Data mining Instagram feeds can point to teenage drinking patterns

University of Rochester:

Using photos and text from Instagram, a team of researchers from the University of Rochester has shown that this data can not only expose patterns of underage drinking more cheaply and faster than conventional surveys, but also find new patterns, such as what alcohol brands or types are favored by different demographic groups. The researchers say they hope exposing these patterns could help develop effective intervention.

Instagram is very popular among teenagers and it offers large amounts of information about this target population in the form of photos and text. As Jiebo Luo, professor of computer science at the University of Rochester, and his colleagues describe in a new paper, underage drinkers “are willing to share their alcohol consumption experience” in social media. Studying the social media behavior of this group allows the researchers to observe it passively in an “undisturbed state.”

They are presenting their work this week at the 2015 IEEE International Conference on Big Data in Santa Clara, California.