Temporal variability of problem drinking on Twitter

Twitter is a micro-blogging application, which is commonly used as a way for individuals to maintain social connections. Social scientists have also begun using Twitter as a data source for understanding more about human interactions. There is very little research about Twitter’s utility for monitoring health related attitudes, beliefs and behaviors. The purpose of this study was to examine the extent to which individuals tweeted about problem drinking, and to identify if such tweets corresponded with time periods when problem drinking was likely to occur. Data from this study came from tweets originating in one of 9 randomly selected states, one from each of the nine census geographies in the US. Twitter’s API was used to collect tweets during the month of October 2010, and again during the time period surrounding New Year’s Eve 2010. Keywords were selected which indicated problem-drinking behaviors, and tweets were coded for the presence or absence of these keywords. Twitter users were most likely to tweet about problem drinking on Friday, Saturday and Sunday during the hours from 10 pm to 2 am. Tweets originating during the New Year’s Eve holiday (0.53%) were twice as common when compared to tweets during weekends in the month of October (0.34%). Twitter may be a valid data source for social scientists, given that tweets about problem drinking corresponded with expected time periods of actual problem drinking. Furthermore, tweets that mention problem drinking may be problematic for public health if they establish incorrect normative beliefs that such behaviors are acceptable and expected. Social norms interventions may be an effective tool in correcting misperceptions related to problem drinking by informing Twitter followers that problem drinking behaveiors are not normative.