Study: Inflammation drives social media use
buffalo.edu
buffalo.edu
Sounds like they found correlation and called it causation. I’m keeping an open mind, but I find this article dubious. No link to any of the studies, no alternative explanations (I would guess any negative health markers are associated with higher tech use), and the title is a little too strong “Inflammation linked to social media use” would be easier to swallow, or even “contributes to”.
I find press releases like this both not useful and overall bad for the scientific community. It’s unfortunate because this may genuinely be an interesting line of research.
Otherwise, sure, you're telling me all of the factors associated with inflammation, i.e. illness, disability, injury, sedentary life, are also associated with people spending more time on social media than they might otherwise, doesn't seem like a revelation.
I was able to get to it by going to Google Scholar and searching "Brain, Behavior and Immunity" david lee. The first result was a sciencedirect link that did allow me to read the whole thing.
Because another obvious hypothesis is that social media causes some kind of fight-or-flight response in people that triggers inflammation.
Like gambling to thrill seek because of stress from overdue bills.
(super meta: I am tired and uncomfortable and am spending stupid amounts of time reading reddit/HN)
> Providing stronger evidence of the directionality of this effect, Study 3 (N = 171) showed that in college students CRP predicted increased social media use in the subsequent week even after controlling for current week’s use.
The basic methodology for this part is:
* Blood sample (measured for CRP)
* 1 week later: survey on social media use (participants using Screen Time app to objectively measure their activity)
* 1 week after that: survey on social media use again
Then they ran some regression analyses.
I didn't see anything here that rules out the alternative possible explanation: college students who use social media more are more stressed out as a result of their social media use.
The inflammatory aspect makes me feel like a complete zombie after several days of flaring up. I highly doubt this is a unique subjective experience. In fact, if you do some googling, you will find that chronic low-grade inflammation (as well as disruptions of the GI tract / microbiome) are quite strongly linked to treatment resistant depression, which is another thing I happen to have. I haven't personally read studies investigating it, but I suspect "brain fog" and attention/memory issues are also strongly correlated with chronic inflammation, even of the 'low grade' variety.
When I get into these states, brought on by flare-ups, my mind wants nothing more than to zone out in such a way as to increase the perceived speed with which time passes. Because time is basically the only thing that can get me out of a bad flare-up (as long as I avoid a huge list of foods and activities and strictly follow certain protocols as well). If I could sleep through all of it that would be ideal (a common refrain among the chronically depressed). And at the same time, stress and complicated situations increase the chances that I do something wrong that is likely to extend the flare-up (which to me suggests an adaptive role of depression during chronic health problems).
Even watching movies and TV feel too effortful at times: you have to focus on a storyline, remember what characters said and did, and maintain some emotional connection to the story in order to be engaged and thus have time pass quickly... all which takes effort. Social media truly is the high fructose corn syrup + hydrogenated palm oil of passive time-wasting activities. Getting into "the zone" in terms of mindlessly clicking as minutes and hours pass by in a flash takes almost zero effort once you are accustomed (read: addicted) to it. And everything is so bite-sized and condensed, it is perfectly tailored to someone who is having more trouble than normal focusing, staying engaged, and remembering stuff (even what was said/read 2 minutes ago).
BAM/BAD is definitely associated with Crohn's:
>Bile acid malabsorption (BAM) is a common but an underestimated and often neglected sign of inflammatory bowel diseases (IBDs), especially those affecting the distal ileum. Clinically relevant BAM is most often present in patients with Crohn's ileitis and particularly in ileal-resected Crohn's disease patients. However, deterioration of bile acid (BA) metabolism occurs also in patients with IBD without ileal disease or in those in clinical remission, and the role of BAM in these patients is not well appreciated by clinicians.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25248001/
Here's a nice paper that does a good job of summarizing the state Crohn's + BAM/BAD research (aka a systematic review) as of 6 years ago:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6191959/
Anecdotally, I found myrrh + frankincense (about 100 - 300mg of each) chewed up 15 minutes prior to meals and phosphatidylcholine aka sunflower lecithin (5-10g) added to one meal per day seemed to help. I wouldn't use the myrrh and frankincense on a long-term basis, I stopped after a month. But above all, consult your doctor or other certified and licensed healthcare professional before taking any medications and supplements, herbal or otherwise. Meds like this can fuck you up if you aren't careful! Actually, be careful with phosphatidylcholine as well. Although it has been shown in limited research to benefit IBD and other GI disorders, apparently high levels of some of it's downstream metabolites are associated with more severe symptoms.
