By Jeffrey Kopman

2012-07-16-eh_logo.jpg


Nearly two-thirds (65 percent) of adult Internet users in the United States are Tweeting, posting status updates to Facebook, and communicating in all sorts of ways through social networking sites. With 60 percent of all Internet users also looking up health information, there should be an overabundance of diabetes Tweets, cancer comments and other health condition discussions. But that does not appear to be the reality, a Brigham Young University study finds.


The study, which used data from the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, found that less than 15 percent of all people are contributing information about their health on the Internet.


More from Everyday Health:

Psoriasis And Bullying: Breaking The Cycle

MRI For Low Back Problems Deemed 'Overused'

Multiple Sclerosis Research Gears Up For New Drugs


“One explanation might be related to the fact that the frequency of encounters with doctors, hospitals, or medical treatments is less often [than other experiences discussed online], so there may be less motivation to share experiences,” the study authors wrote. “It could also be due to users' feelings of incompetence relating to health topics, preferring to leave such discussions to trained professionals.”


Despite the low number of commenters, 30 to 40 percent of people surveyed reported turning to social networking specifically for, "health-related activities and use of online rankings or review of doctors, hospitals, and medical treatments.”


These trends are consistent throughout the Internet. The study used Amazon and TripAdvisor as examples of popular websites that feature online communities in which the "lurkers" -- members who read but don't participate in discussion -- greatly outnumber the contributors.


Researchers did find certain demographics in which commenting was more common. Women and younger people -- those under 50, especially ages 18-29 -- were more likely to discuss health over social networks. The study also found that these groups are, unsurprisingly, more likely to be active on social media in general.


Participants with higher incomes (who are more likely to have Internet access) and chronic disease (who have a need for health information) were far more likely to consult online rankings and reviews.


“Overall, there is a need for more research to understand the motivations and perceived benefits of contributing to health-related online forums, discussion boards, rating sites, and other social media venues,” the study authors concluded.


Future studies should consider areas of the Internet where people freely share and discuss their health history. The New York Times has a photo wall dedicated to cancer survivors, the American Diabetes Association has a strong Facebook presence, and Kevin Pho, also known as KevinMD, is constantly engaging with readers over various social platforms, earning him the reputation as “social media's leading physician voice.”


"Anti-Social Media: Health Enthusiasts Use The Internet, But Don't Comment" originally appeared on Everyday Health.


Also on HuffPost:






  • How Much We Know And Care About CPR, AEDs And Cardiac Arrest


    In two new studies, researchers from the University of Pennsylvania have found that people are tweeting about cardiac arrest, CPR and AEDS (automated external defibrillators), and that the microblogging platform has the potential to spread more awareness and spur more discussion on the topics. The research was presented this month at the annual <a href="http://scientificsessions.org/" target="_hplink">Scientific Sessions</a> meeting of the American Heart Association.

    In one of the studies, researchers sought to find out what exactly <a href="http://circ.ahajournals.org/cgi/content/meeting_abstract/124/21_MeetingAbstracts/A53?sid=6e736fad-18a8-4580-8b6d-225308e637e6" target="_hplink">people were asking about cardiac arrest and CPR </a>on Twitter. They analyzed 13,981 tweets and found that 21 percent of cardiac arrest-related questions had to do with symptoms, prognosis or risk factors of the condition, and 39 percent of the questions had to do with guidelines, certification and proper technique of CPR. Forty percent of the questions had to do with costs, safety and use of AEDs.

    In the other study, researchers looked at 15,324 tweets that contained some sort of <a href="http://circ.ahajournals.org/cgi/content/meeting_abstract/124/21_MeetingAbstracts/A52?sid=6e736fad-18a8-4580-8b6d-225308e637e6" target="_hplink">information about cardiac arrest</a>. Among their findings: 14 percent of those tweets were a direct reference to a cardiac arrest, while 5 percent were personal stories of cardiac arrest.

    Twenty-nine percent of the tweets had to do with using CPR or an AED and almost 60 percent of the tweets had to do with training or advocacy events for cardiac arrest, or news about a celebrity, athlete or young adult who had undergone cardiac arrest.




