreational and social activities with friends, and pursuing pleasurable hobbies.
Although a correlational relationship has already been established, our study is the first to examine a causal relationship between social media use and mental health in youth experiencing emotional distress. Among 220 youth experiencing symptoms of anxiety or depression, we found that reducing social media by half, to a maximum of one hour per day, led to greater reductions in anxiety, depression, the experience of FoMO, and increases in sleep compared to a placebo group that had unrestricted access. Our findings support the “displacement theory” of screen time, suggesting that spending less time on things that make people truly happy makes people more likely to experience poor mental health. Although our findings did not demonstrate that reduced social media improved mental health due to reduced negative social comparisons, it is too early to throw “the baby out with the bathwater,” as correlational studies have found this link.
While it makes sense to think that reducing social media usage would make people feel even more isolated or left out, our study indicated that the opposite was true. Although initial reduction time in social media may increase FoMO, this typically only lasts a few days, and our findings support that FoMO will go down with continued reduced use. In fact, reduced social media use may lead to increased social connection and positive mental health behaviors as people are forced to adapt and meet their social needs in healthier ways.
The study also indicated that reduced social media use led to earlier bedtimes and longer sleep. As the displacement theory suggests, less time on social media means more time to get some well-needed rest. On top of this, reduced feelings of anxiety and depression likely helped people fall asleep easier, or perhaps the increased sleep resulting from less social media use reduced anxiety and depression symptoms. Further research is needed to make the direction of these findings more clear.
The results of the study beg the question: why do we torture ourselves? Sure, social media has many benefits. It helps us connect with long-lost friends, plan our social lives, and share our successes with people we care about. But when our life becomes a constant competition , and we feel like we just don't measure up, and when we know social media takes time away from sleep and in-person social and recreational activities that make us feel good, why do we continue to use it so much?
Important takeaways from our study suggest reducing your usage of social media will help you get more sleep and boost your mood. Instead of scrolling on Instagram, try taking your dog for a walk, reading a book, or catching up with a friend. As parents, we suggest implementing rules to reduce screen time during meals or social activities to promote better attachment and connection with friends and family. We also recommend implementing a “no-phone” rule 30 minutes before bedtime and no-phones in children's and youth’s bedrooms overnight. Lastly, parents are the most important role models for their children, and there is a relationship between parent screen and social media use and their children’s mental health. This means parents should also try to reduce their own social media use and engage in non-screen health-promoting alternative activities, as well as support their children in doing the same. This will help your child promote better sleep, lead to more efficient learning at school, and improve their mental health.
Davis, C. G., & Goldfield, G. S. (2024). Limiting social media use decreases depression, anxiety, and fear of missing out in youth with emotional distress: A randomized controlled trial. Psychology of Popular Media . https://doi.org/10.1037/ppm0000536
Gary Goldfield, PhD., C. Psych., is a Senior Scientist with the Healthy Active Living & Obesity (HALO) Research Group at the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario Research Institute in Ottawa, Canada.
At any moment, someone’s aggravating behavior or our own bad luck can set us off on an emotional spiral that threatens to derail our entire day. Here’s how we can face our triggers with less reactivity so that we can get on with our lives.
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Cristina m. pulido.
1 Department of Journalism and Communication Studies, Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain
2 Department of Psychology and Sociology, Universidad de Zaragoza, Zaragoza, Spain
3 Department of Sociology, Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain
4 Department of Sociology, Universitat de Barcelona (UB), Barcelona, Spain
All relevant data are within the paper and its Supporting Information files.
The social impact of research has usually been analysed through the scientific outcomes produced under the auspices of the research. The growth of scholarly content in social media and the use of altmetrics by researchers to track their work facilitate the advancement in evaluating the impact of research. However, there is a gap in the identification of evidence of the social impact in terms of what citizens are sharing on their social media platforms. This article applies a social impact in social media methodology (SISM) to identify quantitative and qualitative evidence of the potential or real social impact of research shared on social media, specifically on Twitter and Facebook. We define the social impact coverage ratio (SICOR) to identify the percentage of tweets and Facebook posts providing information about potential or actual social impact in relation to the total amount of social media data found related to specific research projects. We selected 10 projects in different fields of knowledge to calculate the SICOR, and the results indicate that 0.43% of the tweets and Facebook posts collected provide linkages with information about social impact. However, our analysis indicates that some projects have a high percentage (4.98%) and others have no evidence of social impact shared in social media. Examples of quantitative and qualitative evidence of social impact are provided to illustrate these results. A general finding is that novel evidences of social impact of research can be found in social media, becoming relevant platforms for scientists to spread quantitative and qualitative evidence of social impact in social media to capture the interest of citizens. Thus, social media users are showed to be intermediaries making visible and assessing evidence of social impact.
The social impact of research is at the core of some of the debates influencing how scientists develop their studies and how useful results for citizens and societies may be obtained. Concrete strategies to achieve social impact in particular research projects are related to a broader understanding of the role of science in contemporary society. There is a need to explore dialogues between science and society not only to communicate and disseminate science but also to achieve social improvements generated by science. Thus, the social impact of research emerges as an increasing concern within the scientific community [ 1 ]. As Bornmann [ 2 ] said, the assessment of this type of impact is badly needed and is more difficult than the measurement of scientific impact; for this reason, it is urgent to advance in the methodologies and approaches to measuring the social impact of research.
Several authors have approached the conceptualization of social impact, observing a lack of generally accepted conceptual and instrumental frameworks [ 3 ]. It is common to find a wide range of topics included in the contributions about social impact. In their analysis of the policies affecting land use, Hemling et al. [ 4 ] considered various domains in social impact, for instance, agricultural employment or health risk. Moving to the field of flora and fauna, Wilder and Walpole [ 5 ] studied the social impact of conservation projects, focusing on qualitative stories that provided information about changes in attitudes, behaviour, wellbeing and livelihoods. In an extensive study by Godin and Dore [ 6 ], the authors provided an overview and framework for the assessment of the contribution of science to society. They identified indicators of the impact of science, mentioning some of the most relevant weaknesses and developing a typology of impact that includes eleven dimensions, with one of them being the impact on society. The subdimensions of the impact of science on society focus on individuals (wellbeing and quality of life, social implication and practices) and organizations (speeches, interventions and actions). For the authors, social impact “refers to the impact knowledge has on welfare, and on the behaviours, practices and activities of people and groups” (p. 7).
In addition, the terms “social impact” and “societal impact” are sometimes used interchangeably. For instance, Bornmann [ 2 ] said that due to the difficulty of distinguishing social benefits from the superior term of societal benefits, “in much literature the term ‘social impact’ is used instead of ‘societal impact’”(p. 218). However, in other cases, the distinction is made [ 3 ], as in the present research. Similar to the definition used by the European Commission [ 7 ], social impact is used to refer to economic impact, societal impact, environmental impact and, additionally, human rights impact. Therefore, we use the term social impact as the broader concept that includes social improvements in all the above mentioned areas obtained from the transference of research results and representing positive steps towards the fulfilment of those officially defined social goals, including the UN Sustainable Development Goals, the EU 2020 Agenda, or similar official targets. For instance, the Europe 2020 strategy defines five priority targets with concrete indicators (employment, research and development, climate change and energy, education and poverty and social exclusion) [ 8 ], and we consider the targets addressed by objectives defined in the specific call that funds the research project.
This understanding of the social impact of research is connected to the creation of the Social Impact Open Repository (SIOR), which constitutes the first open repository worldwide that displays, cites and stores the social impact of research results [ 9 ]. The SIOR has linked to ORCID and Wikipedia to allow the synergies of spreading information about the social impact of research through diverse channels and audiences. It is relevant to mention that currently, SIOR includes evidence of real social impact, which implies that the research results have led to actual improvements in society. However, it is common to find evidence of potential social impact in research projects. The potential social impact implies that in the development of the research, there has been some evidence of the effectiveness of the research results in terms of social impact, but the results have not yet been transferred.
Additionally, a common confusion is found among the uses of dissemination, transference (policy impact) and social impact. While dissemination means to disseminate the knowledge created by research to citizens, companies and institutions, transference refers to the use of this knowledge by these different actors (or others), and finally, as already mentioned, social impact refers to the actual improvements resulting from the use of this knowledge in relation to the goals motivating the research project (such as the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals). In the present research [ 3 ], it is argued that “social impact can be understood as the culmination of the prior three stages of the research” (p.3). Therefore, this study builds on previous contributions measuring the dissemination and transference of research and goes beyond to propose a novel methodological approach to track social impact evidences.
