James Loy:

This is Reframe. The podcast from the College of Education, Health and Society on the campus of Miami University in Oxford, Ohio.

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Social media gets attention for a lot these days. It can be an invaluable way to keep in touch with friends and feel connected with the world. But it can also tell us a lot about ourselves, influence our behaviors, even shape our reality -- sometimes in dangerous and unhealthy ways -- and it’s everywhere.

Take twitter. Today, there are about 500 million new tweets generated every day. And a surprising number of those, about 10 million per day, are about alcohol, alcohol consumption, or alcohol-related messages.

And that is generating a near endless well of data for public health and wellness researchers.

Can you introduce yourself, and tell us who you are.

Rose Marie Ward:

Sure. I’m Rose Marie Ward. I’m the associate dean of the graduate school, and a full professor in kinesiology, nutrition, and health. 

James Loy:

And what you study here at Miami?

Rose Marie Ward:

Broadly speaking, I study the impact of using social media, and what you put on social media, with regards to how much you consume different substances from alcohol to marijuana.

James Loy:

Some of Dr. Ward’s research explores the links between college students, their use of twitter, and alcohol-induced blackouts among college students. She’s also done similar research around the COVID-19 pandemic and blackout drinking during quarantine. And even what social media can tell us about the rise in high-risk behaviors around other potentially stressful events, like politics for example.

Rose Marie Ward:

I have data on people drinking around the most recent election.

James Loy:

Did that spike as well? Did it spike during the election?

Rose Marie Ward:

Guess when it spiked. On the election, during, or after? When would you guess that it spiked?

James Loy:

We will answer that question, as well as what happens when social media makes it seems like “every one’s doing it,” and what you can do about it, especially if you have high school or college-age students who are active on social media.

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For Dr. Rose Maire Ward, and her colleagues, Twitter became an ideal way to study alcohol-related content, and its relationship to high risk behaviors after the understood a few key features of the platform.

First, not only are there a mind-bending amount of daily tweets generated, in the U.S. tweets have been made public. You can make them private, but most are not. In contrast to other platforms, like Facebook or Instagram, where content usually shared between friends, twitter is far more openly available. The data is right there. That’s one reason

Rose Marie Ward:

The next reason why I think Twitter is so powerful is because people think they post it, and then it's gone. Because it's not the same type of feed that we get from Facebook, where it's cultivated and … I don't get on Facebook very often. So I get on and it's like everybody just had a baby, everybody's getting married, and somebody had some major crisis in their life. But in Twitter, it's like a feed that just keeps replacing. And so people forget. They like post these crazy things about drinking or smoking marijuana, and then they forget about it. Because it's like way down in the feed.

James Loy:

So as new tweet roll in, old tweets get pushed outta sight, and out of mind. This makes Twitter a naturalistic surveillance tool, which is ideal for researchers, who wish to avoid unintentionally influencing their study, and it can be a useful way for schools and parents to monitor student behaviors – like drinking and others – and we’ll talk more about that in a bit …

Twitter also offers what’s called an “ecologically valid examination.” Because blackouts, by definition, occur when too much alcohol blocks the brain from making long-term memories, which can lead to an obvious problem when asking someone to recall one.

Rose Marie Ward:

Blackouts, the only way we can find out about them, is after the drinking event. And you have to think about how we're talking about, like, losing memories. So how can we ask somebody about their memories losing memory? And tweeting, and other social media, gives us that look. Because they're doing that while they're drinking. And so, then we get this event… event level information. And we don't have to just count on the fact that what they did after, what they say afterwards, is actually them realizing, “Oh, I didn't have a memory of that.”

James Loy:

So using twitter gets around this too. And after controlling for other meanings of the phrase blackout -- like those related to a power outage for instance -- and through a combination of machine learning, hand-coding, and help from an undergraduate research lab, Dr. Ward and her colleagues have already analyzed millions of tweets.

And … Dr. Ward, you have already studied this from several different angles. And first I want to ask about your line of research that does focus on college-students specifically, and the alcohol related blackout content -- both those who post it and those who just consume it – what are some of the key findings that you found in this research?

Rose Marie Ward:

What we find is the students that are creating the content … we have about 50% of students that just lurk, like me, like other researchers, we just lurk online and watch the trends go on. But about 50% of our drinkers are just watching. So they're consuming it, and being impacted by it.