Note: the dosages for frank and myrrh are for the whole resin, eg obtained from a trusted supplier of bulk herbs such as Herb Stomp. You can also use tinctures, although dosage may be different and they may be more or less potent and effective based on formulation.
Phosphatidylcholine and GI inflammatory disorders and IBD:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19594939/
>Results: Studies suggested that PC displays a significant effect in the treatment of IBD by modulating gut barrier function, remodeling gut microbiota structure, regulating polarization of macrophages, and reducing the inflammatory response.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3103094/
>Phosphatidylcholine has also been shown to have a cytoprotective role in the biliary epithelium and may reduce the cellular toxicity of bile acids
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002192582 0587875
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1774598/
Myrrh and frankincense in regards to inflammation and IBD:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4950638/
>In conclusion, the results of the present study suggested that myrrh has potent therapeutic value in the amelioration of experimental colitis in laboratory animals by downregulating the expression of proinflammatory mediators and improving endogenous antioxidative activities.
https://www.nature.com/articles/srep15597
I also found glycine (30g+ / day), creatine (5-10g /day), and taurine (1.5g-3g / day) supplementation very helpful. Taurine and glycine are the primary amino acids used to conjugate bile, so they can in theory be helpful to a liver that's struggling to do it's job.
Creatine is incredibly restorative to the epithelium of the GI tract. A rather large study is currently being designed to investigate creatine as adjuvant therapy for IBD/Crohn's, and I suspect we will see a lot more discussion and research into this angle in coming years. Bodybuilders take all of these substances because they improve upon even a nearly optimal metabolism, so it's quite logical that they are going to yield benefits to people with severely impaired metabolic processes at least in some cases, if not most of the time.
Might be worth discussing pancreatic enzymes with your doctor. Lipase is critical to fat metabolism, so that's of course going to be relevant with BAM. The tricky part is that in cases of borderline/mild exocrine pancreatic insufficiency, the standard test they give (stool elastase) has only a 50% sensitivity (so false negatives half the time), and possibly even lower depending on the quality of the stool sample you provide. Depending on how chill your doctor is it might be one of those things to just try it out and see if it delivers significant benefit -- these aren't really risky meds since it's the exact enzymes your pancreas should be producing.
The problem is they aren't cheap. Getting this kind of help from medical professionals can be very difficult, sadly. You may be able to find OTC enzymes containing lipase, but as always talk to physician first, and you don't want an product that has everything under the sun in it, plus some random herbs added for no apparent reason (there's a lot of complete junk in the category of 'natural products' since it's basically unregulated medicine at this point).
B vitamins are also quite important to various processes in the liver, I believe including bile synthesis and/or reabsorption indirectly. It is a little more expensive, but well worth it to get a methylated b-vitamin (saves your body the metabolic cost of methylation after the fact). Important note, if you have intolerance to potatoes, which is not uncommon among GI patients, you may have to go out of your way to find one that isn't derived from potato - I have found one thanks to my naturopath if you are interested.
As an aside, potato intolerance is tricky to figure out. It's one of those ingredients that is used in tons of industrial food production processes and doesn't always show up on the label. For instance, the majority of foods 'fortified' by B-vitamins (bread, alcohol, nutritional yeast) and even most table salt (other than 'unrefined sea salt') have unlisted potato sufficient to trigger a reaction in a highly sensitive individual.
Good luck in your search for health and vitality (or at least a slightly less fucked up GI tract)!
Best of luck in your own GI journey!
Don't know if this is true for everyone but the study's findings match my personal experience.
University media offices seem to think it's their job to misinterpret and exaggerate scientific findings in whatever way will draw the most clicks to their press release.
I've only had a chance to skim, but there's all kinds of weirdness here. In "Study 3" they measure 171 college students' social media use on Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook, ignoring TikTok, which those subjects probably use more than all the others combined.
