The Science (®)! Bloomberg News: ‘Climate change is leading to more social media use, as the increase in extreme weather events forces people indoors’
Bloomberg news: Climate change might make us spend more time on social media. In a new study in Psychological Science, researchers found that extreme weather — hot and cold — led to a significant uptick in how much people posted on Facebook and Twitter. Heavy precipitation did the same.
Nick Obradovich, a computational behavioral scientist at the Laureate Institute for Brain Research in Tulsa, Oklahoma, is one of the authors of the paper. He concedes that it’s a pretty intuitive finding: When it’s unpleasant outside, people stay inside, and when they’re inside they’re more likely to be scrolling and, perhaps, posting.
Put this together and a vicious cycle emerges: one in which worse weather drives us to spend more time inside on social media, growing more and more enraged and politically polarized. Our representative government responds to this by also growing more and more polarized and dysfunctional and, therefore, unable to deal with big problems like climate change.
It’s a symbiosis between two of the more pernicious things our species created. Social media wins, so does climate change. Humanity loses.
Bloomberg: Posting Through It: Climate Change Is Fueling Social Media Use
February 17, 2025, By Drake Bennett
Doom scrolling
The list of climate change’s effects is long and Biblical: rising, acidifying oceans; fiercer forest fires and thunderstorms and hurricanes; spreading mosquitos and mosquito-borne diseases. But there’s a new potential plague, at least for our species. Climate change might make us spend more time on social media.
In a new study in Psychological Science, researchers found that extreme weather — hot and cold — led to a significant uptick in how much people posted on Facebook and Twitter. Heavy precipitation did the same.
Nick Obradovich, a computational behavioral scientist at the Laureate Institute for Brain Research in Tulsa, Oklahoma, is one of the authors of the paper. He concedes that it’s a pretty intuitive finding: When it’s unpleasant outside, people stay inside, and when they’re inside they’re more likely to be scrolling and, perhaps, posting.
The point of the research, he says, was to see if something we thought was likely to be true was, in fact, true, and to flesh out a broader portrait of what does and doesn’t shape people’s online behavior. A lot of science is like that.
“Nobody has measured this before, to my knowledge,” Obradovich says. “We have one of the largest corpuses of social media data that I’m aware of, and nobody has asked this question or measured it before.”
A sizable body of evidence links climate change to extreme weather of all kinds. Not just hot weather, but very wet weather. (There’s also some evidence that rising temperatures paradoxically cause brutal cold snaps, by destabilizing the winds of the polar vortex and thereby releasing Arctic air into lower latitudes.)
At the same time, waiting out the weather on our social media feeds probably makes us less happy – there’s evidence on that connection, too.
And social media consumption seems to harden political views and sectarianism for many of its users.
Put this together and a vicious cycle emerges: one in which worse weather drives us to spend more time inside on social media, growing more and more enraged and politically polarized. Our representative government responds to this by also growing more and more polarized and dysfunctional and, therefore, unable to deal with big problems like climate change.
It’s a symbiosis between two of the more pernicious things our species created. Social media wins, so does climate change. Humanity loses.
Bloomberg news: Climate change might make us spend more time on social media. In a new study in Psychological Science, researchers found that extreme weather — hot and cold — led to a significant uptick in how much people posted on Facebook and Twitter. Heavy precipitation did the same.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Sure, 1 or 2 degrees, F or C, will turn me into a hermit.
LOL, did they consider that when most people were younger, there was no social media !!
Facebook started 2004, Twitter started 2006
Clasic definition of Climate is the average weather conditions of a region over a long period of time. It’s usually averaged over at least 30 years.
So – “A sizable body of evidence links climate change to extreme weather of all kinds.”
Becomes – A sizable body of evidence links <climate> average weather conditions over the last 30 years to extreme weather of all kinds?
“average“
There are numerous jokes about averages, but I digress.
Think of climate more as a pattern of weather over time.
For example, I live where winters are cold with snow and summers are
hot and dry. The average of that pattern is a bland nothingness.
The scene. Our local restaurant on Valentines night.
The cast of players-around 16 couples.
12 of the couples were not in the first flush of youth. The other 4 were young.
4 couples were continually scrolling on their smartphones throughout their meal. Yes, the young ones.
many have become addicted to digital technology. If anyone wants to destroy the West, merely hack the mobile phone system and other digital technology and many peoples lives-lived out on their phones-will implode.
In the meantime, Banks, Services, Food systems, transport etc will grind to a halt.
When sensors are being implanted in trees to check their growth and you can use an app to control your toaster we are truly becoming over dependent on technology.
Even before AI rises up….
“If anyone wants to destroy the West…”
Yep. Whenever Willie the Geek’s minions, the Cuppertino kumquats, or Premier Xi’s gestapo just decide to turn it all off.
How can utter drivel like this be published? This means that there was absolutely nobody in the chain of publication with an intelligence greater than a hamster.
It’s a classic pseudoscience
You take an assumption … In rain or hot weather people are indoors and on devices more.
Then you take another assumption …. Climate change is making more rain and hot days
Then you take a third assumption …. interactions on social media make us more enraged and politicized.
So then your result is obvious.
