Hacker News Reader

Comment by harles | Hacker News Reader

> 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.

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.

View on HN

> I find press releases like this both not useful and overall bad for the scientific community.

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.

Is it possible that the process of getting access to trustworthy and complete datasets is more streamlined with these American companies than it is for TikTok? It's hard to imagine the researchers ignored TikTok purely as an oversight, although it's certainly possible.

They had students use screen tracking software to log what apps they were using. The researchers ignored TikTok because it wasn't included in some pre-existing methodology they were following.

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.

That's fair. It sounds like they wanted to iterate on something that's been established on a preliminary basis, which makes the choice to stay within the parameters of of the original study likely the correct one. We have to be choosy about which variables we tweak when building upon previous works, otherwise people will correctly point out ambiguities if not outright flaws in reasoning when the authors analyze current results in the context of the previous study (the whole point of iterating).

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.

I slightly misinterpreted the following from the article:

> 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.

Two of the researchers datasets were from 2012-2016 and 2018-2019, I can't find the full text of the third study with 171 participants. Likely pre-tiktok.

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.

"Study 3" was September 2021 - May 2022:

> 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).

Most of this team looks like they're more interested in policy than pharmaceuticals.

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

I don't think you have to search for some nefarious pharma connection - to me the simpler explanation is that "social media is bad" is an opinion that is very much in the zeitgeist right now, so any "scientific" findings that supports this belief will generate lots of press attention, which is beneficial to the researchers careers and institutions.

> University media offices

Relevant comic: https://phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1174

> 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 :)

n=1 anecdotal reflection here. I've had have chronic low grade inflammation from two different disorders for a very long time, including a GI disorder that definitely triggers my liver to work overtime (experienced in the form of general soreness, occasional stabs of pain in liver area and indications of impaired bile production and/or bile acid malabsorption, or BAM, during my longer flare-ups). So CRP is probably on the menu for me on a frequent basis.

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).

Hey, can I ask what GI disorder is giving you BAM? I have Crohn's and suspect that this latest flare is giving me bile issues on top of everything else (was literally digging into the literature about it this morning, so your comment was serendipitous, lol) but I'm not sure if it's more closely correlated with non-IBD disorders than it is with Crohn's and the like.

I've got SIBO and dysbiosis in my large intestines as well. Also possible mast cell activation syndrome, pending one more test to complete the current diagnostic criteria. Note: use both bile acid malabsorption and bile acid diarrhea (BAM/BAD) as search terms. It gets referred to as either one depending on the source.

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)!

This is an amazing response, thank you so much! I appreciate the wealth of links here.

Best of luck in your own GI journey!

You described me, for the past 50 years following an incident.

I... just want to say, it's probably not the place, but... I hear and see your pain, I have a similar condition, and I hope you'll (we'll) find something to feel better and enjoy the long slow times.

Not scientific, but funny enough I was just thinking of my social media use last night, and I came to the realization that I use it as a way to distract from unpleasant feelings and as a pain killer. If I'm hungover, or sick, or worried about work, my social media usage goes up significantly.

Don't know if this is true for everyone but the study's findings match my personal experience.

It'd be nice if they included a link or even the title of the paper being referenced here to see the methods. It's hard for me to imagine how causation could even be investigated for this. You'd need to randomly induce inflammation on purpose to study participants, which seems like something you couldn't get through an IRB, nor would anybody consent to it if you could.

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.

Found the paper: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S08891...

Most people won't be able to access the paper via that link.

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.

My link was the sciencedirect link, and I could read it immediately. What do you mean?

I mean that the full article is paywalled for me at that link.

Right, came here to ask if anyone had read the paper and looked at the correlation / causation methodology.

Because another obvious hypothesis is that social media causes some kind of fight-or-flight response in people that triggers inflammation.

I think it’s a pretty basic/uninteresting relation; for a subset of users, being inflamed causes them to be uncomfortable which causes them to post about being uncomfortable, probably sometimes talking about inflammation itself (for a super meta example, see posts in this thread).

Or being uncomfortable causes them to want to seek comfort (social?), but lacking adaptive outlets they instead do maladaptive ones like social media.

Like gambling to thrill seek because of stress from overdue bills.

imo: inflammatory conditions often lead to fatigue and discomfort which makes physical activities less appealing and sedentary activities more appealing. Social media is already very accessible and highly 'rewarding' so the incentive to use it is very strong.

(super meta: I am tired and uncomfortable and am spending stupid amounts of time reading reddit/HN)

Here's what they say in the abstract:

> 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.

I thought the same thing on correlation/causation. However, the most SM active person I know also has lupus so it checks out /s

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.

A more concerning relationship would be social media use induces inflammation / inflammatory responses. Perhaps the study controlled for the inverse causation, but maybe not.

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.

I personally use social media much more often when my CRP is high.

How do you monitor it continuously?

Yeah I see chronic inflammation as a sign someone isn't particularly disciplined when it comes to diet or exercise.

There's likely some correlation with being undisciplined with your physical health and being undisciplined when it comes to mindlessly consuming social media.

Chronic inflammation is the hallmark of dozens (if not hundreds) of autoimmune disorders. Discipline has nothing to do with it.

What? Body inflammation in the modern world is of course impacted by diet and exercise.

Sure, diet and exercise absolutely have an impact (and so do stress, and your environment, and your genes), but you specifically claimed that "chronic inflammation [is] a sign someone isn't particularly disciplined when it comes to diet or exercise," but more often chronic inflammation is a sign of an unchecked autoimmune condition.

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...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com