The language people use on Facebook subtly changes before they make a visit to the emergency department (ED), a new study found. Researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and Stony Brook University’s Computer Science Department compared patients’ Facebook posts to their medical records, which showed that a shift to more formal language and/or descriptions of physical pain, among other changes, reliably preceded hospital visits. Published today in Nature Scientific Reports, the study provides more evidence that social media is often an unseen signal of medical distress and could potentially be used to trigger health care interventions.
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