But then the other 50%, especially the heavy drinkers, they're more likely to create the content. So in other words, they're setting the stage. They're putting those messages out there. And they are, in essence, informing everybody of like, “Hey, I’m drinking, and this is how I drink, and this is when I drink, and this is how much I drink.” And all of that has a really important picture of what we're setting up as “this is the norm.”

And so, it adds to the impact of what they're doing.

And what I’m finding is that people see it in their feed, if they're monitoring their feed, and so, then they feel left out. They feel like everybody else is partying. And that's the power of social media. What we're seeing is that setting of the context. The setting it up of, like, everybody else is doing it. Or everybody's doing it this way. Or I have to go on social media to tell you what I’m doing, so that that's the only way to celebrate, or gripe.

But that… I mean, to me, across our studies, what we're seeing is just that power of going beyond your friend group. And so, you're not just getting influenced by the people in your high school, you're getting influenced by potentially anybody over the world that you follow, in terms of these norms. And so, that context is so powerful. You've crafted this context and this experience of the world, based on what you see in these platforms.

James Loy:

And I know you primary use Twitter, but you also say this can apply to other platforms like Snapchat and TikTok these days. And can you talk a bit about how just consuming this content on these kinds of social media platforms … how does that translate to intentions to drink heavily or to blackout, or just more actual drinking in general?

Rose Marie Ward:

So one of our studies is we broke up the tweets to… that we could tell were before they are drinking, or after their drinking. And in the ones that we saw that was before their drinking, people did talk about that context of, “I want to go out and get smashed. I want to go out and get blacked out drunk.” When they said blackout drunk, that meant really, really, really drunk. And so, we see this power of, again, committing to it…. it's funny because in health behavior change literature, we say when you publicly commit to something, you're more likely to do it.

We normally mean that with like exercise, or good diet. We're seeing the exact same thing with alcohol. And so, I have a study that shows that their intention to drink is strongly related to the actual drinking behavior, and to actually blacking out. And that's pretty powerful, that, again, not only are you making that intention, and that leads to your own drinking. But then you have that potential of setting up that stage for other people who are consuming what you're putting in that social media feed.

James Loy:

So not only are those who post about drinking more likely to then go out an actually do it, evidence also shows even just viewing the alcohol-related content of others can influence college students to drink more themselves by falsely altering their internalized perceptions of drinking norms. And that is a key theme that runs throughout a lot of Dr. Ward’s research.

That is, people tend overestimate how much and how often their peers are using alcohol, which leads more students to view high-risk behaviors as just normal and completely acceptable.

So Dr. Ward, when we think about this type of content being so regularly presented on social media, is it fundamentally different than the more traditional types of media, like TV or movies for example, that have for years also presented inaccurate or unrealistic social norms around heavy drinking, especially on places like college campuses.

Rose Marie Ward:

I think that the power of advertising, and the power of the media, so like advertising and movie projections of these behaviors, definitely influence behavior. But what's interesting is, even now, like you can watch TV and if someone's smoking now they'll put a little thing at the top saying it's for mature audiences only. And so we flag it.

But social media, you craft that environment. You choose who to follow. You choose who to read. You somehow feel familiar to them. Like, there's a buzz to that. There's a buzz to seeing new things into your feed. And so, in contrast … the advertisement definitely influenced the behavior. The TV definitely influenced the behavior. But we monitor that now. We've had landmark lawsuits and everything to cut all that down, and to label it.

But how do you label when your kid's friend posts something about drinking? Like, you can't put parental controls or federal guidelines on limiting certain age groups exposure to this.

But it's also these false narratives of everybody's doing it. And that's really powerful. Because we get this dilemma how do you control that information? How do you restrict that from certain people consuming that who are maybe more impressionable? You can't right now. It's just not set up that way.

And social media is inherently set up for the more popular things, things that are getting more attention, to spread faster. Not just viral. But in your feed, you are more likely to get more things pulled in that have had more likes by certain people in your network, and that, again, creates this perception that, well, everybody’s doing it. So the normalizing of the behaviors that we see research-wise is the more people think others approve, or the more they think others are doing it, the more they're going to go out and drink as well.  

James Loy:

And it’s not just college students or teenagers who are easily influenced by this kind of content. Adults and working professionals are not immune either.