In fact, the contribution that we develop in this article is based on the creation of a new method to evaluate the evidence of social impact shared in social media. The evaluation proposed is to measure the social impact coverage ratio (SICOR), focusing on the presence of evidence of social impact shared in social media. Then, the article first presents some of the contributions from the literature review focused on the research on social media as a source for obtaining key data for monitoring or evaluating different research purposes. Second, the SISM (social impact through social media) methodology[ 10 ] developed is introduced in detail. This methodology identifies quantitative and qualitative evidence of the social impact of the research shared on social media, specifically on Twitter and Facebook, and defines the SICOR, the social impact coverage ratio. Next, the results are discussed, and lastly, the main conclusions and further steps are presented.
Social media research includes the analysis of citizens’ voices on a wide range of topics [ 11 ]. According to quantitative data from April 2017 published by Statista [ 12 ], Twitter and Facebook are included in the top ten leading social networks worldwide, as ranked by the number of active users. Facebook is at the top of the list, with 1,968 million active users, and Twitter ranks 10 th , with 319 million active users. Between them are the following social networks: WhatsApp, YouTube, Facebook Messenger, WeChat, QQ, Instagram,Qzone and Tumblr. If we look at altmetrics, the tracking of social networks for mentions of research outputs includes Facebook, Twitter, Google+,LinkedIn, Sina Weibo and Pinterest. The social networks common to both sources are Facebook and Twitter. These are also popular platforms that have a relevant coverage of scientific content and easy access to data, and therefore, the research projects selected here for application of the SISM methodology were chosen on these platforms.
Chew and Eysenbach [ 13 ] studied the presence of selected keywords in Twitter related to public health issues, particularly during the 2009 H1N1 pandemic, identifying the potential for health authorities to use social media to respond to the concerns and needs of society. Crooks et al.[ 14 ] investigated Twitter activity in the context of a 5.8 magnitude earthquake in 2011 on the East Coast of the United States, concluding that social media content can be useful for event monitoring and can complement other sources of data to improve the understanding of people’s responses to such events. Conversations among young Canadians posted on Facebook and analysed by Martinello and Donelle [ 15 ] revealed housing and transportation as main environmental concerns, and the project FoodRisc examined the role of social media to illustrate consumers’ quick responses during food crisis situations [ 16 ]. These types of contributions illustrate that social media research implies the understanding of citizens’ concerns in different fields, including in relation to science.
Research on the synergies between science and citizens has increased over the years, according to Fresco [ 17 ], and there is a growing interest among researchers and funding agencies in how to facilitate communication channels to spread scientific results. For instance, in 1998, Lubchenco [ 18 ] advocated for a social contract that “represents a commitment on the part of all scientists to devote their energies and talents to the most pressing problems of the day, in proportion to their importance, in exchange for public funding”(p.491).
In this framework, the recent debates on how to increase the impact of research have acquired relevance in all fields of knowledge, and major developments address the methods for measuring it. As highlighted by Feng Xia et al. [ 19 ], social media constitute an emerging approach to evaluating the impact of scholarly publications, and it is relevant to consider the influence of the journal, discipline, publication year and user type. The authors revealed that people’s concerns differ by discipline and observed more interest in papers related to everyday life, biology, and earth and environmental sciences. In the field of biomedical sciences, Haustein et al. [ 20 ] analysed the dissemination of journal articles on Twitter to explore the correlations between tweets and citations and proposed a framework to evaluate social media-based metrics. In fact, different studies address the relationship between the presence of articles on social networks and citations [ 21 ]. Bornmann [ 22 ] conducted a case study using a sample of 1,082 PLOS journal articles recommended in F1000 to explore the usefulness of altmetrics for measuring the broader impact of research. The author presents evidence about Facebook and Twitter as social networks that may indicate which papers in the biomedical sciences can be of interest to broader audiences, not just to specialists in the area. One aspect of particular interest resulting from this contribution is the potential to use altmetrics to measure the broader impacts of research, including the societal impact. However, most of the studies investigating social or societal impact lack a conceptualization underlying its measurement.
To the best of our knowledge, the assessment of social impact in social media (SISM) has developed according to this gap. At the core of this study, we present and discuss the results obtained through the application of the SICOR (social impact coverage ratio) with examples of evidence of social impact shared in social media, particularly on Twitter and Facebook, and the implications for further research.
Following these previous contributions, our research questions were as follows: Is there evidence of social impact of research shared by citizens in social media? If so, is there quantitative or qualitative evidence? How can social media contribute to identifying the social impact of research?
A group of new methodologies related to the analysis of online data has recently emerged. One of these emerging methodologies is social media analytics [ 23 ], which was initially used most in the marketing research field but also came to be used in other domains due to the multiple possibilities opened up by the availability and richness of the data for different research purposes. Likewise, the concern of how to evaluate the social impact of research as well as the development of methodologies for addressing this concern has occupied central attention. The development of SISM (Social Impact in Social Media) and the application of the SICOR (Social Impact Coverage Ratio) is a contribution to advancement in the evaluation of the social impact of research through the analysis of the social media selected (in this case, Twitter and Facebook). Thus, SISM is novel in both social media analytics and among the methodologies used to evaluate the social impact of research. This development has been made under IMPACT-EV, a research project funded under the Framework Program FP7 of the Directorate-General for Research and Innovation of the European Commission. The main difference from other methodologies for measuring the social impact of research is the disentanglement between dissemination and social impact. While altmetrics is aimed at measuring research results disseminated beyond academic and specialized spheres, SISM contribute to advancing this measurement by shedding light on to what extent evidence of the social impact of research is found in social media data. This involves the need to differentiate between tweets or Facebook posts (Fb/posts) used to disseminate research findings from those used to share the social impact of research. We focus on the latter, investigating whether there is evidence of social impact, including both potential and real social impact. In fact, the question is whether research contributes and/or has the potential to contribute to improve the society or living conditions considering one of these goals defined. What is the evidence? Next, we detail the application of the methodology.
To develop this study, the first step was to select research projects with social media data to be analysed. The selection of research projects for application of the SISM methodology was performed according to three criteria.
Criteria 1. Selection of success projects in FP7. The projects were success stories of the 7 th Framework Programme (FP7) highlighted by the European Commission [ 24 ] in the fields of knowledge of medicine, public health, biology and genomics. The FP7 published calls for project proposals from 2007 to 2013. This implies that most of the projects funded in the last period of the FP7 (2012 and 2013) are finalized or in the last phase of implementation.
Criteria 2. Period of implementation. We selected projects in the 2012–2013 period because they combine recent research results with higher possibilities of having Twitter and Facebook accounts compared with projects of previous years, as the presence of social accounts in research increased over this period.
Criteria 3. Twitter and Facebook accounts. It was crucial that the selected projects had active Twitter and Facebook accounts.
Table 1 summarizes the criteria and the final number of projects identified. As shown, 10 projects met the defined criteria. Projects in medical research and public health had higher presence.
Field of Knowledge | Criteria 1. Success stories FP7 | Criteria 2. Starting year 2012 & 2013 | Criteria 3. Twitter and Facebook |
---|---|---|---|
98 | 11 | 3 | |
37 | 11 | 4 | |
14 | 2 | 1 | |
9 | 2 | 2 | |
158 | 26 |
After the selection of projects, we defined the timeframe of social media data extraction on Twitter and Facebook from the starting date of the project until the day of the search, as presented in Table 2 .
Project | Period | Months |
---|---|---|
Project 1 | From 2012-11-01 to 2017-04-25 | 54.53 |
Project 2 | From 2012-11-01 to 2017-04-25 | 54.53 |
Project 3 | From 2013-01-01 to 2017-04-25 | 52.50 |
Project 4 | From 2013-10-01 to 2017-04-25 | 43.40 |
Project 5 | From 2013-11-01 to 2017-04-25 | 42.37 |
Project 6 | From 2013-02-01 to 2017-04-25 | 51.47 |
Project 7 | From 2013-11-01 to 2017-04-25 | 42.37 |
Project 8 | From 2012-11-01 to 2017-04-25 | 54.54 |
Project 9 | From 2012-11-01 to 2017-04-25 | 54.54 |
Project 10 | From 2012-08-01 to 2017-04-25 | 57.60 |
The second step was to define the search strategies for extracting social media data related to the research projects selected. In this line, we defined three search strategies.