Ignoring TikTok for any reason in 2021-2022 is a huge mistake. Once I saw that, I decided I'm not interested in their findings.
This approach does have it's drawbacks though, such as rapidly fading into irrelevance and obscurity given the ever-changing landscape of the study environment. It is of course your prerogative to disregard research as you see fit, but hopefully we can agree that this isn't bad science (at least not on that basis), even if you find the results uninteresting.
> We decided to assess social media use across four platforms for three reasons. First, Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook were the most popular social media platforms among college students at the time of our study design (Perrin and Anderson, 2019).
This is telling us that they designed the study at a time when a 2019 report on social media usage was the most up-to-date available. I misread initially, thinking that (Perrin and Anderson, 2019) was the study design they followed, but it is actually this: Perrin, A., & Anderson, M. (2019). Share of US adults using social media, including Facebook, is mostly unchanged since 2018. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/04/10/share-of-u-....
I get that they probably didn't feel like revising their design in the fall of 2021, but this would have been the right thing to do, given trends in social media use in young people at the time. It is odd that this 2023 paper doesn't even mention TikTok. Its exclusion, justified or not, is a limitation worth noting.
What's real interesting is their 2021 paper, showing the effect is mediated by high-self esteem (as measured by the 7 Item Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale).
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8474231/
Researcher goes along with this insane press release that does not mention self-esteem mediating it, why? Because they have an agenda.
If you want to figure it out, follow the money. Who is funding their research? I would not be terribly surprised to find a pharma pipeline with a drug that reduces c-reactive protein. Social media addiction isn't in the DSM-5 yet, but once it is you know there's a market for a drug to address it.
> Our data came from a larger project investigating college students’ lifestyle and well-being. In this project, one hundred and seventy-one college students (102 females; Mage = 19.24, SDage = 2.68) participated for partial course credit between September 2021 and May 2022. For our purpose, we focus on the longitudinal component of this study, which consisted of two parts: a baseline lab session (Phase 1, N = 171) and two follow-up weekly surveys (Phase 2, N = 160; Phase 3, N = 160).
Baldwin Way's research focus may put him in more contact with pharma: https://psychology.osu.edu/people/way.37
His R01 is looking at substance abuse: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10304875
Relevant comic: https://phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1174
Yes, but in the ~15 years since this came out, University PR have closed the gap between their work and that of cable news :)
There's likely some correlation with being undisciplined with your physical health and being undisciplined when it comes to mindlessly consuming social media.
Also worth noting that some estimates claim that between 5 and 10% of Americans have at least one autoimmune disease, and on average it takes patients four years[1] to receive a diagnosis, let alone treatment.
If I had a dollar for every person who suggested something was wrong with my (healthy, vegetarian) diet when it turns out my immune system is brute-force attacking my gut and spine...
[1] https://www.staffcare.com/locum-tenens-blog/news/most-diffic...
I tend to think being idle is what drives most SM usage. Inflammation just happens to drive idle time because of pain being the alternative.
So if there is correlation, the opposite causation would imply a more pernicious outcome, combined with the fact that social media use is addictive.
Some inflammatory event causing social media use like injury is a lot more limited than social media use by billions of people increasing stress. The short article didn't really assuage me of this.
It shouldn't be debatable that social media use increases the sensation that you are being watched/looked at by more people than normal. It would be a given that this increases stress and tension.
Role of inflammation in depression: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6658985/
Depression and social media: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7364393/
would also add this research direction: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24331897/
Suppose X causes inflammation and social media use.
Suppose you want to reduce social media use.
You look at this study and think I should reduce inflammation, so I can reduce social media use? How do I do that? By removing causes of inflammation.
The thing to be careful about is to avoid jumping to some medication or surgery that directly removes inflammation, and be sure to eliminate something that causes inflammation.
- inactive people use social media more, and the inactivity causes inflammation due to heart disease / diabetes - depression causes inflammation, and depressed people use social media more - social media causes depression, which causes inflammation
The body is full of these chicken-egg relationships. It really is a gigantic and bewildering system of positive and negative feedback loops (in terms of effect, not value judgements). Mental stress is one trigger, sure, but if you accept my interpretations below it is not much of a leap to see that CRP can also lead to significant increases in mental stress.
