Jellyfish Are Not Taking Over; Facebook Makes Low Self-Esteem Lower

Rebecca Greenfield

Discovered: There is not a jellyfish epidemic, Facebook is bad for people with low self-esteem, the case for massages, so many useless tweets. 

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  • There is not a jellyfish epidemic. Good to hear. We're scared of those stingy monsters. Contrary to media reports of the jellied creatures taking over the seas, getting stuck in fishermen's nets and showing up on coastlines, research from UC Santa Barbara finds that the animal's population hasn't proliferated over the years. "Clearly, there are areas where jellyfish have increased--the situation with the Giant Jellyfish in Japan is a classic example," said researcher Rob Condon. "But there are also areas where jellyfish have decreased, or fluctuate over the decadal periods." Below we see that Japan problem Condon was talking about. Disgusting. [UC Santa Barbara]

  • Facebook is bad for people with low self esteem. Add this one to the pile of things Facebook does to our brains. People with already low-self esteem only make their condition worse by posting negative thoughts and feelings on Facebook, found research at the University of Waterloo. The researchers thought that Facebook would help these types of people. "We had this idea that Facebook could be a really fantastic place for people to strengthen their relationships," said researcher Amanda Forest. (What Facebook do these guys use?) Makes perfect sense to us that people who don't love themselves wouldn't benefit from the social network. [Psychological Science]

  • The case for massages. Science double-checked and massages both feel good and have real health benefits. Phew. Massaging muscles after exercise reduces signs of inflammation and increases the cell’s "energy factories," found research published in journal Science Translational Medicine.  [The Wall Street Journal]

  • So many useless tweets. We'll admit we're into Twitter, but we can't dispute this latest research that finds only a little a third over all tweets are worth reading. Using this site Who Gives a Tweet, researchers at Carnegie Mellon had readers evaluate tweets and readers indicated 36 percent of the tweets were useless. Spending hours on the site all day, we can attest to a high uselessness rate. It's not that we get tweets about mundane daily activities, just a lot of the same stuff, especially during big events. (Ahem, Facebook IPO.)  [Carnegie Mellon]