3. RELEVANCE OF SOCIAL MEDIA TO PUBLIC HEALTH
One domain where data has grown by massive proportions in recent years, and continues to grow, is social media. Social networks have seen an unprecedented growth in terms of users worldwide (e.g., as of 11th July 2014, Twitter has over 645,750,000 users and grows by an estimated 135,000 users every day, generating 9100 tweets per second). A large population of patients are actively involved in sharing and posting health related information in social media and particularly health social networks. A recent survey by the Pew Research Center’s survey has elucidated the relevance of social media in modern day public health, explaining that 34% of caregivers and 20% of patients read or watch someone else’s
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Recent advances in the data processing capabilities of machines, and machine learning and NLP research present the possibility of utilizing this massive data source for a variety of purposes, including public health. The fact that it is a direct source of users’ personal experiences makes it a lucrative resource. According to Harpaz et al, social media offers new opportunities for public health monitoring due to the availability of large amounts of data that is internet-based, patient-generated, unsolicited, and up-to-date. The use of social media for health-related and other tasks is, however, not without drawbacks and difficulties. The drawbacks found when utilizing he user generated content of social media may include issues with the credibility, recency, uniqueness, frequency, and salience of the data. Abbasi and Adjeroh demonstrate the potential downside of each of these five points and the importance of selecting the right media channel for social media analytics. For example, the authors discuss the potential low salience of Twitter because of the short text limits. In addition to these general problems related to the data generated within social media, there are difficulties and challenges posed by the processing and extraction of relevant information using NLP techniques. A frequently encountered challenge is due to the fact that the data is generated by consumers, and they tend to use misspellings, non-medical, descriptive terms to discuss health issues. This reduces a system’s ability to automatically extract mentions of relevant concepts and map them to suitable medical lexicons for further analysis. Traditional NLP methods that are used on longer texts have proven to be inadequate when applied to short texts, such as those found in Twitter. Thus, recent research tasks have focused on developing NLP tools specifically for data from social media. Some recent research has reported the imbalance
Moreno, Kelleher, and Pumper (2013) evaluated depression symptoms using social media website by developing depression codebook. This codebook can be used and expanded in future for different disorder cases such as anxiety. They also investigated suicide protocol in this paper (Moreno et al., 2013). De Choudhury, Counts, and Horvitz (2013) also used social media as measurement tool of depression in population. They used crowdsourcing technique to collect data and developed SVM classifier to predict depressive tweets with the accuracy of 73% and along with this geographical analysis of tweets were performed (De Choudhury, Counts, et al., 2013).
The State of Connecticut Board of Nursing does not have a position statement regarding the use of social media. The use of social media by nurses has steadily increased, and the clarity between what is personal information and what is work-related information has become more unclear. The American Nurses Association has made recommendations for the use of social media by nurses. The guidelines focus on the nurse legal and ethical obligation to protect the patient’s privacy (Spector & Kappel, 2012). With the increased use of technology and our dependence on the digital communications and involvement with social media there are greater threats for patient privacy violations.
However, the addictive nature of social media and its potential adverse effects on mental health and relationships raise concerns. Social media addiction can lead to social disconnection despite physical proximity, as individuals prioritize their online presence over face-to-face interactions. Nevertheless, social media platforms have empowered individuals to voice their opinions, mobilize communities, and raise awareness about social issues. It is essential to balance the benefits and risks of social media use to harness its full potential for positive societal
This paper analyzes the effects technology has on mental health. When overused, without face to face communication, one may experience anxiety and stress. A study from the American Phycology Association states that most teenagers use social media, teenagers are especially vulnerable to these effects because technology surrounds them in their day lives. When using social networking, or technology in general, while maintaining face to face socialization one can also sustain their health. How Social Media and Technology Affects Mental Health Add to your intro.
Using social media is an effective way to keep up with your family and friends, as touched on in “Could You Become a Mean Meme?” by Kristin Lewis and Jane Porter. It’s absolutely remarkable how well we can keep in contact with people today using the power of the internet. Of course, like anything good, using social media has its drawbacks, some of which are quite alarming to think about. However, there is no need to fret!