I think it would be more accurate to say inflammation isn't the primary underlying cause but is rather an adaptive response gone awry. However, once triggered, inflammation (and it's downstream effects) can have a significant influence on one's subjective experience and behavior, by way of physiological alterations to brain chemistry and function.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6658985/
>Increased inflammation is seen in the periphery in both depression and fatigue. This inflammation leads to increased permeability of the BBB,* allowing for easier entry of inflammatory molecules or immune cells into the CNS.
If you happen to have a disruption/disorder of your microbiome that includes loosening of the tight junctions of your epithelium (aka intestinal permeability aka "leaky gut"), that means that cytotoxic byproducts of bacterial metabolism and your body's immune responses to their presence (eg Mast cell release of histamine, heparin, cytokines, chemokines, etc) can enter your bloodstream and then cross your BBB to get into your brain.
I believe that inflammation plays a role in each of these three steps: loosening of the tight junctions in epithelium, release of chemical mediators by mast cells (eg in response to detection of cytokines, rather than strictly in the presence of allergens and toxins), and increasing the permeability of the blood brain barrier.
The chemokines are particularly concerning:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11786310/
>Chemokines in the brain have been recognised as essential elements in neurodegenerative diseases and related neuroinflammation.
Fun times!
For example, it may be possible to say that inflammation correlates with mental stress, but given lifestyle choices made under mental stress (such as your diet and so on) are also what causes or at least contributes to that inflammation it’s dubious whether we can completely untangle the two and definitively prove that the causal arrow does not, in fact, point in the counter-intuitive (from physicalist perspective) direction.
Consider that. A whole population afraid of each other. That's some kind of epidemic.
Is this a variety of FOMO?
(Fear of missing out).
I hear that's a big thing now.
And of course there's the employee version of that too. Where boss can talk to you 24-7. I don't know what the name for that is.
It's a kind of massive force for unsolitude.
The boss thing is as often about trying to avoid negative consequences/staying in control of an interaction.
If you’re always available to your boss, it’s harder for them to blame you for something not working (because you weren’t there to walk them through it at 2am).
If you respond to a negative social media post before everyone else reads it, you have a better chance in getting ahead of a shitstorm, etc.
And if you ask for an interpretation of one of those quotes they get evasive.
I'm a little confused as to why anyone is still using it, why people are still defending it, why we're all still talking about it and why I'm getting more (not less) random texts from friends / colleagues pressuring me to get back on to big social platforms.
What are the motivations for people to be daily activate users these days? Honestly just curious.
Why do you go on HN? That may be the beginning of a response since HN is a social platform.
People tend to view every other social media platform negatively except for the one they personally use, and they're prepared to staunchly defend their choice no matter what.
a fair amount of the customers would have to go to rehab to successfully leave.
that isn’t judgement. just facts.
Are we saying that all social media platforms are the same? Are there teams working on the hacker news platform trying to tweak the algorithms to drive addictive user engagement? Is the sorting algorithm not a matter of public record?
Correction to my original comment, I am asking about Instagram / Facebook / Twitter.
I know why I (maybe we) go on HN and its because Im bored and weak and Ive never felt manipulated by it or addicted to it or wanted to be on it for more than 15 minutes.
I have chores I should be doing.
Really? I actually encounter such individuals quite frequently, even if it's more subtly expressed through statements like, "Hey, did you catch that discussion on HN about X? You should check it out!"
> Are we implying that all social media platforms are indistinguishable?
In the sense that they all harbor pseudonymous individuals often baiting one another and getting embroiled in futile online conflicts aimed solely at boosting egos (even our current exchange is not exempt from this and I am guilty of it)?
Yes, I believe that's a valid assessment of virtually every social media platform.
Nobody is saying that.
> Are there teams working on the hacker news platform trying to tweak the algorithms to drive addictive user engagement?
Driving addictive user engagement has little to do with being a social media platform, see Netflix for example.
> Is the sorting algorithm not a matter of public record?
Again, that’s irrelevant. Twitter is more open-source than HN.
