Using Twitter For Long Periods Can Cause Social Jet Lag, Finds New Study

People's social media usage, which largely mirrors daily work schedules and school calendars, is causing a huge amount of "social jet lag" and disrupting their biological clocks, reveals a report that analysed patterns of activity on the social media platform Twitter.

Social jet lag — a syndrome related to the mismatch betwixt the trunk'southward internal clock and the realities of our daily schedules — has previously been tied to health problems.

The researchers found that sustained periods of low Twitter activeness were correlated with sleep patterns, while the nightly lull in Twitter activeness shifted to afterwards times on weekends relative to weekdays — an indication of social jet lag.

The magnitude of this "Twitter social jet lag" varied seasonally and geographically. It was also correlated with average commuting schedules, including how many people practise shift piece of work, and affliction risk factors such as obesity.

"When we look at how social jet lag changes throughout the year, we find that the ascendant effect by far is the social calendar," said Michael Rust from The University of Chicago.

"It suggests that humans in modern societies have biological rhythms that are somewhat disconnected from the changing hours of sunlight throughout the year," he added.

Previously, researchers have measured social jet lag by surveying for differences in wake and sleep times between weekdays and weekends and by using specialized action monitors.

In the new study, reported in the journal Current Biology, the team collected readily available Twitter data for more than 1,500 U.s. counties throughout the 2012-2013 agenda years in 15-minute intervals.

Those geographically tagged tweets represented most 2,forty,000 people.

Most counties experienced the largest corporeality of Twitter social jet lag in Feb and the lowest in June or July. The testify is consequent with the notion that those patterns are driven primarily by social pressures, including shifting schoolhouse schedules, and less then by the direct seasonal result of altered solar day length.

"This is consistent with some studies that advise that the issue of the sun on our lives may exist getting weaker over time, perhaps equally we spend more fourth dimension indoors looking at our phones," Rust said.