Angry Twitter is bad for your health
You've got to tell them. They're so wrong. What an idiot. Unbelievable. This will show them. Getting angry on Twitter may feel great (correction: amazing) at times, but that doesn't mean it's good for you. Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have found a strong correlation between use of negative language on Twitter and heart disease mortality. From public tweets made during 2009 and 2010, the research found that communities where expletives and hate words were tweeted often also had higher rates of heart disease deaths. Positive tweets, however, showed the opposite effect.
"Hostility and depression have been linked with heart disease at the individual level through biological effects," said Margaret Kern, an assistant professor at the University of Melbourne,, who assisted with the study.
"Negative emotions can also trigger behavioral and social responses; you are also more likely to drink, eat poorly and be isolated from other people which can indirectly lead to heart disease."
Interestingly, the study showed that it wasn't the people tweeting the angry words and topics, generally, that were dying of heart disease: it seems to be the toxic environment surrounding a user. Perhaps, then, a good enough reason for keeping it a little more convivial on Twitter. We mean, aside from complaining about how your Instagram pics won't show up.
