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Reddit language indicates changes associated with diet, physical activity, substance use, and smoking during COVID-19

COVID-19 has adversely impacted the health behaviors of billions of people across the globe, modifying their former trends in health and lifestyle. In this paper, we compare the psychosocial language markers associated with diet, physical activity, substance use, and smoking before and after the ons...

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Autores principales: Wanchoo, Karan, Abrams, Matthew, Merchant, Raina M., Ungar, Lyle, Guntuku, Sharath Chandra
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9897548/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36735708
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0280337
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author Wanchoo, Karan
Abrams, Matthew
Merchant, Raina M.
Ungar, Lyle
Guntuku, Sharath Chandra
author_facet Wanchoo, Karan
Abrams, Matthew
Merchant, Raina M.
Ungar, Lyle
Guntuku, Sharath Chandra
author_sort Wanchoo, Karan
collection PubMed
description COVID-19 has adversely impacted the health behaviors of billions of people across the globe, modifying their former trends in health and lifestyle. In this paper, we compare the psychosocial language markers associated with diet, physical activity, substance use, and smoking before and after the onset of COVID-19 pandemic. We leverage the popular social media platform Reddit to analyze 1 million posts between January 6, 2019, to January 5, 2021, from 22 different communities (i.e., subreddits) that belong to four broader groups—diet, physical activity, substance use, and smoking. We identified that before the COVID-19 pandemic, posts involved sharing information about vacation, international travel, work, family, consumption of illicit substances, vaping, and alcohol, whereas during the pandemic, posts contained emotional content associated with quarantine, withdrawal symptoms, anxiety, attempts to quit smoking, cravings, weight loss, and physical fitness. Prevalent topic analysis showed that the pandemic was associated with discussions about nutrition, physical fitness, and outdoor activities such as backpacking and biking, suggesting users’ focus shifted toward their physical health during the pandemic. Starting from the week of March 23, 2020, when several stay-at-home policies were enacted, users wrote more about coping with stress and anxiety, alcohol misuse and abuse, and harm-reduction strategies like switching from hard liquor to beer/wine after people were socially isolated. In addition, posts related to use of substances such as benzodiazepines (valium, xanax, clonazepam), nootropics (kratom, phenibut), and opioids peaked around March 23, 2020, followed by a decline. Of note, unlike the general decline observed, the volume of posts related to alternatives to heroin (e.g., fentanyl) increased during the COVID-19 pandemic. Posts about quitting smoking gained momentum after late March 2020, and there was a sharp decline in posts about craving to smoke. This study highlights the significance of studying social media discussions on platforms like Reddit which are a rich ecological source of human experiences and provide insights to inform targeted messaging and mitigation strategies, and further complement ongoing traditional primary data collection methods.
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spelling pubmed-98975482023-02-04 Reddit language indicates changes associated with diet, physical activity, substance use, and smoking during COVID-19 Wanchoo, Karan Abrams, Matthew Merchant, Raina M. Ungar, Lyle Guntuku, Sharath Chandra PLoS One Research Article COVID-19 has adversely impacted the health behaviors of billions of people across the globe, modifying their former trends in health and lifestyle. In this paper, we compare the psychosocial language markers associated with diet, physical activity, substance use, and smoking before and after the onset of COVID-19 pandemic. We leverage the popular social media platform Reddit to analyze 1 million posts between January 6, 2019, to January 5, 2021, from 22 different communities (i.e., subreddits) that belong to four broader groups—diet, physical activity, substance use, and smoking. We identified that before the COVID-19 pandemic, posts involved sharing information about vacation, international travel, work, family, consumption of illicit substances, vaping, and alcohol, whereas during the pandemic, posts contained emotional content associated with quarantine, withdrawal symptoms, anxiety, attempts to quit smoking, cravings, weight loss, and physical fitness. Prevalent topic analysis showed that the pandemic was associated with discussions about nutrition, physical fitness, and outdoor activities such as backpacking and biking, suggesting users’ focus shifted toward their physical health during the pandemic. Starting from the week of March 23, 2020, when several stay-at-home policies were enacted, users wrote more about coping with stress and anxiety, alcohol misuse and abuse, and harm-reduction strategies like switching from hard liquor to beer/wine after people were socially isolated. In addition, posts related to use of substances such as benzodiazepines (valium, xanax, clonazepam), nootropics (kratom, phenibut), and opioids peaked around March 23, 2020, followed by a decline. Of note, unlike the general decline observed, the volume of posts related to alternatives to heroin (e.g., fentanyl) increased during the COVID-19 pandemic. Posts about quitting smoking gained momentum after late March 2020, and there was a sharp decline in posts about craving to smoke. This study highlights the significance of studying social media discussions on platforms like Reddit which are a rich ecological source of human experiences and provide insights to inform targeted messaging and mitigation strategies, and further complement ongoing traditional primary data collection methods. Public Library of Science 2023-02-03 /pmc/articles/PMC9897548/ /pubmed/36735708 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0280337 Text en © 2023 Wanchoo et al https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Wanchoo, Karan
Abrams, Matthew
Merchant, Raina M.
Ungar, Lyle
Guntuku, Sharath Chandra
Reddit language indicates changes associated with diet, physical activity, substance use, and smoking during COVID-19
title Reddit language indicates changes associated with diet, physical activity, substance use, and smoking during COVID-19
title_full Reddit language indicates changes associated with diet, physical activity, substance use, and smoking during COVID-19
title_fullStr Reddit language indicates changes associated with diet, physical activity, substance use, and smoking during COVID-19
title_full_unstemmed Reddit language indicates changes associated with diet, physical activity, substance use, and smoking during COVID-19
title_short Reddit language indicates changes associated with diet, physical activity, substance use, and smoking during COVID-19
title_sort reddit language indicates changes associated with diet, physical activity, substance use, and smoking during covid-19
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9897548/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36735708
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0280337
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