By Courtney Stonefelt
Are you always grumpy before your morning cup of joe? It may be affecting more than just your relationships with your roommates. In a new study published by the University of Bristol, three researchers found that Twitter could be receiving the brunt of your bad sleeping habits.
“Circadian Mood Variations in Twitter Content,” published in Brain and Neuroscience Advances, uses a dataset of over 800 million tweets collected over a four-year period in the United Kingdom. The researchers analyzed keywords from the tweets against the time of day, season, and day of the week. Unsurprisingly, the study found that tweets are happier during the summer months and that morning tweets are grumpiest.
However, it is important to be wary of such definite studies connecting social media with emotion. Pete Etchells, a psychologist at Bath Spa University, stated to Buzzfeed News that “there’s an underlying assumption that if I tweet ‘I’m having a great day, I love life,’ it’s a real expression of my feelings.” Despite the criticism, it is important to note that such a study could shed light on the correlation between sleep and mood disorders.
