The Daily Mail's quest to divide the world into things that cause cancer and things that cure cancer has reached the internet: it turns out that Facebook causes cancer.
According to psychologist - that's psychologist, not oncologist - Dr Aric Sigman, spending all day poking people "may have wide-ranging biological effects", could "alter the way genes work and upset immune responses, hormone levels and the function of arteries." It could "also impair mental performance."
Yes, it could, but you could equally say that MySpace increases your risk of being killed by a vampire because you'd be too busy stalking Lily Allen to spot Dracula going for your neck.
But if we're going to take this internet cancer stuff seriously, why don't we look at the other side of the coin? Because it turns out that internet porn can prevent cancer. Hooray!
We're not making it up, either, because just like the Daily Mail we've found some experts to back us up. According to Australian researchers, "men could reduce their risk of developing prostate cancer through regular masturbation". Significantly, "the protective effect was greatest while the men were in their twenties" and "men who ejaculated more than five times in a week were a third less likely to develop prostate cancer later in life."
Ready for the science bit? Over to you, Dr Graham Giles of the Cancer Council Victoria in Melbourne.
"It's a prostatic stagnation hypothesis," he told New Scientist. Did you hear that? A prostatic stagnation hypothesis! That's SCIENCE! "The more you flush your ducts out, the less there is to hang around and damage the cells that cause them."
The bad news? It doesn't work for women, because of course women don't have prostates. But for men, the answer is clear: if you care about your health and don't want to get cancer, don't poke people on Facebook - watch people getting poked instead.
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Your comments (4) Click to add a new comment
kasino72
February 20th
4. Great post, Matthew. On a related note: the problem with the Daily Mail comments is that for a while at least, wags from the likes of b3ta would pop along and add fake but convincing looking comments to stories demanding we return to the 1950s, burn people as witches, that sort of thing. So when I see a really daft comment on the site, I can no longer tell whether it's a real comment or someone taking the mickey. It hurts my brain :)
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matthewcain
February 20th
3. It's great to see the reaction of Mail readers to this article:
http://blog.matthewcain.co.uk/mail-readers-reject-cancer-scare-story/
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rebeccae
February 19th
2. To discount social networks per se is wrong, as we can show by the use of our service for residential developments – www.residentshq.com.
It has proved that discrete, social networks have the potential to enhance communities. What we have found is that our long-hours culture, family fragmentation, fear of the consequences of social interaction and tendency to retreat inside our own homes, means that getting to know neighbours can be a challenging and sometimes daunting task – even when living in close proximity to them.
By providing people with a simple means to break the ice without having to go and knock on someone’s door we have enabled them to interact, set-up clubs and events, share experiences on local restaurants or trades people, sell items or discuss topics of mutual interest. Basically many of the things that used to take place down the church, social club, or over the garden fence.
Our functionality allows you to interact online but also encourages you to meet FACE to FACE which without our site, people just wouldn't do. We have evidence of people meeting to play football, form book clubs, mother and toddler groups, fitness groups and organize ‘come dine with us’ type activities which wouldn't have happened if they hadn't interacted on the social network beforehand.
Additionally, it must be remembered the growth of social networking is about making connections and from its dramatic growth, this is obviously something people want to do. The challenge is that today’s populace is so mobile that many of those connections can only be maintained online through sites like Facebook and Bebo.
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grahamjones
February 19th
1. Excellent. I have spent half the day commenting to various media outlets, being interviewed by journalists, pointing out that the research used by Dr Sigman is flawed. He puts two things together and suggests there is a causal relationship. However, he ignores other research which shows us that Facebook users are the most active socially generally. In other words, online social networkers are actually the people most likely to engage in face to face "offline" meetings. So, if Dr Sigman's theory is right, social networking makes it MORE likely we'll spend more time with other people, thus improving our health, not destroying it.
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