Luotanko vai enkö luota? Nuorten luottamus sosiaalisessa mediassa leviävään informaatioon ja siihen liittyviä tekijöitä.

The increasing role that social media plays as a source of news and information has both positive and negative effects from the viewpoint of democratic societies. As sharing information on social media is easy, it has also become easier to spread false information. False news, which can render manipulation of people’s views and thoughts remarkably easy, can be extremely challenging to detect. We approached youngsters’ trust in social media content as a potential risk factor; trust can reduce uncertainty and suspicion of information and thus predict the spread of disinformation and conspiracy theories. This may have negative effects on societal security. We aimed to examine what factors explain Finnish youngsters’ (15–19 years) trust in news and information in social media. The analysis was based on a survey (N=800) collected in 2019– 2020. Using regression analysis we found four factors that were positively associated with youngsters’ trust in news and information in social media; trust in traditional media, daily use of social media, following social media influencers, and the belief that approval ratings predict the trustworthiness of news. In addition, the belief that social media gives a distorted view of other people’s lives was negatively connected to trust in news and information. From a national security perspective, youngsters’ social media use is often harmless. However, as their identities and worldviews are still developing, they may act as a target group for information campaigns which aim to undermine the stability of society and disrupt national security. Therefore, it is crucial to understand more about youngsters’ trust in social media content and their ability to detect false information

Associations of autozygosity with a broad range of human phenotypes

In many species, the offspring of related parents suffer reduced reproductive success, a phenomenon known as inbreeding depression. In humans, the importance of this effect has remained unclear, partly because reproduction between close relatives is both rare and frequently associated with confounding social factors. Here, using genomic inbreeding coefficients (F-ROH) for >1.4 million individuals, we show that F-ROH is significantly associated (p <0.0005) with apparently deleterious changes in 32 out of 100 traits analysed. These changes are associated with runs of homozygosity (ROH), but not with common variant homozygosity, suggesting that genetic variants associated with inbreeding depression are predominantly rare. The effect on fertility is striking: F-ROH equivalent to the offspring of first cousins is associated with a 55% decrease [95% CI 44-66%] in the odds of having children. Finally, the effects of F-ROH are confirmed within full-sibling pairs, where the variation in F-ROH is independent of all environmental confounding.Peer reviewe

Shared genetic origin of asthma, hay fever and eczema elucidates allergic disease biology

Asthma, hay fever (or allergic rhinitis) and eczema (or atopic dermatitis) often coexist in the same individuals, partly because of a shared genetic origin. To identify shared risk variants, we performed a genome-wide association study (GWAS; n = 360,838) of a broad allergic disease phenotype that considers the presence of any one of these three diseases. We identified 136 independent risk variants (P < 3 × 10-8), including 73 not previously reported, which implicate 132 nearby genes in allergic disease pathophysiology. Disease-specific effects were detected for only six variants, confirming that most represent shared risk factors. Tissue-specific heritability and biological process enrichment analyses suggest that shared risk variants influence lymphocyte-mediated immunity. Six target genes provide an opportunity for drug repositioning, while for 36 genes CpG methylation was found to influence transcription independently of genetic effects. Asthma, hay fever and eczema partly coexist because they share many genetic risk variants that dysregulate the expression of immune-related genes