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Dr. Ward, you’ve also done similar research with a more recent study around alcohol influenced blackout tweets and the COVID 19 pandemic. And part of what I think is interesting about this study is that it shows how this phenomena is not limited to younger adults or college students  -- or those we may think of as being more impressionable. Can you explain what you found in this study as well?

Rose Marie Ward:

Sure. What's interesting to me is we did data right around when the pandemic was just starting to have some social isolation, and some breakdown. So from March to April of 2020. That's when everybody was going into social isolation, that the bars were closing. So to get access to alcohol meant drinking at home. Meant drinking maybe via zoom. But not with other people around. Not physically around. So you didn't have that social pressure of I’m in a bar and there's 500 other people, or …. and we found the same level of alcohol tweets, and the same level of blackout tweets, so the more risky alcohol behavior, during that period.

And that was a little bit disturbing. Because during a time of COVID, when we're told to make safer choices in general about our health, people are drinking to cope. And it's adults in general in the U.S. saying, “Yep. I’m gonna just order some alcohol online, and I’m going to drink at home, and I’m going to drink to risky levels, and then talk about it online.”

James Loy:

And I’m am not that active on social media at all, but I remember, my wife and I talked about feeling that sense as well – just among peers and neighbors and just people in your life – that, “Oh, it’s a crazy time. It’s a stressful time, so why not?” There was this sense of almost permission just hanging about in the social ether of, “Well, they’re doing it, so I’m going to do it too. And, you know what? I’ve earned it because it’s stressful.” And I can image that being even more amplified if you are on social media more.

Rose Marie Ward:

I would 100% agree with that. I mean, with the stay home order, we saw more people across different social media platforms talking about drinking their dinner, which, again, drinking your dinner?! What?

We saw the rise in quarantieenies. So going on zoom and drinking alcohol with your friends, but also, yes, the big thing you just said there was: “it's a bad time.”

There's so much going on, it's people drinking to cope. And in the alcohol field, we consider that really dangerous. Because the people who are drinking to cope are also more likely to have drinking problems. When people say they drink to celebrate, that is related to higher alcohol consumption, but they have not as many problems as the people that say, “I’m drinking the cope. Because I have so much anxiety. I have so much stress. That I can't do it.”

So watching that and monitoring that over the last year, it's been fascinating because it's so scary that they are alone. Like, we're in isolation. We've shut things down, and it's still going on.

James Loy:

And in that research you also mentioned other a past events like the 2003 SARS outbreak and 9-11that also led to increases in higher drinking rates, and even higher binge drinking years down the line, which may forecast what we may be dealing with in the future, after this most recent COVID quarantine and pandemic.  

And I imagine this ability that social media has to normalize drinking as a way to cope can apply to many other kinds of scenarios or stressful events. Is that something you’ve looked into as well, or plan to do in the future?

Rose Marie Ward:

Yes. Goodness. I could keep talking about my research …. there's so much other stuff. Are you kidding? Like, people drink all the time! And it's all over social media!

James Loy:

Right

Rose Marie Ward:

I have data on people drinking around the most recent election.

James Loy:

Did that spike as well? Did it spike during the election?

Rose Marie Ward:

Guess when it spiked. On the election, during, or after? When would you guess that it spiked?

James Loy:

Considering all the hand wringing before, I would guess before.

Rose Marie Ward:

That's a good guess. But it actually was after. So the Saturday … the election was on Tuesday. The Saturday after it spiked when Biden was announced.

James Loy:

What's the reason behind that you think? Like, a lot of anxiety causes people to drink. So that's why I would say before. But afterwards, I guess half the country probably was drinking to console themselves. Another half might be for celebratory reasons.

Rose Marie Ward:

Exactly. So in 2016, people drank on the day of election. In 2020, we drank the day Biden was announced for drinking to cope reasons, or drinking to celebrate

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James Loy:

So with this insight that you have been able to get from using social media and Twitter. I want to ask specifically about what ultimately would be the ideal endgame that you hope would be the result of these research findings? What kind of interventions could they lead to? What would those interventions maybe look like? And how would that would unfold? What would this mean for public health professionals, for parents, and even for schools?

