Sleepless Cities under Social Isolation: Geographically and Temporally Revealing Circadian Rhythm Disorders through Social Media

Abstract

The circadian rhythm typically follows a 24-hour cycle and is primarily influenced by the daily light-dark cycle. Animal experiments have shown that the mechanisms underlying social isolation-induced sleep disorders are social isolation duration dependent and are under circadian and seasonal influences. However, there has been little research into this blank spot on a large population scale, both geographically and temporally, due to the limited sample size in previous survey-based research. The outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 caused worldwide social isolation, offering an opportunity to study the effect of social isolation on human circadian rhythm disorders. To fill this research gap, we designed circadian rhythm disorder metrics based on X platform (Formerly Twitter). These metrics allow us to uncover the spatial and temporal patterns of circadian rhythm disorders in the United States during the COVID-19 pandemic. It is noteworthy that circadian rhythms in April 2020 are severely disrupted and circadian rhythm in April 2020 is on average 31 minutes later than that in April 2019. Moreover, most cities experienced serious circadian rhythm disorders in April 2020, and there are no significant differences in latitudinal and longitudinal distribution.The proposed framework provides valuable insights into revealing the pattern of circadian rhythm disorder on the aggregation level.