I find Instagram pretty valuable, and I've tried to create a habit of going on it every day or two for 15-20 minutes (I have to exert effort to do this). I have close friends now scattered around the world, and one of the best ways (per unit of time) for me to keep up with everyone is to check out their posts/stories, send some kind of DM commenting on their activities, and post a story of my own. Then when we do end up talking on the phone I feel like I know what they've been up to.
On a side note, HN is the place person matters more than anywhere I can think of except for YouTube. Is it possible you feel like that because it's closer to your person/ingroup?
Hacker News isn't an exception in the realm of social media platforms subject to such considerations. It appears that a significant number within this community possess a certain blind spot, often exerting substantial effort to delineate why their favored social media stands apart in some manner from the rest.
They are not virtual substitute, they are actual debates but through a medium different than voice. Of course, the experience is different, but that doesn’t make it "virtual", just like going to the cinema is not a "virtual substitute" to live theater.
- No infinite scroll
- No algorithmic content recommendations (ex: if you like X, you'll like Y)
- Highly targeted and moderated content
- The user is not the product (this is maybe the most important and has far reaching consequences)
It does use "popularity" and it's gamed - maybe not algorithmic content, but it's still promoting content.
It uses Social media game to upvote/downvote comments, etc. which impacts people's behaviors and group think.
There's such a wide variety of articles on here, and a pretty wide variety of people, too. I'm always suprised by how many non-programmer types are really around here.
The user's not the product? We'll there is targeting of Job ads and such on here for Y-Combinator companies. Probably other things that you just don't know about.
It's just a niche social media company that you happen to really align with. But so are certain Reddits for people, etc.
The one thing it doesn't have here is the distractions with other links (I'm
Then we can discuss which attributes are good or bad and which attributes interact with some kind of synergy or opposition.
This is a good example for this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37210298
> People tend to view every other social media platform negatively except for the one they personally use, and they're prepared to staunchly defend their choice no matter what.
Besides, nowadays pretty much any random content website (including newspapers) have infinite scroll, algorithmic content recommendation (btw, content recommendation is algorithmic by definition), untargeted content and ads (= the user is the product) while not always being a social media platform.
All the people in front of me, who were there with friends.. kept pulling out their phones. Tiktok, instagram.
Not to grab photos (which is at least interacting with the event sorta) but just.. scrolling.
Not talking to their friends, not enjoying the show, just.. social media.
It seems to be that the social media usage is some sort of crutch. Like meth or alcohol abuse, it's a bad solution to a problem.
Which other solution do you think of for someone who’s bored at an event, can’t go out, and doesn’t have anything more in their pocket than their phone? I don’t know what was the exact situation, but I would be wary about writing conclusions based on something I saw and don’t understand.
Obviously I didn't interview a stranger during a live show, but I suspect if I had asked them they would not have realized they had done it.
I see this behavior at bars and such too. Maybe next time I will just be rude for a bit and ask someone about it (though I would be surprised to get much of a real answer).
I keep using Hacker News, and follow several people on Mastodon or Twitter in read-only mode (don't have an account) to keep up on the news about web development.
By contrast, I have a Twitter account, but I only log in once every few weeks to check for messages.
I think there is a meaningful distinction between corporate social media and volunteer-run platforms like the Fediverse.
We’ve all been dropped into the most well-funded and technologically sophisticated casino of all time, built and maintained by armies of engineers and ML models that continuously optimize a ~infinite number of useless but highly varied casino games that are then made accessible to you 24/7 via a device in your pocket.
Also all your friends are in the casino and even the ones who hate it are actually having a pretty good time. They are more than happy to send you links/offer you a seat at their particular game of choice (such as these comments on HN).
Normal people have way too many everyday concerns to be (successfully) engaging in a 24/7 battle-for-attention against the most advanced attention-grabbing systems ever created.
It’s so ludicrously asymmetric it seems unfair to even ascribe “motivation” to users, but the motivation for the casino designers is pretty obvious.
The sincere belief that real town squares don't matter and that the real ones are only online now. This is brought on by propaganda in the media that Twitter, etc is where things 'happen' now and real life should be shunned at every instance.
'If it's not online, it doesn't exist' mentality.
On a more superficial level, it often creates a culture of comparison, where people judge themselves in relation to the lifestyles they see others apparently living. I use the word "apparently" because most of those lifestyles are complete fiction. None the less, that comparison can convince a person that they're "losing at life", which can lead to depression and all of the problems that come with it.
