Study: Social Media Content May Hold Key To Important Health Info
By Melony Roy
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) - Language used in everyday social media posts may have a strong connection to an individual's overhaul health, according to new research from Penn, which previously only looked at heart health.
"We're now interested in building a bank of language that could broaden our understanding of health and health behaviors," says Dr. Raina Merchant -- senior author of a Penn study that links social media and medical record data.
More than 1,000 participants agreed to share their social media and medical data over seven months.
"We typically think about diagnosing a disease based on someone symptoms or a discussion they may have had with a physician," says Dr. Merchant. "We were really interested in what about the info they write down what can we learn from that language to help us learn better understand more about disease and disease progression."
The study analyzed content from as far back as 2009. The data consisted of nearly 1.4 million Facebook posts and tweets, comprising over 12 million words.
"What we're looking to do is build the algorithm that will allow us to understand what the patterns we see in the social media info that people post," says Dr. Merchant, "and eventually give that information back so that we can tell you 'did you realize that you were posting more about a part health condition than others, or did you realize that things you are posting are similar to others who may have certain health conditions'?"
She says this is the first of many studies to come examining the study between health and social media.
The study was funded through an innovation grant.
