Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Social Media And Public Health: The Age Factor

virginia, If I overlay your graph of colon cancer rates in the US as a function of age:

With this marketing graph of Facebook users:


I can understand a little better why the CDC posted only (exclusively) about swine flu for the first 13 days of its Facebook account, even though chronic diseases like cancer and heart disease make up a big chunk of their work.

This same marketing site says that, where about a quarter (24%) of Facebook users are 55 or older, only 1% of Twitter users are that age (although I've read elsewhere that figure may be higher, ~10%.)

No wonder I hear very little about chronic diseases on these sites.
________

1 comment:

homebray said...

I think you should publish a paper that concludes that facebook prevents colon cancer --- your evidence is pretty clear. :^)