Why are people using it? To satisfy the innate human need for social connection.
I waste far more time on Hacker News, which has a similar dubious added value...
I like to keep up with my friends and see what they're up to, and we trade text messages through our Stories, etc. It's something I can do during a couple poop breaks in the day, so I don't really think of it as being "bad" for me. Maybe I'm the only one using it who isn't addicted?
But I completely agree, I'd prefer delete all my accounts.
You're confused because you're attempting to take an entire technology and then view it through a binary lens of "good" or "bad." This is impractical and not at all useful.
I'm sorry your use of social media is filled with such negativity. Other people are using to connect over their hobbies, to collaborate and to do work together, to do research, to put together broadcasts, to have this very conversation we're having right now.
Social media is exactly like all other human activities. It's a reflection of the sum total of humanity. It has both good and bad aspects to it. It is a part of us because we built it.
Social media can also be used for good reasons like you described, and that's how I use it too. I still think it's a net negative on society, though. It's just too good at taking away human interaction and doesn't provide enough in return, the way most people are using it.
Also, people just hate, HATE being bored. It has got to a point where boredom makes people anxious and upset.
It's useful so you stay connected with friends who don't necessarily live next to you. That's the motivation for at least monthly active, maybe daily if you've got a lot going on.
Also, when I was in college (2014-2018), Facebook was extra useful because it was the default way of inviting many people to an event, and there were also really active pages like "free and for sale." It was also a directory for classmates/housemates to contact you if they didn't already have your number, which was an occasional bacon-saver. Nowadays FB Messenger is still ubiquitous enough that at least you can invite ~20 people via a group chat without having to deal with SMS (cause one guy will always have Android).
Of course, you could easily use it to kill time scrolling through random stuff from strangers and possibly go overboard to the point of it being mentally impactful, same how daily video game addiction is different from playing an hour per week. I'm also not going to ignore how social media is more addictive than a lot of other things.
Coca Cola is also bad for you but most people will still drink one at a picnic.
If you drink coke everyday, that’s probably bad for you, but swearing off coke (or the govt banning coke) would be wtf on the other end of the spectrum.
Treat social media like coca cola
why isn't it that people who spend all day on social media get less sunlight and exercise therefore have more inflammation?
OK well they said this, sure:
> “For some people the relationship between social media use and inflammation may be a positive feedback loop, a cycle where more social media use leads to more inflammation, and more inflammation then leads to more social media use,” he says.
Was the hypothesis pre-registered, or did they just check the survey results against a bunch of markers to see what popped? While the conclusion certainly seems plausible, it's hard to imagine that something as diffuse and hard to measure as social media use could be reliably correlated to a specific biomarker...
> it's associated with social media to specifically interact with other users, like direct messaging and posting to people’s pages. Interestingly, inflammation did not lead people to use social media for other purposes—for example, entertainment purposes like watching funny video
[1] 2018, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5997866/
The problem is we're getting inflammation without earning it the old fashioned way: misadventure.
I still don't think anybody should be caring about social interactions when it is on a scale of 1 to 1 million. Where it is 1 person interacting with a million people. If you can't respond to me as an individual on a 1 to 1 scale then I simply do not care about your personal life.
I would recommend, instead of saying what people should do, is investigate why this parasocial relationship failure mode exists. Why do people not only end up in a losing proposition, but actively seek it out?
(I am quite sure there is no nice well contained single answer)
Still, I'm not going to care about who Taylor Swift's new boyfriend is unless she cares about the same for me. I'd rather be depressed and alone. Understandably not everyone is going to be so masochistic about it and will fill that gap however they can.
Why would that be an illusion? If he did read your response that counts as a social interaction. People who smile at each others in random social situations are not best buddies and that’s not a problem.
A lot of people have allowed social media to replace a normal social life, and so if a celebrity, or someone with a lot of social media clout follows you and interacts with you, it can be tempting to incorporate that connection into your social identity, and overvalue it.
To me, talking about health problems from “inflammation” sounded at first like a buzzword used to sell snake oil(much like “toxins”), but there seem to be real studies by real scientists discussing it.
