Three out of four times, your Facebook friends don’t read past the headline when they share a link to political content.  Experts say that’s somewhat surprising — and downright scary.  People who share without clicking may be unwittingly aiding hostile adversaries aiming to sow seeds of division and distrust, warned S. Shyam Sundar, a professor of media effects at Penn State University. “Superficial processing of headlines and blurbs can be dangerous if false data are being shared and not investigated,” said Sundar, corresponding author of the new study published Nov. 19 in the journal Nature Human Behavior.  “Disinformation or misinformation campaigns aim to sow the seeds of doubt or dissent in a democracy — the scope of these efforts came to light in the 2016 and 2020 elections,” he added in a Penn State news release. To learn more about content shared on social media, his team analyzed more than 35 million public posts containing links shared on Facebook between 2017 and 2020. The links included political content from both ends of the spectrum — and it was shared without clicking more often than politically neutral content. While the study was limited to Facebook, researchers said their findings likely apply to other social media platforms as well.  Data for the analysis were provided in collaboration with Facebook’s parent company, Meta.  It included user demographics and…  read on >  read on >

Think of it as collateral damage: Millions of Americans say they have been harmed by a loved one’s drug or alcohol use. One in 3 adults who responded to a new nationwide survey said they had suffered “secondhand harm” from another person’s drinking. And more than 1 in 10 said they had been harmed by a loved one’s drug use.  That’s close to 160 million victims — 113 million hurt by loved one’s drinking and 46 million by their drug use, according to the survey published recently in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs.  “There are more harms than people think,” said study co-author William Kerr, of the Alcohol Research Group at the Emeryville, Calif.-based Public Health Institute. “They affect families, relationships and communities.” He said it makes sense that risky drinking and drug use have far-reaching consequences, but researchers only began looking at the secondhand harms of alcohol in recent years. Less has been known about the damage done by a loved one’s drug use. The new study is based on a survey of 7,800 U.S. adults. They were questioned between September 2019 and April 2020, before the pandemic became a factor in Americans’ substance use. People were asked if they had been harmed in any of several ways due to someone else’s substance use.  In all, 34% of respondents said they…  read on >  read on >

Rates of postpartum depression have more than doubled in little over a decade among American women, a new analysis shows. While about 1 in every 10 new moms (9.4%) suffered postpartum depression in 2010, that number rose to almost 1 in every 5 (19%) by 2021, report a team from Kaiser Permanente Southern California. Why the steep rise? Better detection and reporting could be playing a big role, the researchers said. However, rising rates of obesity during pregnancy could also be a factor, since obesity has long known to be a risk factor for postpartum depression. Whatever the reasons, “the prevalence of postpartum depression is high and rising,” said a team led by Dr. Darios Getahun, a Kaiser researcher based in Pasadena, Calif. His team published its findings Nov. 20 in the journal JAMA Network Open. As defined by the researchers, postpartum depression is “a depressive disorder that occurs within 12 months following childbirth.” Like other forms of depression, symptoms include sadness, anxiety and lack of interest in activities that were once pleasurable. Mothers with postpartum depression may fail to bond with their infant, neglect breastfeeding and develop other illnesses. “In severe cases, postpartum depression can lead to suicide or infanticide,” Getahun’s team wrote in the report. In their new analysis, the researchers tracked rates of postpartum depression for more than 442,000 California pregnancies between…  read on >  read on >

Parents can’t monitor everything their kids watch online, but a set of new guidelines may help young people manage their own viewing habits. “Research consistently shows that video content, and the platforms that host it, have the potential to help or harm teens,” said Arthur Evans Jr., CEO of the American Psychological Association (APA).  “It is the shared responsibility of video platforms, content creators, parents, caregivers, educators, policymakers and the technology industry to create an environment where youth can learn and express themselves safely online,” he added in an APA news release. The association announced new recommendations to help parents, policymakers and tech companies give teens the power to manage their own viewing habits. They include steps that can be taken right away, as well as longer-range recommendations for Big Tech and policymakers. For educators: Teach teens to be choosy. Videos can help with homework, teach new skills or hobbies or provide insights into different experiences and cultures, APA points out, calling on schools to teach video literacy. The aim: “To expand [teens’] knowledge and abilities while resisting manipulative platform features designed to prolong their engagement and profit from their attention.” For creators: Modify features that can affect teens’ well-being. Platforms that recommend content to young people, switch between short videos and autoplay content to extend viewing time may lead to abnormal viewing habits and…  read on >  read on >