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Written By: Editorial Team | Published : June 13, 2015 2:37 PM IST
Social media is a part of every aspect of our lives these days and its popularity has made it ideal for scientific research. The latest example of this is analysing sleep disorders based on the user s Twitter data.
In a first of its kind study, scientists at the Boston Children s Hospital and Merck have developed a unique digital phenotype which analyses Twitter data to find out if the user is suffering from sleep disorders like insomnia. This study is the first to look at the relationship between the use of social media and sleep issues based on the sentiments expressed in the tweets. This could also give preliminary hints about patients with sleep disorders who may be at a greater risk of other psychological issues.
John Brownstein from the Boston Children's Hospital said that they wanted to see if they could use new forms of online data, such as Twitter to characterise individual suffering from sleep disorders and possibly uncover new cases of the same.
How was the study carried out?
Data from 896 active twitter users was used to create a virtual cohort for this study. Users whose tweets contained sleep-related words or hashtags or names of common sleep aids or medications were selected. This data was then compared to another cohort of 934 users whose tweets did not contain such terms. The time of day and average sentiment -- positive, neutral, negative -- of each user's tweets were also assessed.
What did the results indicate?
The data suggested that users who are less active on Twitter on an average, but tweeting more during traditional sleeping hours are at a high risk of suffering from sleep disorders. Furthermore, these people with increased negative sentiment could be at an increased risk for psychosocial issues.
Chronic sleep disorders not only impact productivity, accidents and risky behaviour but also contribute to diabetes, cardiovascular disease and depression. The research appeared in the Journal of Medical Internet Research.
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With inputs from IANS
Image Source: Getty Images
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