Strategy 1. To extract messages published on the Twitter account and the Facebook page of the selected projects. We listed the Twitter accounts and Facebook pages related to each project in order to look at the available information. In this case, it is important to clarify that the tweets published under the corresponding Twitter project account are original tweets or retweets made from this account. It is relevant to mention that in one case, the Twitter account and Facebook page were linked to the website of the research group leading the project. In this case, we selected tweets and Facebook posts related to the project. For instance, in the case of the Twitter account, the research group created a specific hashtag to publish messages related to the project; therefore, we selected only the tweets published under this hashtag. In the analysis, we prioritized the analysis of the tweets and Facebook posts that received some type of interaction (likes, retweets or shares) because such interaction is a proxy for citizens’ interest. In doing so, we used the R program and NVivoto extract the data and proceed with the analysis. Once we obtained the data from Twitter and Facebook, we were able to have an overview of the information to be further analysed, as shown in Table 3 .
Project | Tweets | Facebook posts |
---|---|---|
Project 1 | 952 | 585 |
Project 2 | 403 | 423 |
Project 3 | 896 | 396 |
Project 4 | 21 | 41 |
Project 5 | 410 | 16 |
Project 6 | 124 | 74 |
Project 7 | 148 | 64 |
Project 8 | 56 | 236 |
Project 9 | 55 | 43 |
Project 10 | 106 | 47 |
TOTAL | 3,171 | 1,925 |
We focused the second and third strategies on Twitter data. In both strategies, we extracted Twitter data directly from the Twitter Advanced Search tool, as the API connected to NVivo and the R program covers only a specific period of time limited to 7/9 days. Therefore, the use of the Twitter Advanced Search tool made it possible to obtain historic data without a period limitation. We downloaded the results in PDF and then uploaded them to NVivo.
Strategy 2. To use the project acronym combined with other keywords, such as FP7 or EU. This strategy made it possible to obtain tweets mentioning the project. Table 4 presents the number of tweets obtained with this strategy.
Project | Tweets |
---|---|
Project 1 | 10 |
Project 2 | 0 |
Project 3 | 2 |
Project 4 | 5 |
Project 5 | 4 |
Project 6 | 175 |
Project 7 | 4 |
Project 8 | 5 |
Project 9 | 4 |
Project 10 | 17 |
TOTAL | 226 |
Strategy 3. To use searchable research results of projects to obtain Twitter data. We defined a list of research results, one for each project, and converted them into keywords. We selected one searchable keyword for each project from its website or other relevant sources, for instance, the brief presentations prepared by the European Commission and published in CORDIS. Once we had the searchable research results, we used the Twitter Advanced Search tool to obtain tweets, as presented in Table 5 .
Project | Searchable Research result | Tweets |
---|---|---|
Project 1 | MACSQuant® Tyto | 3 |
Project 2 | Prototype screening tests for pre-eclampsia | 0 |
Project 3 | Early Life Exposome | 5 |
Project 4 | Splendid system | 0 |
Project 5 | EuroFIT programme | 4 |
Project 6 | Fishchoice tool | 3 |
Project 7 | Vitamin D-enhanced eggs | 5 |
Project 8 | Developakure clinical trials | 4 |
Project 9 | Precision Livestock Farming Applications | 3 |
Project 10 | NOSHAN technologies | 1 |
TOTAL | 28 |
The sum of the data obtained from these three strategies allowed us to obtain a total of 3,425 tweets and 1,925 posts on public Facebook pages. Table 6 presents a summary of the results.
Project | Tweets | Facebook posts |
---|---|---|
Project 1 | 965 | 585 |
Project 2 | 403 | 423 |
Project 3 | 903 | 396 |
Project 4 | 26 | 41 |
Project 5 | 418 | 16 |
Project 6 | 302 | 74 |
Project 7 | 157 | 64 |
Project 8 | 65 | 236 |
Project 9 | 62 | 43 |
Project 10 | 124 | 47 |
TOTAL | 3,425 | 1,925 |
We imported the data obtained from the three search strategies into NVivo to analyse. Next, we select tweets and Facebook posts providing linkages with quantitative or qualitative evidence of social impact, and we complied with the terms of service for the social media from which the data were collected. By quantitative and qualitative evidence, we mean data or information that shows how the implementation of research results has led to improvements towards the fulfilment of the objectives defined in the EU2020 strategy of the European Commission or other official targets. For instance, in the case of quantitative evidence, we searched tweets and Facebook posts providing linkages with quantitative information about improvements obtained through the implementation of the research results of the project. In relation to qualitative evidence, for example, we searched for testimonies that show a positive evaluation of the improvement due to the implementation of research results. In relation to this step, it is important to highlight that social media users are intermediaries making visible evidence of social impact. Users often share evidence, sometimes sharing a link to an external resource (e.g., a video, an official report, a scientific article, news published on media). We identified evidence of social impact in these sources.
We analysed all tweets and Facebook posts collected (3,425 tweets and 1,925 Facebook posts) to calculate the ratio of social media data with evidence of social impact in relation to the total amount of social media data extracted from the research projects selected. The aim was to answer the question whether or not there is evidence of social impact shared by citizens in social media. Once we had the tweets and Facebook posts selected for each project, we identified the number of tweets and Facebook posts responding or not to the criteria of presenting evidence of the social impact of research. In the final step of this search, we defined a ratio of coverage adapted to this calculation called the SICOR, the social impact coverage ratio:
γ i is the total number of messages obtained about project i with evidence of social impact on social media platforms (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc.);
T i is the total number of messages from project i on social media platforms (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc.); and
n is the number of projects selected.
The result is expressed in percentages. In this paper, we use the SICOR for Twitter and Facebook thus:
The researchers who carried out the analysis of the social media data collected are specialists in the social impact of research and research on social media. Before conducting the full analysis, two aspects were guaranteed. First, how to identify evidence of social impact relating to the targets defined by the EU2020 strategy or to specific goals defined by the call addressed was clarified. Second, we held a pilot to test the methodology with one research project that we know has led to considerable social impact, which allowed us to clarify whether or not it was possible to detect evidence of social impact shared in social media. Once the pilot showed positive results, the next step was to extend the analysis to another set of projects and finally to the whole sample. The construction of the analytical categories was defined a priori, revised accordingly and lastly applied to the full sample.
Different observations should be made. First, in this previous analysis, we found that the tweets and Facebook users play a key role as “intermediaries,” serving as bridges between the larger public and the evidence of social impact. Social media users usually share a quote or paragraph introducing evidence of social impact and/or link to an external resource, for instance, a video, official report, scientific article, news story published on media, etc., where evidence of the social impact is available. This fact has implications for our study, as our unit of analysis is all the information included in the tweets or Facebook posts. This means that our analysis reaches the external resources linked to find evidence of social impact, and for this reason, we defined tweets or Facebook posts providing linkages with information about social impact.
Second, the other important aspect is the analysis of the users’ profile descriptions, which requires much more development in future research given the existing limitations. For instance, some profiles are users’ restricted due to privacy reasons, so the information is not available; other accounts have only the name of the user with no description of their profile available. Therefore, we gave priority to the identification of evidence of social impact including whether a post obtained interaction (retweets, likes or shares) or was published on accounts other than that of the research project itself. In the case of the profile analysis, we added only an exploratory preliminary result because this requires further development. Considering all these previous details, the codebook (see Table 7 ) that we present as follows is a result of this previous research.
CODE | Element | Definition |
---|---|---|
ESISM | Evidence of social impact shared in social media | Evidence of social impact is a research result that contributes to the achievement of a particular objective of the society defined by the corresponding institution,in this case, one of the targets addressed in the EU2020 strategy or the target addressed in the call of the funding project. Evidence can be of potential or already achieved social impact. |
QUALESISM | Qualitative evidence of social impact | The evidence provided gives qualitative information about improvements obtained through the implementation of the research results of the project linked to the one of the targets of the EU2020 strategy or the target addressed in the call of the funding project. Evidence can be of potential or already achieved social impact. |
QUANESISM | Quantitative evidence of social impact | The evidence provided gives quantitative information about improvements obtained through the implementation of the research results of the project linked to the one of the targets of the EU2020 strategy or the target addressed in the call of the funding project. Evidence can be of potential or already achieved social impact. |
INTER | Interaction of the tweet or Fb post | The tweet or post has been shared, liked retweeted or published by an account other than the project account itself. |
PROF D | Diverse profiles | Diverse profiles of citizens have interacted with the tweet or Fb post. |
To illustrate how we analysed data from Twitter and Facebook, we provide one example of each type of evidence of social impact defined, considering both real and potential social impact, with the type of interaction obtained and the profiles of those who have interacted.
