Facebook now causes cancer, or so a swathe of reports today would have you believe. But is it a legitimate threat to your health or tabloid hacks trying to get on the front page? Find out after the jump.
It was the story the Daily Mail was meant for: Facebook and other social networking sites like MySpace cause cancer, according to one psychologist. More surprising were the other esteemed publications that picked it up: BBC News, Bloomberg, Press Association, consumer champion Which? and more ran with the scaremongering. But should we be wary of Facebook causing cancer?
The story was sourced from a report by Aric Sigman in the journal Biologist. “Emailing people rather than meeting them may have wide-ranging biological effects,” he wrote.
When the Daily Mail pressed him as to what these might be, he said it could “impair mental performance, which could increase the risk of problems as serious as cancer, stroke, heart disease and dementia.”
In other words, if spending time alone on Facebook makes you stressed, it’s possible that could cause cancer. That sounds pretty ropey to us, and we’re a bit worried at the amount of papers who failed to talk to a single oncologist to get their thoughts. We’re off to get this report peer reviewed, but in the meantime, carry on poking, tagging and sheep-hurling as you please.
Out TBC | £TBC | Facebook (Via DNA)