Rose Marie Ward:

So one of my hopes, and we've written a grant for this … my hope is that we can start using these as … for the people who are generating the alcohol related content, and the cannabis related content, we know that is the higher levels of use with them. So the first thing is we want to be able to flag people, who may post this stuff and get some ... like, we get ads all the time. You search for a pair of shoes, and all of a sudden your ads are about that pair of shoes. Why can't we do the same thing with health behaviors? Why can't you post something, or search for something, and then all of a sudden you're getting feedback about how to change your behavior? So that we're more positive about it. So the messaging could be more powerful.

And I feel like that's what is an opportunity here is: as we make transitions, as we learn about how social media works, or doesn't work, can we start giving people messages so that they are making better choices about things?

So at least instead of seeing to buy that pair of shoes, they're seeing, “You mentioned blacking out. Have you considered reaching out to this service?”

Another broader implication of this is: we have limited control on how children, and other impressionable people, experience this environment. I mean, you could limit who your kid is listening to or whatever, but they are going to see it in their feed. We see it in our feed.

It's how to counter that. And it's teaching our schools, and our teachers, and our parents, how to have conversations about social media, and how what they see is not necessarily reality. That they may think that lots of their friends are using substances, and using substances in this way, when in actuality they're not. And so, there's something called personalized normative feedback – so we can adjust their norms. So it’s: you think this is how much people drink. This is how much you drink. In actuality, you're drinking a lot more than what the norm really is.

And so, it's adjusting their expectations. It's adjusting of what they think is going on in the environment. And that has a very powerful effect of their choices in the future.

In terms of the schools, it's interesting to me how schools seem to be responsible for what kids are doing outside of the school day, outside school limits and everything. And so, there is increasingly -- for college and high schools -- responsibility for schools to monitor, or get in trouble, for what one of their students do on social media. So you need to have a conversation. Again, you need to talk about what is acceptable? What is it unacceptable? What is a real norm? What is just a perceived norm? And, again, thinking about how that interplays with stuff that they're doing in the classroom.

We know that in psychology that you're not gonna remember something until you tie it to your own personal experience. And so, it's finding ways to connect up with the students today about what's going online. Because that feels very personal. It's very easy for them to store that memory, and how do you get that message that most people are not drinking. Most people are not having sex. Most people are not smoking marijuana. How do you get that to tie more into their experiences?

James Loy:

One of the other things you bring up is the use of Twitter as a naturalistic surveillance tool.  Could you quickly talk about that a bit? What does that mean. And then I want to know if schools ... maybe they don't have a problem with people posting too much about drinking. But can it also be translated to other issues that they might want to monitor like bullying or gun violence or mental health issues and things like that?

Rose Marie Ward:

That's a perfect segue. It's naturalistic because, again, people feel like it's … for a lot of the tools, like Snapchat and Twitter, is that they put it up there, and then it disappears. So they don't really monitor or edit or remove it down. Versus like Instagram.

So depending on what behaviors we're talking about, certain platforms are more likely to show you an unfiltered glimpse of what the students are doing, and I would keep that more like TicTok or snapchat -- and most purposes twitter -- but for the younger generation, that's not going to be as popular as Snapchat.

And so, that can help them look at bullying. But it can also look at sexual violence. It can also look at attitudes towards women. It can also give them insight into cheating that's going on in their classroom.

But it's an unfiltered -- because they think that it gets on there and then it disappears -- look at what our students are thinking about. And so, anything that you think is a primary concern in our schools, this would be the place to start trying to see: what are my students really thinking about?

James Loy:

Any advice on how to do that? Like, practically speaking? Because with 500 million tweets per day generated, that’s a lot, right? And they might not have the capacity to do machine learning to code them. So how might a school go about doing that on a more localized level?

Rose Marie Ward:

On a more localized level, Twitter is very easy because it's public. And so, you can either follow the students on twitter, and you can see it as long as they don't block you from it. Snapchat is a little bit harder because you have to be friends and they'd have to accept your friend request to see it.

So on a practical level, it's taking this stuff real. It's not necessarily following and being actively on there. But every school has things that are going on online. It's being mindful when these things are brought up, and looking at the evidence, and then knowing that's only the tip of the iceberg -- that if you're seeing one or two posts about X, there's probably several hundred more out there that you're not seeing.

James Loy:

Rose Marie Ward is the associate dean of the graduate school, and a full professor in kinesiology, nutrition, and health. And this is the Reframe Podcast, thank you for listening. If you know anyone who may find this episode interesting and/or helpful, please share it. We have many more episodes available wherever podcasts are found.