“Climate change is leading to more social media use as the increase in extreme weather events forces people to be indoors – what about Watt?

From the climate warehouse

Bloomberg News: Climate change may make us spend more time on social media. In a new study in psychological science, researchers found that extreme weather (cold weather) has led to a massive increase in how many people have posted on Facebook and Twitter. The same is true for heavy precipitation.

Nick Obradovich, a computational behavioral scientist at the Tulsa Award winner in Oklahoma, is one of the authors of this article. It was a very intuitive discovery, he admits: when it’s not pleasant outside, people stay inside, and when they’re inside, they’re more likely to scroll and maybe post.

Putting them together, a vicious cycle emerges: A deteriorating weather drives us to spend more time on social media, growing increasingly angry and politically polarized. Our representative government responded to this, which is also a growing number of polarizations and dysfunctions that are unable to address major issues such as climate change.

This is a symbiosis between two more harmful things our species creates. Social media wins, and so does climate change. Human beings are lost.

Marc Morano

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2025-02-17/posting-through-it-climate-change-change-is-ofueling-social-social-media-use

Bloomberg: By it Posted: Climate change is intensifying the use of social media
Drake Bennett, February 17, 2025

Doom Roll

The list of effects of climate change is long and unified: rising, acidifying oceans; intense forest shooting, thunderstorms and hurricanes; spreading mosquitoes and mosquitoes to spread disease. But at least for our species, there is a new potential plague. Climate change may make us spend more time on social media.

In a new study in psychological science, researchers found that extreme weather (cold weather) has led to a massive increase in how many people have posted on Facebook and Twitter. The same is true for heavy precipitation.

Nick Obradovich, a computational behavioral scientist at the Tulsa Award winner in Oklahoma, is one of the authors of this article. It was a very intuitive discovery, he admits: when it’s not pleasant outside, people stay inside, and when they’re inside, they’re more likely to scroll and maybe post.

The purpose of the study, he said, is to see what we think we think might be true is true and to have a broader portrait of what we do and not shape people’s online behavior. This is how many sciences are.

“As far as I know, no one has measured this before,” Obradovic said. “We know one of the largest social media databases I know, no one asked this question or measured it before.”

There is a lot of evidence linking climate change to various extreme weather. Not only is the weather hot, but it is also very humid. (There is also some evidence that rising temperatures can cause cruel cold chokes by destroying the wind that destroys polar vortexes, thereby releasing Arctic air to lower latitudes.)

Meanwhile, waiting for the weather on social media feeds may make us unhappy – there is also evidence of this connection.

The consumption of social media seems to have strengthened political views and sectarianism for many users.

Putting them together, a vicious cycle emerges: A deteriorating weather drives us to spend more time on social media, growing increasingly angry and politically polarized. Our representative government responded to this, which is also a growing number of polarizations and dysfunctions that are unable to address major issues such as climate change.

This is a symbiosis between two more harmful things our species creates. Social media wins, and so does climate change. Human beings are lost.

Bloomberg News: Climate change may make us spend more time on social media. In a new study in psychological science, researchers found that extreme weather (cold weather) has led to a massive increase in how many people have posted on Facebook and Twitter. The same is true for heavy precipitation.