QUANESISM. Tweet by ZeroHunger Challenge @ZeroHunger published on 3 May 2016. Text: How re-using food waste for animal feed cuts carbon emissions.-NOSHAN project hubs.ly/H02SmrP0. 7 retweets and 5 likes.
The unit of analysis is all the content of the tweet, including the external link. If we limited our analysis to the tweet itself, it would not be evidence. Examining the external link is necessary to find whether there is evidence of social impact. The aim of this project was to investigate the process and technologies needed to use food waste for feed production at low cost, with low energy consumption and with a maximal evaluation of the starting wastes. This tweet provides a link to news published in the PHYS.org portal [ 25 ], which specializes in science news. The news story includes an interview with the main researcher that provides the following quotation with quantitative evidence:
'Our results demonstrated that with a NOSHAN 10 percent mix diet, for every kilogram of broiler chicken feed, carbon dioxide emissions were reduced by 0.3 kg compared to a non-food waste diet,' explains Montse Jorba, NOSHAN project coordinator. 'If 1 percent of total chicken broiler feed in Europe was switched to the 10 percent NOSHAN mix diet, the total amount of CO2 emissions avoided would be 0.62 million tons each year.'[ 25 ]
This quantitative evidence “a NOSHAN 10 percent mix diet, for every kilogram of broiler chicken feed, carbon dioxide emissions carbon dioxide emissions were reduced by 0.3 kg to a non-food waste diet” is linked directly with the Europe 2020 target of Climate Change & Energy, specifically with the target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 20% compared to the levels in 1990 [ 8 ]. The illustrative extrapolation the coordinator mentioned in the news is also an example of quantitative evidence, although is an extrapolation based on the specific research result.
This tweet was captured by the Acronym search strategy. It is a message tweeted by an account that is not related to the research project. The twitter account is that of the Zero Hunger Challenge movement, which supports the goals of the UN. The interaction obtained is 7 retweets and 5 likes. Regarding the profiles of those who retweeted and clicked “like”, there were activists, a journalist, an eco-friendly citizen, a global news service, restricted profiles (no information is available on those who have retweeted) and one account with no information in its profile.
The following example illustrates the analysis of QUALESISM: Tweet by @eurofitFP7 published on4 October 2016. Text: See our great new EuroFIT video on youtube! https://t.co/TocQwMiW3c 9 retweets and 5 likes.
The aim of this project is to improve health through the implementation of two novel technologies to achieve a healthier lifestyle. The tweet provides a link to a video on YouTube on the project’s results. In this video, we found qualitative evidence from people who tested the EuroFit programme; there are quotes from men who said that they have experienced improved health results using this method and that they are more aware of how to manage their health:
One end-user said: I have really amazing results from the start, because I managed to change a lot of things in my life. And other one: I was more conscious of what I ate, I was more conscious of taking more steps throughout the day and also standing up a little more. [ 26 ]
The research applies the well researched scientific evidence to the management of health issues in daily life. The video presents the research but also includes a section where end-users talk about the health improvements they experienced. The quotes extracted are some examples of the testimonies collected. All agree that they have improved their health and learned healthy habits for their daily lives. These are examples of qualitative evidence linked with the target of the call HEALTH.2013.3.3–1—Social innovation for health promotion [ 27 ] that has the objectives of reducing sedentary habits in the population and promoting healthy habits. This research contributes to this target, as we see in the video testimonies. Regarding the interaction obtained, this tweet achieved 9 retweets and 5 likes. In this case, the profiles of the interacting citizens show involvement in sport issues, including sport trainers, sport enthusiasts and some researchers.
To summarize the analysis, in Table 8 below, we provide a summary with examples illustrating the evidence found.
Tweet/ Fb post | Project |
---|---|
Weekly consumption of 7 vitamin D-enhanced eggs has an important impact on winter vitamin D status in adults. | Project 7 |
How re-using food waste for animal feed cuts carbon emissions NOSHAN Project: | Project 10 |
Here's a HELIX publication for you! Assessment of metabolic phenotypic variability in children's urine using 1H NMR spectroscopy.—PubMed—NCBI | Project 3 |
There is a greater presence of tweets/Fb posts with quantitative evidence (14) than with qualitative evidence (9) in the total number of tweets/Fb posts identified with evidence of social impact. Most of the tweets/Fb posts with quantitative evidence of social impact are from scientific articles published in peer-reviewed international journals and show potential social impact. In Table 8 , we introduce 3 examples of this type of tweets/Fb posts with quantitative evidence:
The first tweet with quantitative social impact selected is from project 7. The aim of this project was to provide high-quality scientific evidence for preventing vitamin D deficiency in European citizens. The tweet highlighted the main contribution of the published study, that is, “Weekly consumption of 7 vitamin D-enhanced eggs has an important impact on winter vitamin D status in adults” [ 28 ]. The quantitative evidence shared in social media was extracted from a news publication in a blog on health news. This blog collects scientific articles of research results. In this case, the blog disseminated the research result focused on how vitamin D-enhanced eggs improve vitamin D deficiency in wintertime, with the published results obtained by the research team of the project selected. The quantitative evidence illustrates that the group of adults who consumed vitamin D-enhanced eggs did not suffer from vitamin D deficiency, as opposed to the control group, which showed a significant decrease in vitamin D over the winter. The specific evidence is the following extracted from the article [ 28 ]:
With the use of a within-group analysis, it was shown that, although serum 25(OH) D in the control group significantly decreased over winter (mean ± SD: -6.4 ± 6.7 nmol/L; P = 0.001), there was no change in the 2 groups who consumed vitamin D-enhanced eggs (P>0.1 for both. (p. 629)
This evidence contributes to achievement of the target defined in the call addressed that is KBBE.2013.2.2–03—Food-based solutions for the eradication of vitamin D deficiency and health promotion throughout the life cycle [ 29 ]. The quantitative evidence shows how the consumption of vitamin D-enhanced eggs reduces vitamin D deficiency.
The second example of this table corresponds to the example of quantitative evidence of social impact provided in the previous section.
The third example is a Facebook post from project 3 that is also tweeted. Therefore, this evidence was published in both social media sources analysed. The aim of this project was to measure a range of chemical and physical environmental hazards in food, consumer products, water, air, noise, and the built environment in the pre- and postnatal early-life periods. This Facebook post and tweet links directly to a scientific article [ 30 ] that shows the precision of the spectroscopic platform:
Using 1H NMR spectroscopy we characterized short-term variability in urinary metabolites measured from 20 children aged 8–9 years old. Daily spot morning, night-time and pooled (50:50 morning and night-time) urine samples across six days (18 samples per child) were analysed, and 44 metabolites quantified. Intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC) and mixed effect models were applied to assess the reproducibility and biological variance of metabolic phenotypes. Excellent analytical reproducibility and precision was demonstrated for the 1H NMR spectroscopic platform (median CV 7.2%) . (p.1)
This evidence is linked to the target defined in the call “ENV.2012.6.4–3—Integrating environmental and health data to advance knowledge of the role of environment in human health and well-being in support of a European exposome initiative” [ 31 ]. The evidence provided shows how the project’s results have contributed to building technology for improving the data collection to advance in the knowledge of the role of the environment in human health, especially in early life. The interaction obtained is one retweet from a citizen from Nigeria interested in health issues, according to the information available in his profile.
We found qualitative evidence of the social impact of different projects, as shown in Table 9 . Similarly to the quantitative evidence, the qualitative cases also demonstrate potential social impact. The three examples provided have in common that they are tweets or Facebook posts that link to videos where the end users of the research project explain their improvements once they have implemented the research results.
Tweet/ Fb post | Project |
---|---|
'#Tech trialled in fight against ticking #obesity timebomb' #H2O20 #SPLENDID project, by @euronews via @eu_ehealth | Project 4 |
EU-PLF and Fancom b.v. in the news again. This time in Euronews! | Project 9 |
See our great new EuroFIT video on youtube! | Project 5 |
The first tweet with qualitative evidence selected is from project 4. The aim of this project is to produce a system that helps in the prevention of obesity and eating disorders, targeting young people and adults [ 32 ]. The twitter account that published this tweet is that of the Future and Emerging Technologies Programme of the European Commission, and a link to a Euronews video is provided. This video shows how the patients using the technology developed in the research achieved control of their eating disorders, through the testimonies of patients commenting on the positive results they have obtained. These testimonies are included in the news article that complements the video. An example of these testimonies is as follows:
Pierre Vial has lost 43 kilos over the past nine and a half months. He and other patients at the eating disorder clinic explain the effects obesity and anorexia have had on their lives. Another patient, Karin Borell, still has some months to go at the clinic but, after decades of battling anorexia, is beginning to be able to visualise life without the illness: “On a good day I see myself living a normal life without an eating disorder, without problems with food. That’s really all I wish right now”.[ 32 ]
This qualitative evidence shows how the research results contribute to the achievement of the target goals of the call addressed:“ICT-2013.5.1—Personalised health, active ageing, and independent living”. [ 33 ] In this case, the results are robust, particularly for people suffering chronic diseases and desiring to improve their health; people who have applied the research findings are improving their eating disorders and better managing their health. The value of this evidence is the inclusion of the patients’ voices stating the impact of the research results on their health.