Pseudoscience it is, part of converting science into political science with a dash of feelings.
Why don’t we just call it fake science, which it is. No point in using ten dollar words where ten cent ones are better 🙂 🙂
Hamster? That gives them more credit than due. More of a bowl of oatmeal.
what a bunch of carp
There seems to be an assumption here that people don’t spend time on social media while outside.
That is retarded.
“Never go full retard!”
Logical fallacy here – global warming (or whatever you want to call it) hasn’t made weather worse. I sit on my deck watching kangaroos and kookaburras breathing in pollen and typing away on my 12yo MacBook Air.
but surely all that scrolling through online data will use more electricity which needs more fossil fuel to generate it. Vicious circle.
The stupid is strong in this one. Typical drivel from a lab that only survives on the vicious cycle of funding: publish scary stories and get more bucks from the climate panic industry so you can make up more stupid logical threads that fall apart already in the title.
Umm I’m thinking the adults left the room before this brain seizure by the author. What a howler – I’ll be laughing about this for days.
By “extreme weather” do they mean all the snow in the NH at the moment ??
End Of Snow Update | Real Climate Science
Caused by human CO2… of course 😉
No, wrong way around – social media use is fueling climate hysteria.
We are now subject to every weather-related incident anywhere around the world within seconds of it happening – immediately x’d or f’booked by connected individuals. Sad really. We used to broadcast such events we personally experienced to immediate family only – now it is global and people can actively search for it.
Simple advice
Put the phone down and go outside. Meet people and, er, talk to them.
Echo chambers are not healthy.
Enjoy the weather while you are at it.
Here in Melbourne Australia it is late summer, yet last Thursday evening the daily Tmin was reported as 9.9 deg C. That, the BOM and the media flooded over the airways, was the coldest February night here since 1957. That is correct by the official BOM record. The inference was that we had felt a climate extreme.
Here follows a wonderful example of cherry picking put before the public.
In the years between 1856 when observations started and that date of 1957, there were 241 other February nights that were just as cold, or colder. The lowest was in Feb 1924 at 4.5 deg C.
Question. Where is the value in reporting one past cold Feb night and not reporting 241 others? Question. Is this not cherry picking? Question. If yes, who is responsible for it?
If said person claims to have a university degree, especially in Science, should it be taken away?
….
Bloomberg, those people addicted to mobiles is bad for society. What is worse is the utter drivel like my example that is fed to those mobiles under the deceptive guise of climate extremes.
Geoff S
If you want to feel a climate extreme in Melbourne, just wait five minutes…
So … Global Warming is being replaced by Extreme Weather. More opportunities for Front Page News and costly reliance on Big Government.
There is no climate problem to be dealt with.
And of course, Bloomberg never considers the malign effect of some social media, like YouTube, blatantly censoring discussions of climate change.
In the middle of the US this morning it’s -25 F. One tends to want to stay inside and resist alarmism.
I can see where social media has a polarizing impact, but climate change? Quite the stretch.
This is laughable. I haven’t seen kids playing outside for the last twenty years (maybe more). It has less to do with screens than with the terminal desire for safe spaces, participation trophies, and nanny state regulations.
When I was a kid ( I know, I know) the outdoors was all I knew, rain shine, snow, or boiling heat. Nothing could keep me inside.
My favorite example is a pair of fire ponds my town used to fill fire tankers. We used to turn them into permanent hockey rinks that we shoveled after every snow. Now, the four foot deep ponds are permanently off limits.
Insane!
Many of the people who spend a lot of time on social media, wouldn’t be going outside, regardless of the weather.
Poor education and low intellectual curiosity are the more likely culprits for excessive social media use.
Climate does not cause weather phenomena, good or bad. Climate is simply defined as the long term (30+years) average of weather metrics at a particular location around the globe.
Anytime someone tells you that “climate” has caused any particular extreme weather event(s) he is lying or is so seeped in Leftist ideological propaganda that he can’t think about science rationally. Additionally, we can safely change the old James Carvel Democrat Party slur about Paula Jones (or Gennifer Flowers) to something like: “See what you get by dragging billions of dollars through academia and corporate boardrooms.”
Many of us have to spend hundreds of dollars nearly every month, either heating or cooling our homes – tiny little boxes that may be highly insulated and very energy-efficient.
But we are supposed to believe that Man can control the climate, the whole outdoors weather of our great big world. And all we have to do is pay more money to government!
There is a great disconnect between people who live in reality and who truly “follow the science”, and those who live in fantasy and believe in “green energy” myths, and that we can control the temperature of the world…why do they have so much power in setting public policy?
Clearly none of these mid-wits have figured out that wealthy people flock to the warmest parts of the world every chance they get. It must be comical to see rich white people and climate refugees passing each other in opposite directions.
Funny stuff. I am fascinated by wild weather. Watching leaves blow and spiders flow on a strand of silk, or wisps of high ice clouds, and many other things will get me to stop and observe the wonders of this world. Pancake (lenticular) clouds hanging over Mt. Rainier are amazing. Why anyone would prefer looking at a screen when there is so much to see, with sound and feeling, is a mystery.
It might be that Bloomberg, being in NYC, is clueless.