Facebook Posts Can ID Problem Drinkers

LogicSoDeveloped

LogicSoDeveloped

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Counselors can glean information about college students who may be at risk for serious drinking problems from their Facebook profiles, researchers found.

Students who posted comments deemed related to "problem drinking" were more than four times as likely to score into a higher-risk category on a test of alcohol use disorders, Megan Moreno, MD, MPH, of the University of Wisconsin in Madison, and colleagues reported online in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine.

Facebook users who "chose to display references to intoxication or problem drinking on publicly available Facebook profiles were more likely to meet problem drinking criteria" than those who didn't post such comments, or posted milder ones related to alcohol, they wrote.

Many college students exhibit problem drinking, but it's challenging to screen for potential use disorders, the researchers said. Facebook, however, may provide a simple means of screening, since 98% of college students use the social networking site.

Using an online survey, Moreno and colleagues assessed undergraduates, ages 18 to 20, at two state universities who had public Facebook profiles. The survey measured problem drinking using the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT) scale.

Students were separated into three groups:

No references to alcohol use
Some references to alcohol use but none to intoxication
Problem drinking, which was determined by references to "being wasted" or "getting drunk"
Out of 307 profiles, 224 students completed the survey: 64.3% of the profiles had no alcohol references, 19.6% had some references to alcohol use, and 16.1% contained comments related to intoxication or problem drinking.

A total of 35.4% of participants scored in the at-risk category for problem drinking.

The researchers found that students whose comments related to intoxication or problem drinking were more likely to score in the problem-drinking category on the AUDIT scale (OR 4.4, 95% CI 2.0 to 9.4).

These students also had higher AUDIT scores compared with those who didn't write about alcohol on their profiles (incidence rate ratio 1.64, 95% CI 1.27 to 11.0, P<0.001).

As well, they were more likely to report an alcohol-related injury during the past year, specifically:

They were more than twice as likely as those who made some references to alcohol (19% versus 7%) to report an alcohol-related injury.
They were six times as likely as those who made no references to alcohol (19% versus 3%) to report an injury.
The P-value was 0.002 for both.
Moreno and colleagues noted that the findings also appeared to suggest that the relationship may be stronger for men than for women, but that link lost significance in regression analyses.

The study was limited because the researchers could only examine public profiles, and also because they included very few minority and no African-American students.

Still, they concluded that because such a high proportion of college students are on Facebook, using it "as a complementary and innovative screening tool still represents a substantial improvement over the norm."

In addition to screening for potential alcohol use issues, clinicians may be able to use the results of the study when approached by parents regarding the content of their children's Facebook profile, Moreno and colleagues added.

They pointed out that advertisements on Facebook are triggered by keywords displayed on the profile. Universities may also be able to use Facebook ads that display helpful messages when keywords representing problem drinking are displayed, although more research is needed into the specific messages, the researchers said.
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http://www.medpagetoday.com/Pediatrics/GeneralPediatrics/28856
 
school resource officers in america seriously sit around looking at facebooks all day, i'm being serious
 
I'm thinking of deleting mine as I recently read that facebook tracks users even when they're logged out via cookies.

More like on the fence I guess as I like being able to stay in touch with friends that are far away.
 
I deleted my Facebook years ago, along with everything else. Currently I use my real name for nothing online. I'm constantly astonished that so many people use their actual first and last names when communicating publicly. Are they insane?

Am I insane?
 
LogicSoDeveloped said:
I'm thinking of deleting mine as I recently read that facebook tracks users even when they're logged out via cookies.

More like on the fence I guess as I like being able to stay in touch with friends that are far away.
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Conspiracy theorist much? That was almost instantly shot down by facebook and people from around the world, they don't use it for anything and when they do it will be ads...
 
Not really man...even so, I prefer to err on the side of caution. Agree with what you want to agree with though, I can't change what you believe and don't intend on trying.
 
I just really don't care that some random person knows a lot about me, if they even do. I'm one of nearly a billion people, and it's not like Mark is going to post everyone's personal life, statistics, pictures, and everything to one, big, public website.
 
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