{"id":366813,"date":"2025-02-19T07:59:18","date_gmt":"2025-02-19T06:59:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=366813"},"modified":"2025-02-19T07:59:20","modified_gmt":"2025-02-19T06:59:20","slug":"the-science-bloomberg-news-climate-change-is-leading-to-more-social-media-use-as-the-increase-in-extreme-weather-events-forces-people-indoors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=366813","title":{"rendered":"The Science (\u00ae)! Bloomberg News: \u2018Climate change is leading to more social media use, as the increase in extreme weather events forces people indoors\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From Climate Depot<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bloomberg news<\/a>: Climate change might make us spend more time on social media. In a new study in Psychological Science, researchers found that extreme weather \u2014 hot and cold \u2014 led to a significant uptick in how much people posted on Facebook and Twitter. Heavy precipitation did the same.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2019s a pretty intuitive finding: When it\u2019s unpleasant outside, people stay inside, and when they\u2019re inside they\u2019re more likely to be scrolling and, perhaps, posting.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s a symbiosis between two of the more pernicious things our species created. Social media wins, so does climate change. Humanity loses.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By\u00a0Marc Morano<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\n

Climate change is leading to more social media use, as the increase in extreme weather events forces people indoors https:\/\/t.co\/gLivpaKmNV<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014 Bloomberg (@business) February 17, 2025<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/news\/newsletters\/2025-02-17\/posting-through-it-climate-change-is-fueling-social-media-use<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bloomberg: Posting Through It: Climate Change Is Fueling Social Media Use<\/strong>
February 17, 2025, By Drake Bennett<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Doom scrolling<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The list of climate change\u2019s effects is long and Biblical: rising, acidifying oceans; fiercer forest fires and thunderstorms and hurricanes; spreading mosquitos and mosquito-borne diseases. But there\u2019s a new potential plague, at least for our species. Climate change might make us spend more time on social media.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a new study in Psychological Science<\/a>, researchers found that extreme weather \u2014 hot and cold \u2014 led to a significant uptick in how much people posted on Facebook and Twitter. Heavy precipitation did the same.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

(Worse Weather Amplifies Social Media Activity \u2013 Psychological Science- Published February 4, 2025<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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\u2019s a pretty intuitive finding: When it\u2019s unpleasant outside, people stay inside, and when they\u2019re inside they\u2019re more likely to be scrolling and, perhaps, posting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

[Climate Depot Note: The coauthor of this new paper (Nick Obradovich) also coauthored this 2018 paper in PNAS: Empirical evidence of mental health risks posed by climate change<\/a> ]<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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\u2019t shape people\u2019s online behavior. A lot of science is like that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNobody has measured this before, to my knowledge,\u201d Obradovich says. \u201cWe have one of the largest corpuses of social media data that I\u2019m aware of, and nobody has asked this question or measured it before.\u201d (More on Obradovich<\/em> here<\/a>:<\/strong>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A sizable body of evidence links climate change to extreme weather of all kinds. Not just hot weather, but very wet weather. (There\u2019s 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.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the same time, waiting out the weather on our social media feeds probably makes us less happy \u2013 there\u2019s evidence on that connection, too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And social media consumption seems to harden political views and sectarianism for many of its users.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s a symbiosis between two of the more pernicious things our species created. Social media wins, so does climate change. Humanity loses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Bloomberg news<\/a>: Climate change might make us spend more time on social media. In a new study in Psychological Science, researchers found that extreme weather \u2014 hot and cold \u2014 led to a significant uptick in how much people posted on Facebook and Twitter. Heavy precipitation did the same.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The list of climate change\u2019s effects is long and Biblical: rising, acidifying oceans; fiercer forest fires and thunderstorms and hurricanes; spreading mosquitos and mosquito-borne diseases. But there\u2019s a new potential plague, at least for our species. Climate change might make us spend more time on social media.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":121246920,"featured_media":366824,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[691833378,691833377,691818056,691818514,691833379,691819484],"class_list":["post-366813","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-arctic-air","tag-bloomberg-news","tag-climate-change","tag-extreme-weather","tag-psychological-science","tag-social-media","fallback-thumbnail"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/0Screenshot-2025-02-17-at-08.41.19.png?fit=1206%2C1034&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paxLW1-1xql","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":279931,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=279931","url_meta":{"origin":366813,"position":0},"title":"Climate of Alarm","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"09\/22\/2023","format":false,"excerpt":"Many people take the connection between climate change and extreme weather events \u2014 wildfires, hurricanes, tornadoes, etc. \u2014 for granted. 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