One might imagine that our social media postings would stay largely consistent, at least in terms of the tone and language we use.  Alas, new research from the University of Pennsylvania suggests that’s not the case, at least in the period leading up to a visit to hospital.

The fascinating finding revealed that people would adopt a more formal language in the period preceding a hospital visit, which the researchers believe may be a reliable indicator of the need for medical interventions.

“The better we understand the context in which people are seeking care, the better they can be attended to,” the researchers say. “While this research is in a very early stage, it could potentially be used to both identify at-risk patients for immediate follow-up or facilitate more proactive messaging for patients reporting doubts about what to do before a specific procedure.”

Changing tone

The researchers recruited around 3,000 volunteers from an urban hospital, with each consenting to sharing both their electronic health records and their Facebook posts.  Around 500 of the patients had a recent visit to the emergency department with conditions ranging from chest pain to pregnancy-related issues.  The Facebook posts for each person were monitored up to 10 weeks prior to the hospital visit, with machine learning used to track the language over that time.

The analysis revealed a significant change in language prior to the emergency department visit.  This translated into a less frequent use of leisure-related phrases and a more formal use of language, with less use of slang terms.

What’s more, posts would often increasingly feature family and health-related matters, with an increase in anxiety and worry evident in the language used.

“We seem to become more grave and serious when we are unwell,” the researchers say. “And looking beyond the family mentions data, it’s possible that, when health is down, the need for belonging increases and shows up in what one posts on social media.”

Subtle clues

Interestingly, the researchers believe that monitoring the language used online could give subtle clues as to the health of individuals.  For instance, one volunteer wrote about eating fast food prior to visiting hospital with chest pains, while another wrote about fasting before going in for scheduled surgery.

“How does life affect personal decisions to seek care? How does care affect life? These are the things I would hope that we could fully describe, how people’s everyday lives intermix with health care,” the researchers explain.

Similar research from the team found that our social media postings could also provide an early warning about things such as depression, with the team believing that a diagnosis could be made around three months before an official one.

In terms of visits to the emergency department, it appears that our language changes around a month beforehand, but they would like to research things further to better understand the context of each individual, as this provides a crucial piece of the jigsaw.

“It’s likely that individuals use different platforms to share varying information and that what is revealed on Facebook to an audience of that person’s friend network may be very different from a Twitter or Instagram network,” the researchers explain.