Am I in a bubble, or why is it such a rarely mentioned topic elsewhere?
For reference, my recommendations came from my therapist when battling with depression (i.e. I wasn't really influenced by anything on HN).
Personally, I had not come across much inflammation talk until I had uveitis, which led to an identification of my ankylosing spondylitis (a form of spinal arthritis) which has also brings me enthesitis. All of these are inflammation based.
> Across three studies involving more than 1,800 participants, the findings — published in the journal Brain, Behavior and Immunity — indicate that increased levels of C-reactive protein (CRP), which the liver makes in response to inflammation in the body, can promote social media use among middle-aged adults and college students.
The overall level of inflammation is commonly determined by measuring the level of C-reactive protein in blood (it rises as a result of inflammation). It's commonly measured in blood tests.
There's a natural role for inflammation in the body, but it's also possible to have too much inflammation and experience negative outcomes as a result. A lot of recent research has been about the effects of inflammation signalling throughout the body, and much of the interest in antioxidants is because they may serve to reduce oxidative stress (which damages cells and also comes about as a result of inflammation).
"Chronic low-grade inflammatory process, on the other hand, plays a central role in the pathogenesis of a number of chronic diseases." - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4736408/
About a year after starting treatment, I noticed that during the final week of that eight-week cycle and continuing for a few days after treatment, my time on Twitter was much higher than during the other 6.5-ish weeks. I figured it was something psychological, and was able to get my doctor to increase the frequency of doses, which curbed my Twitter visits even more.
Recently, I had a bout where due to insurance nonsense, I was delayed in getting my injection. I was heavily on Twitter, not as a result of conscious choice, but just because I felt like it. I took my shot a couple weeks ago, and have barely logged into Twitter over the last week and a half.
Correlation does not imply causation, but using my own anecdata, I can't rule out this study and in fact have some personal evidence to confirm it. I find it interesting that someone attempted to test a hypothesis that I had informally stated a few years ago.
Then I read this:
"“It seems that inflammation not only increases social media use, but our results show preliminary evidence that it’s also associated with using social media to specifically interact with other users, like direct messaging and posting to people’s pages. Interestingly, inflammation did not lead people to use social media for other purposes—for example, entertainment purposes like watching funny videos,”
This is a really bold claim. What are the odds this is never replicated? I'd love to have a science gambling website, heck, I wonder if those odds could be added to confidence of a study.
The body knows what’s going on even if we’re not consciously aware of it, and a response like: “seek out other humans” when the body is inflamed makes sense from an evolutionary perspective in a social species.
Obviously this needs further study, but it makes some kind of logical sense at least.
At least assuming it's serious enough that you're stuck at home recovering - I'm realising as I write that my reading of it was quite biased by the image. Otherwise I would not think on reading 'inflammation' that it was particularly serious.
If they studied people with slightly swollen ankle or whatever, but walking about, at work, etc. and found a significant increase in their interest in socialising (social media just being the most easily measured form) that is pretty interesting.
If people are going out less, say because it's winter and they've been feeling unwell then we should expect CRP levels to be higher. We should probably also expect social media use while people are at home is probably going to be higher than when they're outside in the sun.
The idea that an inflammatory marker would actually drive people to seek out social media seems highly suspect to me. Do people with cancer develop an insatiable urge to use social media?
What a terrible PR release written by a non-scientist ("News Content Manager") for clicks and hype and zero critical thinking. The worst part is, they didn't even include a link to the full study in the press release.
It would be interesting to see if introverts have lower inflammation in general. Sociality could be a disease condition.
Maybe an inflamed spleen is the problem after all :-)
Here's a link to the paper (partially paywalled): https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S08891...
To put it another way: it's not that inflammation causes social media use, but that stress causes pleasure cravings.
Literal definition:
websites and applications that enable users to create and share content or to participate in social networking.
At the beginning yes, but nowadays that’s less the case. Twitter’s "For You" is the default view and it contains popular content that have little to do with who you’re following. TikTok/Instagram behave in the same way, showing you a mix of stuff from people you follow (but not everything) and from other sources. I’m not been on Facebook recently, but I believe they do the same.
like... the research team and everyone.