What tweets say about our health

Using geotagged tweets, researchers at the Universities of Utah and Washington were able to build a map of the U.S. by neighbourhood, with indicators of how happy and active people in that neighbourhood are and what their diets are like.

“Overall I think the patterns make sense, more fast food restaurants in the area are correlated with more fast food mentions, but I was surprised that coffee was so highly ranked,” said lead author Quynh C. Nguyen of the University of Utah College of Health in Salt Lake City.

At the state level, more positive mentions of physical activity and healthy foods, as well as happiness, were associated with lower all-cause mortality and the prevalence of chronic conditions like obesity and diabetes, according to the report in the Journal of Medical Internet Research Public Health and Surveillance.

“We don’t think the data can be taken as 100 percent a food diary; what we can see is what people are willing to share,” she said. People are very willing to share about coffee, in particular, which may be due to its “social capital,” she noted.