Tweets can predict heart disease rates, study finds


Common predictors of heart disease include smoking, diabetes, income, education, and obesity. But the bizarre truth is one factor might trump all of those combined: Twitter.
University of Pennsylvania researchers published a study in Psychological Science asserting just that, The Washington Post reports. They sorted geo-tagged public tweets across 1,300 U.S. counties by topics like hate, hostility and boredom.
What they found: Tweets conveying negative emotions correlated with higher rates of heart disease deaths. Now go ahead, tweet about how anxious this study makes you.
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Julie Kliegman is a freelance writer based in New York. Her work has appeared in BuzzFeed, Vox, Mental Floss, Paste, the Tampa Bay Times and PolitiFact. Her cats can do somersaults.
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