Private Sleep? Twitter's usage data can map how much your sleep is wasted

IIt's hard to imagine the scientific benefits of a collection of tweets sent between 4 and 6 am, but a team of scientists from the University of Chicago found one. They use the morning tweets sent by thousands of Americans to explain why our society fights against sleep loss, as well as places in the country where it may be easier to fight its effects.

In an article published Thursday in Cell, Michael Rust, Ph.D., an associate professor of molecular genetics and cell biology at the University of Chicago, and his colleagues turned to anonymized data on Twitter to illuminate the country's watch patterns. He says reverse that they were looking for places where our internal "biological clock" does not fit the demands of modern society in planning. Although it is known that this disparity between biological and societal clocks worries astronauts participating in NASA missions, it also strikes near their home. Here, it is sometimes called "social jet lag" and is associated with poor health outcomes, including depression and cardiovascular disease.

"So we know that we have an internal biological clock. If you do not have to set an alarm clock, it will give the body the signal to wake up and go to bed at certain times, "says Rust. "It is now possible for people to work schedules that conflict with their internal rhythms."

In his study, Rust used Twitter data to build these two calendars by analyzing people's tweet patterns (called "tweetograms") on weekdays and weekends.

Tweets are not an ideal way to calculate an internal clock, but Rust is not the first to turn to Twitter to collect data on human activity. He explains that the use of social media data to explain sleep patterns is based on the idea that, on the one hand, this can solve the problem of asking people to report their own hours of sleep, which is not always reliable. And secondly, it's a standby record – even if it only takes a few moments, you have to write 240 characters.

His team's research revealed a gap of about 75 minutes between the clocks of most Americans and clocks determined by their schedule – almost as if we lived in different time zones of ourselves. As an example of the team's process, the document illustrates data from four counties in New York, California, Louisiana, and Minnesota, where tweet frequencies follow a similar curve, culminating at around noon and midnight, then plunging in a "hollow", usually early in the morning. To arrive at the final calculation, they applied this logic to 1,500 American counties.

According to the tweetograms, the west coast tended to have the the longest periods of time that people have not tweeted – 5.5 hours in Orange Country, California, for example. This may indicate that people who live there adhere to a slightly normal sleep schedule. The counties on the east coast, however, did not meet deadlines. The county of Suffolk, New York, which the newspaper says is a representative example, had only 4.4 hours of comfort. In Wayne County, Minnesota, the tweet break was only 3.6 hours. The team also noted that in countries with low tweet activity, there was a correlation with competing data from the CDC. Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System: Residents of these locations reported adequate sleep levels.

To go a step further, Rust used this analysis as a basis for calculating the number of minutes of social time difference that residents of these counties probably have experienced, as evidenced by their tweeting habits late at night. He did this by comparing the troughs on the weekends (when most people tend to choose their own waking hours, a rough approximation of what a biological clock might be) and the days of the week.

This difference is what approximated the fact that most Americans experience 75 minutes of social jet lag. But again, the west coast tends to show a less severe trend: Pacific Time Zone counties have an average of 56 minutes of social time difference, compared to the Eastern and Central Time Zone counties. , where locals had 77 minutes of social time difference. on average. Rust does not know why this happens, but he can guess:

"I am tempted to think that, given the West Coast's way of life and environment, people are more exposed to daylight, allowing clocks to better align with the sun," he says. -t it. "I do not know if this is really true, but we know that by far, bright light from the sun is a very important clue to your internal rhythm," he adds.

So, in short, he can assume that it is not necessarily that the inhabitants of the western coasts huge lifestyle changes to help them realign their internal clocks to the demands of modern life. Instead, it seems that the environment can help offset the balance that can constantly harm the rest of the population.