  • What We Think About The Flu


    A study published earlier this year in the journal <em>PLoS Computational Biology</em> shows that Twitter could be used to track <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/15/twitter-flu-shot-vaccinations_n_1010899.html" target="_hplink">flu shot vaccination rates</a> and attitudes.

    That research, conducted by Pennsylvania State researchers, involved analysis of 477,768 tweets between August 2009 and January 2010 that contained some sort of wordage about the H1N1 vaccine. The researcher was able to see what parts of the U.S. had the highest flu vaccination rates (based on the Twitter information), as well as what the general sentiments were toward the vaccine (New Englanders are most positive toward the vaccine, and are also the most likely to get vaccinated).

    Researchers also found that people were most negative toward the flu vaccine when it was first introduced, but then the reaction grew increasingly positive the more time passed.




  • What's Ailing Us -- And What We've Got Wrong About Our Health


    Recent research from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore shows that you can look on Twitter to get a <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/08/twitter-health_n_893466.html#s305983&title=Chris_Tung" target="_hplink">general feel for what ills people are experiencing</a>. They found in their study of 1.5 million health-related tweets that people are tweeting most about depression, cancer, obesity, allergies, insomnia and pain.

    Researchers also found that Twitter could be used to unearth some common health misconceptions we have.

    For example, "we found that some people tweeted that they were <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-14059745" target="_hplink">taking antibiotics for the flu</a>," Ph.D. student Michael J. Paul, one of the researchers for the project, told BBC News. "But antibiotics don't work on the flu, which is a virus, and this practice could contribute to the growing antibiotic resistance problems."




  • How We're Feeling


    Turns out, we're <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/29/twitter-mood-study_n_987569.html" target="_hplink">happiest early in the morning</a> and around midnight, according to a Twitter study conducted by Cornell University researchers.

    Researchers looked at half a billion tweets from more than 2 million Twitter users over a two-year period, and found that Twitter users' <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/29/twitter-mood-study_n_987569.html" target="_hplink">moods tend to start happy</a> early in the day and then get more negative as the day wears on, but then peak again in happiness at midnight.

    "Everybody we told about this has had the same reaction: 'That's obvious. People go to work, they get stressed -- of course their mood deteriorates,'" study researcher Michael Macy, Ph.D., a professor of sociology at Cornell, told HuffPost. "It turns out, that's not true."

    Because researchers found that the "daily mood swing" unearthed by Twitter was also the case during the weekends, they suggest that the changes in emotions might be affected by our sleep and circadian rhythms, and not just a bad mood brought on by the workday.




  • What We Understand (And Misunderstand) About Antibiotics


    What we <a href="http://www.ajicjournal.org/article/S0196-6553(10)00034-9/abstract" target="_hplink">think we know about antibiotics</a> is very easily spread through Twitter, according to a study published last year in <em>AJIC: American Journal of Infection Control</em>. However, the viral nature of Twitter has the ability to backfire if the antibiotic information isn't correct, researchers said.

    The study, conducted by Columbia University and MixedInk researchers, looked at 52,153 <a href="http://www.ajicjournal.org/article/S0196-6553(10)00034-9/abstract" target="_hplink">tweets that mentioned antibiotics</a> that were posted between March 13, 2009 and July 31, 2009. Researchers used word combinations like "extra + antibiotic(s)" and "leftover + antibiotic(s)" to narrow down the tweets further.

    They found that when it came to tweeting about antibiotics, people were most commonly talking about how many days they had left on an antibiotic regimen, or a desire that antibiotics help to kick an illness soon. The second most common topic was advice on antibiotics, and the third most common topic was side effects that come from taking antibiotics.

    Out of all the tweets, 700 were spreading some sort of misunderstanding about antibiotics, researchers found. For example: the word combination of "flu + antibiotic(s)" yielded 345 tweets, which in turn reached a total of 172,571 Twitter followers.




  • Related Video


    New Study Reveals Twitter Knows Your Mood