That social media has become a ubiquitous part of our lives is news to exactly no one. It is likely that every person reading this tweets or reads tweets, likes or dislikes posts, and shares pictures using one social media platform or another. Social media does not, per se, have a direct link to penis health; however, as arguably the main medium for self-expression and public communication in contemporary times, social media is a rich field for exploring attitudes toward everything, including sexuality and sexual health. In fact, a new scientific study is one of the first to take a look at social media tweets and penis function.
The study
Entitled “The Sentiment Analysis of Tweets as a New Tool to Measure Public Perception of Male Erectile and Ejaculatory Dysfunctions,” the study was conducted by a team of Italian doctors and psychiatrists. It has been published in the medical journal Sexual Medicine.
Sentiment analysis refers to a kind of analysis that aims to summarize the opinion toward a topic. For this study, the researchers wanted to see what kind of opinion tweets revealed about erectile dysfunction and about premature ejaculation, two common penis function issues.
Initially, 11,000 tweets on premature ejaculation and more than 30,000 on erectile dysfunction were gathered. (These were unique tweets, not including retweets.) Further purging of duplicates left scientists with 7,020 premature ejaculation tweets and 22,648 tweets on erectile dysfunction. (This broke down to an average of 51 tweets daily on premature ejaculation and 164 daily on erectile dysfunction.)
Results
The scientists stated that they conducted this study “to assess the need to share personal opinions on these sexual health problems and to measure the perception by the general population on two important aspects of sexual dysfunction.” Surprisingly, in spite of the fact that premature ejaculation is significantly more common than is erectile dysfunction (about 20% to 30% of men for the former versus 15% to 20% for the latter), the number of tweets on erectile dysfunction outnumbered those on premature ejaculation by about 3 to 1.
In both cases, however, the words in the tweets were most often about treatments for each of these penis function issues. One interesting finding is that, judging by tweets, the availability of pharmacological treatment for premature ejaculation is far less known than that for erectile dysfunction. In other words, among tweeters at least, many know about “little blue pills” but don’t seem to realize that some other medications have been shown to help lengthen ejaculation times in some patients.
The study was not able to provide a quantifiable sentimental analysis, largely because many of the words used in the tweets could be classified as either depicting a sexual act or of a common expletive; this dual meaning impacts the study’s interpretive ability to a significant degree.
Interestingly, there did seem to be a connection between number of tweets and events during the news cycle, suggesting an increase in activity on social media corresponding to stories available in or on other media. In other words, when a news outlet or TV program featured penis function challenges, it bumped their tweet status online.
Many tweets on social media about penis function discuss treatments or medical breakthroughs. Maintaining adequate penis health can be a factor as well, so men are well advised to daily apply a first-rate penis health creme (health professionals recommend Man 1 Man Oil, which is clinically proven mild and safe for skin). Not just any crème will do, of course; men are urged to find one that lists among its ingredients vitamin B5 and L-arginine. The former is one of the B family of vitamins; known also as pantothenic acid, it is a vital nutrient that is required for cell metabolism and the maintenance of healthy tissue. In addition, L-arginine is an amino acid that aids the body’s production of nitric oxide; this in turn makes penile blood vessels more receptive to increased blood flow and expansion.