The second example is a Facebook post from project 9, which provides a link to a Euronews video. The aim of this project is to bring some tools from the lab to the farm in order to guarantee a better management of the farm and animal welfare. In this video [ 34 ], there are quotes from farmers using the new system developed through the research results of the project. These quotes show how use of the new system is improving the management of the farm and the health of the animals; some examples are provided:
Cameras and microphones help me detect in real time when the animals are stressed for whatever reason,” explained farmer Twan Colberts. “So I can find solutions faster and in more efficient ways, without me being constantly here, checking each animal.”
This evidence shows how the research results contribute to addressing the objectives specified in the call “KBBE.2012.1.1–02—Animal and farm-centric approach to precision livestock farming in Europe” [ 29 ], particularly, to improve the precision of livestock farming in Europe. The interaction obtained is composed of6 likes and 1 share. The profiles are diverse, but some of them do not disclose personal information; others have not added a profile description, and only their name and photo are available.
The analysis of tweets and Facebook posts providing linkages with information about social impact was conducted following a content analysis method in which reliability was based on a peer review process. This sample is composed of 3,425 tweets and 1,925 Fb/posts. Each tweet and Facebook post was analysed to identify whether or not it contains evidence of social impact. Each researcher has the codebook a priori. We used interrater reliability in examining the agreement between the two raters on the assignment of the categories defined through Cohen’s kappa. We used SPSS to calculate this coefficient. We exported an excel sheet with the sample coded by the two researchers being 1 (is evidence of social impact, either potential or real) and 0 (is not evidence of social impact) to SPSS. The cases where agreement was not achieved were not considered as containing evidence of social impact. The result obtained is 0.979; considering the interpretation of this number according to Landis & Koch [ 35 ], our level of agreement is almost perfect, and thus, our analysis is reliable. To sum up the data analysis, the description of the steps followed is explained:
Step 1. Data analysis I. We included all data collected in an excel sheet to proceed with the analysis. Prior to the analysis, researchers read the codebook to keep in mind the information that should be identified.
Step 2. Each researcher involved reviewed case by case the tweets and Facebook posts to identify whether they provide links with evidence of social impact or not. If the researcher considers there to be evidence of social impact, he or she introduces the value of 1into the column, and if not, the value of 0.
Step 3. Once all the researchers have finished this step, the next step is to export the excel sheet to SPSS to extract the kappa coefficient.
Step 4. Data Analysis II. The following step was to analyse case by case the tweets and Facebook posts identified as providing linkages with information of social impact and classify them as quantitative or qualitative evidence of social impact.
Step 5. The interaction received was analysed because this determines to which extent this evidence of social impact has captured the attention of citizens (in the form of how many likes, shares, or retweets the post has).
Step 6. Finally, if available, the profile descriptions of the citizens interacting through retweeting or sharing the Facebook post were considered.
Step 7. SICOR was calculated. It could be applied to the complete sample (all data projects) or to each project, as we will see in the next section.
The total number of tweets and Fb/posts collected from the 10 projects is 5,350. After the content analysis, we identified 23 tweets and Facebook posts providing linkages to information about social impact. To respond to the research question, which considered whether there is evidence of social impact shared by citizens in social media, the answer was affirmative, although the coverage ratio is low. Both Twitter and Facebook users retweeted or shared evidence of social impact, and therefore, these two social media networks are valid sources for expanding knowledge on the assessment of social impact. Table 10 shows the social impact coverage ratio in relation to the total number of messages analysed.
Total tweets/ Fb posts | 5,350 |
Total tweets/ Fb posts with evidence | 23 |
Social Impact Coverage Ratio | 0,43% |
The analysis of each of the projects selected revealed some results to consider. Of the 10 projects, 7 had evidence, but those projects did not necessarily have more Tweets and Facebook posts. In fact, some projects with fewer than 70 tweets and 50 Facebook posts have more evidence of social impact than other projects with more than 400 tweets and 400 Facebook posts. This result indicates that the number of tweets and Facebook posts does not determine the existence of evidence of social impact in social media. For example, project 2 has 403 tweets and 423 Facebooks posts, but it has no evidence of social impact on social media. In contrast, project 9 has 62 tweets, 43 Facebook posts, and 2 pieces of evidence of social impact in social media, as shown in Table 11 .
Project | Tweets | Tweets with evidence of potential/real social impact | Facebook posts | Facebook posts with evidence of potential/real social impact |
---|---|---|---|---|
Project 1 | 965 | 2 | 585 | 0 |
Project 2 | 403 | 0 | 423 | 0 |
Project 3 | 903 | 0 | 396 | 1 |
Project 4 | 26 | 2 | 41 | 1 |
Project 5 | 418 | 1 | 16 | 0 |
Project 6 | 302 | 0 | 74 | 0 |
Project 7 | 157 | 6 | 64 | 5 |
Project 8 | 65 | 0 | 236 | 0 |
Project 9 | 62 | 1 | 43 | 1 |
Project 10 | 124 | 3 | 47 | 0 |
TOTAL | 3,425 | 15 | 1,925 | 8 |
The ratio of tweets/Fb posts to evidence is 0.43%, and it differs depending on the project, as shown below in Table 12 . There is one project (P7) with a ratio of 4.98%, which is a social impact coverage ratio higher than that of the other projects. Next, a group of projects (P3, P9, P10) has a social impact coverage ratio between 1.41% and 2,99%.The next slot has three projects (P1, P4, P5), with a ratio between 0.13% and 0.46%. Finally, there are three projects (P2, P6, P8) without any tweets/Fb posts evidence of social impact.
Projects | Total tweets/ Fb posts | Total tweets/ Fb posts with potential/real social impact | Social Impact Coverage Ratio |
---|---|---|---|
Project 1 | 1,550 | 2 | 0,13% |
Project 2 | 826 | 0 | 0,00 |
Project 3 | 67 | 2 | 2,99% |
Project 4 | 434 | 2 | 0,46% |
Project 5 | 376 | 1 | 0,27% |
Project 6 | 376 | 0 | 0,00 |
Project 7 | 221 | 11 | 4,98% |
Project 8 | 301 | 0 | 0,00 |
Project 9 | 105 | 2 | 1,90% |
Project 10 | 171 | 3 | 1,75% |
Considering the three strategies for obtaining data, each is related differently to the evidence of social impact. In terms of the social impact coverage ratio, as shown in Table 13 , the most successful strategy is number 3 (searchable research results), as it has a relation of 17.86%, which is much higher than the ratios for the other 2 strategies. The second strategy (acronym search) is more effective than the first (profile accounts),with 1.77% for the former as opposed to 0.27% for the latter.
Total tweets/ Fb posts | Total tweets/ Fb posts with potential/real social impact | Social Impact Coverage Ratio | |
---|---|---|---|
Strategy 1 (profile accounts) | 5,096 | 14 | 0,27% |
Strategy 2 (acronym search) | 226 | 4 | 1,77% |
Strategy 3 (searchable research results) | 28 | 5 | 17,86% |
Total | 5,350 | 23 |
Once tweets and Facebook posts providing linkages with information about social impact(ESISM)were identified, we classified them in terms of quantitative (QUANESISM) or qualitative evidence (QUALESISM)to determine which type of evidence was shared in social media. Table 14 indicates the amount of quantitative and qualitative evidence identified for each search strategy.