Twitter, a social media platform used by over 330 million people daily, has a limit of 280 characters per tweet (post) which limits what people can say without going to long and losing the attention of other users. Snapchat, a picture messaging app, limits videos or pictures that are sent to the span of ten seconds on the screen of the person who received it and then it disappears. People spend approximately eight hours a day on social media, which is half the time most people spend awake in a day. Going back to Maryanne Wolf who said, “We are not only what we read, [w]e are how we read,” social media shapes how we think. The short things we spend time reading change how we prefer to read, creating new connections in our minds with the expectation that everything we read will be less than 280 characters.
Background: Technological advances have made way for various avenues of communication such as text and multimedia messaging. Since its induction, social media has captivated users of all ages and has become a common staple in households across the United States and has had a significant impact on American culture.
More people nowadays are often resorting to social media as a way to communicate and cope about personal experiences of mental health such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Tumblr (Segreto 2018). Social media can help shape our understandings of the world around us, and at times, it can distort reality. Media platforms can positively impact our understandings of mental health and those who suffer from it, that include feeling a sense of community and sharing similar interests as others on a sensitive topic (Segreto 2018). In the article, “#timetotalk: Is social media helping people talk about mental health?” , many popular Youtubers, such as Rebecca Brown and Laura Lejeune, comment on their experiences of mental health on a new social media platform intended to feature videos and discussion boards relating to personal experiences of mental disorders.
References O'Keeffe, G.S., Clarke-Pearson, K. (2011). The Impact of Social Media on Children, Adolescents, and Families. The American Academy of Pediatrics. Retrieved October 16, 2015 from http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/127/4/800.short In this article, O'Keeffe, M.D. and Clarke-Pearson, M.D. weigh the positives and negatives of social media against each other.
Each year numerous amount of people become a social media user. The eMarketer website estimated that by 2019 “there will be around 2.77 billion social media users around the globe, up from 2.46 billion in 2017” (1). A great deal of those users utilizes social media to communicate their opinion to other users; as a matter of fact, these users might change their perspective a certain person might have on a topic. Social media is a marketing tool, therefore people utilize those social media platforms to pursue, and even manipulate the public to think in a certain way; hence, why social media can influence the public opinion.
On most of these sites, users may establish informal bio profiles, keep in touch with friends and strangers, do research, share thoughts, music, photos, and more. Social media can harm us if used wrong but, on the alternative side we can use it to keep up with news, help young children and teenagers also, offer help to a few people in need. Social media can be good without a doubt but there are disadvantages to it as well. Around 41% of Americans stay-up-to-date with social media. 78.5% of conventional media journalists surveyed utilized web-based social networking to check for breaking news.
In order to use social media in an effective and responsible manner, one must professionally voice their opinions by using various methods and prevent the amount of misinformation from being rapidly spread. In today’s society, social media is a powerful tool for one to express their opinion. From reviews of a certain product to interpreting a movie’s plot, social media gives the average individual the ability to voice their opinion in which can be heard by millions of users. It is important for one to do this, especially on a platform with a diverse audience, because it assists in informing and persuading others to read and consider viewpoints that differ from their own.
The world as we know it today is dynamic in nature, and technological advancements and the use of social media has facilitated the re-shaping of the way the society deals with things. In other words, we now thrive in a connected world. Social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Snap-chat practically drive everything in our society, and the usage continues to grow. For instance, employers now look to get some insight on candidates they are trying to recruit by viewing their social media pages. Because the world is so connected in terms of communication, and the availability of information at our fingertips, many issues have surrounded employers’ use of information posted by job applicants on their social networking sites as the basis for hiring or hiring them.
Children’s lives have quickly shifted onto the Internet in the twenty-first century. Even the President of the United States has nearly forty thousand Twitter and Instagram posts. Social networks are websites that allow users to interact over the Internet. There are 600 million Facebook users across the globe (Rosenwald 2). 300 million visit Twitter every month (Maney 3).
Chapter 1 Background of the Study Introduction In the contemporary world, most people use social media for news, entertainment, to seek information and to be updated every day. Nowadays, the use of social media has greatly changed how people interact with other people. Today, most people only consider the benefits that the social media brought to the people without thinking about the possible negative implications of using it.