Strategy 1 | Strategy 2 | Strategy 3 | |||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Profile twitter | Facebook page | Acronym Search (Twitter) | Searchable Research Result (Twitter) | ||||
ESISM-QUANESISM | ESISM QUALESISM | ESISM QUANESISM | ESISM QUALESISM | ESISM QUANESISM | ESISM QUALESISM | ESISM QUANESIM | ESISM QUALESISM |
3 | 3 | 6 | 2 | 1 | 3 | 4 | 1 |
First, the results obtained indicated that the SISM methodology aids in calculating the social impact coverage ratio of the research projects selected and evaluating whether the social impact of the corresponding research is shared by citizens in social media. The social impact coverage ratio applied to the sample selected is low, but when we analyse the SICOR of each project separately, we can observe that some projects have a higher social impact coverage ratio than others. Complementary to altmetrics measuring the extent to which research results reach out society, the SICOR considers the question whether this process includes evidence of potential or real social impact. In this sense, the overall methodology of SISM contributes to advancement in the evaluation of the social impact of research by providing a more precise approach to what we are evaluating.
This contribution complements current evaluation methodologies of social impact that consider which improvements are shared by citizens in social media. Exploring the results in more depth, it is relevant to highlight that of the ten projects selected, there is one research project with a social impact coverage ratio higher than those of the others, which include projects without any tweets or Facebook posts with evidence of social impact. This project has a higher ratio of evidence than the others because evidence of its social impact is shared more than is that of other projects. This also means that the researchers produced evidence of social impact and shared it during the project. Another relevant result is that the quantity of tweets and Fb/posts collected did not determine the number of tweets and Fb/posts found with evidence of social impact. Moreover, the analysis of the research projects selected showed that there are projects with less social media interaction but with more tweets and Fb/posts containing evidence of social media impact. Thus, the number of tweets and Fb/posts with evidence of social impact is not determined by the number of publication messages collected; it is determined by the type of messages published and shared, that is, whether they contain evidence of social impact or not.
The second main finding is related to the effectiveness of the search strategies defined. Related to the strategies carried out under this methodology, one of the results found is that the most effective search strategy is the searchable research results, which reveals a higher percentage of evidence of social impact than the own account and acronym search strategies. However, the use of these three search strategies is highly recommended because the combination of all of them makes it possible to identify more tweets and Facebook posts with evidence of social impact.
Another result is related to the type of evidence of social impact found. There is both quantitative and qualitative evidence. Both types are useful for understanding the type of social impact achieved by the corresponding research project. In this sense, quantitative evidence allows us to understand the improvements obtained by the implementation of the research results and capture their impact. In contrast, qualitative evidence allows us to deeply understand how the resultant improvements obtained from the implementation of the research results are evaluated by the end users by capturing their corresponding direct quotes. The social impact includes the identification of both real and potential social impact.
After discussing the main results obtained, we conclude with the following points. Our study indicates that there is incipient evidence of social impact, both potential and real, in social media. This demonstrates that researchers from different fields, in the present case involved in medical research, public health, animal welfare and genomics, are sharing the improvements generated by their research and opening up new venues for citizens to interact with their work. This would imply that scientists are promoting not only the dissemination of their research results but also the evidence on how their results may lead to the improvement of societies. Considering the increasing relevance and presence of the dissemination of research, the results indicate that scientists still need to include in their dissemination and communication strategies the aim of sharing the social impact of their results. This implies the publication of concrete qualitative or quantitative evidence of the social impact obtained. Because of the inclusion of this strategy, citizens will pay more attention to the content published in social media because they are interested in knowing how science can contribute to improving their living conditions and in accessing crucial information. Sharing social impact in social media facilitates access to citizens of different ages, genders, cultural backgrounds and education levels. However, what is most relevant for our argument here is how citizens should also be able to participate in the evaluation of the social impact of research, with social media a great source to reinforce this democratization process. This contributes not only to greatly improving the social impact assessment, as in addition to experts, policy makers and scientific publications, citizens through social media contribute to making this assessment much more accurate. Thus, citizens’ contribution to the dissemination of evidence of the social impact of research yields access to more diverse sectors of society and information that might be unknown by the research or political community. Two future steps are opened here. On the one hand, it is necessary to further examine the profiles of users who interact with this evidence of social impact considering the limitations of the privacy and availability of profile information. A second future task is to advance in the articulation of the role played by citizens’ participation in social impact assessment, as citizens can contribute to current worldwide efforts by shedding new light on this process of social impact assessment and contributing to making science more relevant and useful for the most urgent and poignant social needs.
This file contains the SPSS file with the result of the calculation of Cohen’s Kappa regards the interrater reliability. The word document exported with the obtained result is also included.
This excel contains four sheets, the first one titled “data collected” contains the number of tweets and Facebook posts collected through the three defined search strategies; the second sheet titled “sample” contains the sample classified by project indicating the ID of the message or code assigned, the type of message (tweet or Facebook post) and the codification done by researchers being 1 (is evidence of social impact, either potential or real) and 0 (is not evidence of social impact); the third sheet titled “evidence found” contains the number of type of evidences of social impact founded by project (ESISM-QUANESIM or ESISM-QUALESIM), search strategy and type of message (tweet or Facebook posts); and the last sheet titled “SICOR” contains the Social Impact Coverage Ratio calculation by projects in one table and type of search strategy done in another one.
The research leading to these results received funding from the 7 th Framework Programme of the European Commission under Grant Agreement n° 613202. The extraction of available data using the list of searchable keywords on Twitter and Facebook followed the ethical guidelines for social media research supported by the Economic and Social Research Council (UK) [ 36 ] and the University of Aberdeen [ 37 ]. Furthermore, the research results have already been published and made public, and hence, there are no ethical issues.
The research leading to these results has received funding from the 7th Framework Programme of the European Commission under the Grant Agreement n° 613202 P.I. Ramon Flecha, https://ec.europa.eu/research/fp7/index_en.cfm . The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus
Emily Hemendinger does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus provides funding as a member of The Conversation US.
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Amid growing concerns over the effects of social media on teen mental health, on June 17, 2024, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy called for warning labels to be added to social media platforms, similar to surgeon general warnings on cigarettes and alcohol.
Murphy’s warning cited research showing that teens who use more than three hours of social media a day face double the risk of mental health problems .
This comes a year after Murphy issued a major public advisory over the links between social media and youth mental health.
As a specialist in eating disorders and anxiety , I regularly work with clients who experience eating disorder symptoms, self-esteem issues and anxiety related to social media .
I also have firsthand experience with this topic : I am 16 years post-recovery from an eating disorder, and as a teenager, I grew up when people were beginning to widely use social media. In my view, the impact of social media on mental health, especially on diet and exercise patterns, cannot simply be mitigated with a warning label. However, it is an important starting point for raising awareness of the harms of social media.
Experts have long suspected that social media may be playing a role in the growing mental health crisis in young people . However, the surgeon general’s 2023 warning was one of the first government warnings supported by robust research .
Critics of the call for warning labels argue that it oversimplifies a complex issue and that limiting social media access in any way would do more harm than good. Some supporters feel that it is a step in the right direction and far less restrictive than trying to start with more widespread privacy regulations.
And so far, calls for action over regulating social media have fallen flat .
Researchers are limited to only studying associations, which make causal links difficult to establish. But there are numerous studies that do show a relationship between viewing media and worsened self-esteem, body image and mental health.
Additionally, there is scientific data that has shown the effectiveness of including warning labels to deter use of substances such as tobacco and alcohol .
However, the strategy of warning labels has been used for eating disorder content and digitally altered images on the internet, with mixed results . These studies showed that the warning labels do not reduce the negative impact of the media on body image. Some of the research even found that the warning labels might increase body and appearance comparisons , which are thought to be key reasons why social media can be harmful to self-esteem.
Research shows that images of beauty as depicted in movies, social media, television and magazines can lead to mental illness , issues with disordered eating and body image dissatisfaction .
Body dissatisfaction among children and adolescents is commonplace and has been linked to decreased quality of life, worsened mood and unhealthy eating habits.
The mental health of adolescents and teens has been declining for the past decade , and the COVID-19 pandemic contributed to worsening youth mental health and brought it into the spotlight. As the mental health crisis surges, researchers have been taking a close look at the role of social media in these increasing mental health concerns.
About 95% of children and adolescents in the U.S. between the ages of 10 and 17 are using social media almost constantly . A 2023 study found that teens spend about five hours per day on social media.
Research has shown that social media can be beneficial for finding community support . However, studies have also shown that the use of social media contributes to social comparisons, unrealistic expectations and negative mental health effects .
In addition, those who have preexisting mental health conditions tend to spend more time on social media. People in that category are more likely to self-objectify and internalize the thin body ideal . Women and people with preexisting body image concerns are more likely than others to feel worse about their bodies and themselves after they spend time on social media.
A recent review found that, as with mass media, the use of social media is a risk factor for the development of an eating disorder , body image dissatisfaction and disordered eating. In this review, social media use was shown to contribute to negative self-esteem, social comparisons, decreased emotional regulation and idealized self-presentation that negatively influenced body image.
Another study, called the Dove Self-Esteem Project , published in April 2023, found that 9 in 10 children and adolescents ages 10 to 17 are exposed to toxic beauty content on social media, and 1 in 2 say that this has an impact on their mental health.
Researchers have also found that increased time at home during the pandemic led to more social media use by young people and therefore more exposure to toxic body image and dieting social media content.
While social media alone will not cause eating disorders, societal beliefs about beauty , which are amplified by social media, can contribute to the development of eating disorders.
Toxic beauty standards online include the normalization of cosmetic and surgical procedures and pro-eating-disorder content, which promotes and romanticizes eating disorders. For instance, social media sites have promoted trends such as “thinspo,” which is focused on the thin ideal, and “fitspo,” which perpetuates the belief of there being a perfect body that can be achieved with dieting, supplements and excessive exercise.
Research has shown that social media content encouraging “clean eating ” or following a diet based on pseudoscientific claims can lead to obsessive behavior around food. These unfounded “wellness” posts can lead to weight cycling, yo-yo dieting , chronic stress, body dissatisfaction and higher likelihood of muscular and thin-ideal internalization .
Some social media posts feature pro-eating-disorder content , which directly or indirectly encourages disordered eating. Other posts promote deliberate manipulation of one’s body, using harmful quotes such as “nothing tastes as good as thin feels.” These posts provide a false sense of connection, allowing users to bond over a shared goal of losing weight, altering their appearance and continuing patterns of disordered eating.
While young people can often recognize and understand toxic beauty advice’s effects on their self-esteem, they may still continue to engage with this content. This is in part because friends, influencers and social media algorithms encourage people to follow certain accounts.
Small steps at home to cut down on social media consumption can also make a difference. Parents and caregivers can create phone-free periods for the family. Examples of this include putting phones away while the family watches a movie together or during mealtimes.
Adults can also help by modeling healthy social media behaviors and encouraging children and adolescents to focus on building connections and engaging in valued activities .
Mindful social media consumption is another helpful approach. This requires recognizing what one is feeling during social media scrolling. If spending time on social media makes you feel worse about yourself or seems to be causing mood changes in your child, it may be time to change how you or your child interact with social media.
This is an updated version of an article originally published on June 7, 2023 .
These eight names including american educator ruth gottesman are making an impact. here's how., the editors, the editors's most recent stories.
The downfall of fintech mogul Sam Bankman-Fried not only upended the cryptocurrency market, it also raised concerns about the future of effective altruism—a school of philanthropy that he embraced and that reportedly contributed to his fraudulent ways. Effective altruism espouses the idea that instead of giving your money to causes that you have a personal connection to (a hospital where a relative was treated, an alma mater) or one that tugs at your heartstrings—say, an earthquake in a developing country—you fund projects that have the highest potential for immediate and widespread impact, such as supplying mosquito nets to fight malaria. The movement encourages “earning to give,” in which individuals pursue lucrative jobs—sometimes even predatory in nature—in order to dole out as much money as possible. Bankman-Fried would use “earning to give” as cloud cover when he started siphoning billions of dollars from his customers.
More recently, effective altruism has introduced another controversial idea with “longtermism,” in which donors aim to help humanity’s long-term prospects. The argument goes: Why save millions from malaria today when you could theoretically save billions of people yet to be born from, say, hostile A.I.?
This future-forward, quantitative thinking has piqued the interest of tech billionaires, including Elon Musk. While the math of longtermism might make sense to Silicon Valley’s algorithm-happy set, critics charge that prioritizing future generations over people today is flawed. The approach, they argue, plays into the technocrat-as-savior complex, reenforcing the idea that certain individuals are uniquely capable of fixing the world of a century or a millennium hence. Moreover, this type of farsighted musing also neglects to address how certain power systems (and capitalism itself ) have caused many of today’s problems, from economic inequality to climate change, and it’s the antithesis of the trust-based philanthropy practiced by MacKenzie Scott, who distributes her billions with no strings attached.
Despite SBF’s criminality, effective altruism, which focuses on issues such as global poverty and health, continues to attract megadonors, chief among them Facebook cofounder Dustin Moskovitz, who adhere to its data-driven principles. Moskovitz and his wife, Cari Tuna, created Good Ventures and cofounded Open Philanthropy , which are projected to donate over $750 million this year alone. SBF may spend the next quarter-century in prison, but the movement he helped make famous may still be around when he gets out.
Since 2005, some 2,500 local U.S. newspapers have shuttered, leaving nearly one in five Americans in “news deserts,” according to Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. Concerned about the dearth of independent reporting as well as the rise of misinformation (and disinformation) on the internet, John Palfrey, a longtime educator and legal scholar and current president of the MacArthur Foundation , famed for its “genius grants,” recently established Press Forward, an initiative to support journalism in communities across the country.
More than 20 initial donors have pledged $500 million over the next five years to fund outlets that are working to produce rigorously reported news with a nonpartisan approach. That major-donor list has since grown to 57. And Palfrey harbors even bigger ambitions: He hopes to raise an even billion, encouraging all Americans to support the news the way they do other nonprofits—or at least subscribe to it à la Netflix.
Tsitsi Masiyiwa, the wife of Zimbabwe’s richest man, telecommunications magnate Strive Masiyiwa, cofounded Delta Philanthropies with her husband to address education, health, and economic opportunity in developing countries, and she sits on the boards of several social-impact organizations, including the End Fund , which focuses on eradicating tropical diseases. But it’s her work with the Africa Gender Initiative (AGI), which she launched in late 2022, that may be closest to her heart.
As the youngest of five girls and the mother of five daughters, Masiyiwa knows firsthand about the systemic discrimination against women and girls across the continent—even from her privileged perch. AGI aims to build gender parity by investing in human capital and allowing women more access to education, rights to land, and financial resources in order to create a more sustainable and equitable future for all.
The former wife of Home Depot cofounder Arthur Blank, Diana Blank established the Kendeda Fund in 1993 and spent the next 30 years donating over $1 billion to various causes, from women’s rights to gun violence to the environment—much of it anonymously. The 81-year-old Blank was an early pioneer in “trust-based” philanthropy, empowering grant recipients to use the money effectively.
In 2012, Blank’s elder daughter, Dena Kimball, joined the effort as executive director and helped Blank fulfill her final mission: to “spend out,” donating the remainder of Kendeda’s assets in the hope of having the greatest possible impact in the here and now. The fund closed shop in December 2023 but still advises other charitable organizations on how to disperse all of their assets rather than drip-feed grants over generations.
Seattle-based real-estate developer Richard Hedreen and his wife, Betty, were major art collectors with a sweeping approach, acquiring works from the 15th century on up to the present. Betty died in 2022, and Hedreen honored her this year by giving their world-class trove to Seattle University , her alma mater. Valued at $300 million, it is the largest gift of art ever donated to a U.S. university.
The couple had gifted artworks to the school previously and helped fund the construction of a campus chapel designed by Steven Holl. But their collection, which includes works by artists as disparate as Titian, Willem de Kooning, and Amy Sherald, will lay the foundation for the small Jesuit college’s first art museum, for which Hedreen has also pledged another $25 million of seed money.
Earlier this year when 94-year-old Ruth Gottesman announced that she was giving $1 billion to the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx, the audience erupted into cheers. Some attendees wept openly. Their reaction was understandable: The seats were filled with the school’s med students, and Gottesman stipulated the donation would ensure that tuition for all current and future students would be free—in perpetuity.
While it’s common for major donors to give to hospitals in the far wealthier borough of Manhattan, Gottesman, whose late husband bequeathed her the fortune, is an outlier for endowing the less flashy Albert Einstein: As a professor emerita there and chair of the board of trustees, she knew that the institution sorely needed it. As tuition has soared, loans have become cost-prohibitive for some would-be doctors, and many of those who attend Albert Einstein are from modest backgrounds, including a high proportion who are children of immigrants. Nearly half graduate more than $200,000 in debt. Gottesman’s gift is believed to be the largest ever to a medical school. The cherry on top? She stipulated the school could not change its name.
As one of the founders and chief scientists of Qualcomm, a California chipmaker, Franklin Antonio was known for his forward thinking. When he died suddenly in 2022, at the age of 69, he left $200 million to the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Life) Institute , a research organization based in Mountain View, Calif., that is also funded in part by NASA.
In addition to enabling the institute to expand its exploration, the money will establish fellowships and grants for science and education programs. Though the search for other life in the universe might seem out there (so to speak), Antonio believed that science matters. He also bequeathed another $200 million to the Summer Science Program, a North Carolina–based nonprofit for exceptional high-school students, which he once attended.
As a southern Black woman educated at Yale and Stanford, Crystal Hayling knows how to straddle different worlds. This year, Hayling will retire from the Libra Foundation , a San Francisco–based organization founded by a branch of the Pritzker family, where she dispersed nearly $200 million during her six-year tenure as executive director, capping a 32-year career in philanthropy.
Hayling disrupted the traditional top-down philanthropic model in favor of a grassroots approach, trusting those closest to the problems to devise solutions. Over her long career, Hayling had an impact on issues ranging from domestic-violence prevention to health care, but perhaps her most significant legacy is using her voice to rally support for more BIPOC-led nonprofits over the long term rather than just in the wake of the racial-injustice reckoning following George Floyd’s murder.
Former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg has long been a force in pathbreaking philanthropy. His largesse has helped his alma mater, Johns Hopkins University, renounce legacy admissions, and he has funded programs in the arts, the environment, education, public health, and government innovation. In 2023 alone, the 82-year-old businessman gave away $3 billion, making him the biggest donor in American philanthropy last year. (Runners-up Phil and Penny Knight reportedly contributed less than half that figure, at $1.24 billion.)
An original signatory to the Giving Pledge , Bloomberg also announced that before or upon his death, he will donate all of his shares in Bloomberg LP, the financial-media company he started in 1981, to a charitable trust that will in turn fund his foundation, Bloomberg Philanthropies . Though the exact value of his stake is unclear, his net worth is estimated to be around $106 billion, meaning the donation could end up being the largest private philanthropic contribution ever, and his foundation the biggest in the nation.
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Despite the global reach of social media platforms, there is a dearth of research on the impact of these platforms on the mental health of individuals in diverse settings, as well as the ways in which social media could support mental health services in lower income countries where there is virtually no access to mental health providers.
Impact on mental health. Mental health is defined as a state of well-being in which people understand their abilities, solve everyday life problems, work well, and make a significant contribution to the lives of their communities [].There is debated presently going on regarding the benefits and negative impacts of social media on mental health [9,10].
Depression, anxiety, catfishing, bullying, terro rism, and. criminal activities are some of the negative side s of social media on societies. Generall y, when peoples use social. media for ...
The present study reveals that the social and psychological impacts of social media use among University students is becoming more complex as there is continuing advancement in technology, offering a range of affordable interaction opportunities. Based on the 940 valid responses collected, all the hypotheses were accepted (p < 0.05).
The question whether social media use benefits or undermines adolescents' well-being is an important societal concern. Previous empirical studies have mostly established across-the-board effects ...
Social media. The term 'social media' refers to the various internet-based networks that enable users to interact with others, verbally and visually (Carr & Hayes, Citation 2015).According to the Pew Research Centre (Citation 2015), at least 92% of teenagers are active on social media.Lenhart, Smith, Anderson, Duggan, and Perrin (Citation 2015) identified the 13-17 age group as ...
In this commentary, we summarized current research on the use of social media among individuals with mental illness, with consideration of the impact of social media on mental wellbeing, as well as early efforts using social media for delivery of evidence-based programs for addressing mental health problems.
Abstract. Research into the impact of social media use (SMU) on well-being (e.g., happiness) and ill-being (e.g., depression) has exploded over the past few years. From 2019 to August 2021, 27 reviews have been published: nine meta-analyses, nine systematic reviews, and nine narrative reviews, which together included hundreds of empirical studies.
Social media use is an ever-increasing phenomenon of the 21st century. In the United States, about 7 of 10 individuals use social media to connect with others, receive news content, share information, and entertain themselves (Pew Research Center, 2018).According to a recent study, young individuals pervasively use social media for a variety of reasons including entertainment, identity ...
The present study reveals that the social and psychological impacts of social media use among University students is becoming more complex as there is continuing advancement in technology, offering a range of affordable interaction opportunities. Based on the 940 valid responses collected, all the hypotheses were accepted (p < 0.05).
Abstract. Research into the impact of social media use (SMU) on well-being (e.g., happiness) and ill-being (e.g., depression) has exploded over the past few years. From 2019 to August 2021, 27 reviews have been published: nine meta-analyses, nine systematic reviews, and nine narrative reviews, which together included hundreds of empirical studies.
A 2018 Common Sense Media report found that 81 percent of teens use social media, and more than a third report using social media sites multiple times an hour. These statistics have risen dramatically over the past six years, likely driven by increased access to mobile devices. Rising along with these stats is a growing interest in the impact ...
This body of social media research also highlights the importance of health care providers taking an active approach in disseminating high-quality content to their patients and the general public. ... The impact of social media information on health disparities is also an important area for future study. Studies are needed to determine whether ...
41%. Percentage of teens with the highest social media use who rate their overall mental health as poor or very poor, compared with 23% of those with the lowest use. For example, 10% of the highest use group expressed suicidal intent or self-harm in the past 12 months compared with 5% of the lowest use group, and 17% of the highest users expressed poor body image compared with 6% of the lowest ...
Pew Research Center's research on the internet, social media and technology in the U.S. and around the world. Many of the topics explored in this report have been studied in depth in the U.S. by Pew Research Center's internet and technology team, which for more than two decades has conducted survey research on the social impact of digital technologies, such as internet and broadband ...
In the fifth research stream, social media are conceived as a general strategic marketing tool, with the bulk of studies focusing on the strategic role of social media adoption for marketing purposes, the impact of social media on organizational structure, social media usage and its management, and the strategic marketing perspective of social ...
Another research was made using "social network", "health" and "pediatrics" as search terms in text or title/abstract, with the time span always set as "all years". ... Investigating the impact of social media on adolescents' wellbeing is a priority due to a progressive increase in mental health problems and access to ...
Roughly eight-in-ten U.S. adults (83%) report ever using the video-based platform. While a somewhat lower share reports using it, Facebook is also a dominant player in the online landscape. Most Americans (68%) report using the social media platform. Additionally, roughly half of U.S. adults (47%) say they use Instagram.
Society has long fretted about technology's impact on youth. But unlike radio and television, the hyperconnected nature of social media has led to new anxieties, including worries that these platforms may be negatively impacting teenagers' mental health.Just this year, the White House announced plans to combat potential harms teens may face when using social media.
Understanding the intricate dynamics of social media users' information-sharing behaviours during crises is essential for effective public opinion management. While various scholarly efforts have attempted to uncover the factors influencing information sharing through different lenses, the underlying mechanisms remain elusive. Building upon the heuristic-systematic model (HSM) and ...
Research is about producing new information, and social media offers unique opportunities to present new content. As a scientist, once you publish your research, you want to share it with as many colleagues and people so that they may read your novel findings. You want to share your hard work with many individuals.
In a Monday opinion essay in the New York Times, Murthy also called for social media companies to share data and research into health effects so independent experts can examine it. "While the ...
When it comes to the specific breakdown of social media sites being used, Pew Research Center reports that 83% of U.S. adults use YouTube, ... The impact of social media on mental health;
Christian Montag et al, Use fines from EU social-media act to fund research on adolescent mental health, Nature (2024). DOI: 10.1038/d41586-024-01040-5 Provided by University of Ulm
At the same time, 81.3% of Canadian youth reported spending more than two hours on social media daily, and 96% reported regular use of at least one social media platform, rates that are similar or ...
In recent years, several studies have been conducted to explore the potential effects of social media on students' affective traits, such as stress, anxiety, depression, and so on. The present paper reviews the findings of the exemplary published works of research to shed light on the positive and negative potential effects of the massive use ...
The social impact of research has usually been analysed through the scientific outcomes produced under the auspices of the research. The growth of scholarly content in social media and the use of altmetrics by researchers to track their work facilitate the advancement in evaluating the impact of research.
Amid growing concerns over the effects of social media on teen mental health, on June 17, 2024, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy called for warning labels to be added to social media platforms ...
I also have firsthand experience with this topic: I am 15 years post-recovery from an eating disorder, and I grew up when people were beginning to widely use social media. In my view, the impact ...
An original signatory to the Giving Pledge, Bloomberg also announced that before or upon his death, he will donate all of his shares in Bloomberg LP, the financial-media company he started in 1981 ...