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Background: Previous studies have explored the association between social media use and mental health among adolescents. However, few studies using nationally representative longitudinal data have explored this relationship for adults and how the effect might change depending on how people use social media. Objective: This study investigated the longitudinal relationship between the frequency of viewing and posting on social media and mental health problems among UK adults. Methods: This study included 15,836 adults (aged 16 years and older) who participated in Understanding Society, a UK longitudinal survey. Social media use was measured with questions about the frequency of viewing social media and posting on social media in Understanding Society Wave 11 (2019-2021). We explored viewing and posting separately, as well as a combined exposure: (1) high viewing, high posting; (2) high viewing, low posting; (3) low viewing, high posting; and (4) low viewing, low posting. Mental health problems were measured in Wave 12 (2020-2022) using the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-12), a validated scale for identifying symptoms of common mental health problems, where higher scores indicated more mental health problems (0 to 36). Unadjusted and adjusted linear regression models were estimated for viewing social media and posting on social media, adjusting for the baseline GHQ score, gender, age, ethnicity, employment, and education. We found no evidence for effect modification by gender and age so overall associations were reported. Results: In our adjusted models, we found no evidence of an association between the frequency of viewing social media and mental health problems in the following year. We found that adults who posted daily on social media had more mental health problems than those who never posted on social media, corresponding to a 0.35-point increase in GHQ score (β=0.35, 95% CI 0.01-0.68; P =.04). When we considered both social media behaviors, we found that those who frequently viewed and posted on social media scored 0.31 points higher on the GHQ score (β=0.31, 95% CI 0.04-0.58; P =.03) in the following year compared to those who rarely viewed or posted on social media. Conclusions: We found that a high frequency of posting on social media was associated with increased mental health problems a year later. However, we did not find evidence of a similar association based on the frequency of viewing social media content. This provides evidence that some types of active social media use (ie, posting) have a stronger link to mental health outcomes than some types of passive social media use (viewing). These results highlighted that the relationship between social media use and mental health is complex, and more research is needed to understand the mechanisms underlying these patterns to inform targeted interventions and policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores how representations of the 'hipster' in newspapers and on blogs are bound up with processes of class distinction in contemporary Britain. The analysis demonstrates that the hipster is a contested middle-class social type who is the object of both denigration and prestige. The hipster is typically represented as a young person associated with the middle-class fraction of the cultural intermediaries who is engaged in a particular set of reflexive and trendy consumption practices, often performed in gentrified urban spaces and linked to the creative industries. The article suggests that the disputed status of 'hipster cool' is indicative of shifting class distinctions in cultural taste and classificatory struggles within the middle class between generational groupings that involve questions of authenticity. Such contestations are reflected by the increasing legitimacy of emerging forms of cultural capital rooted in popular culture and embraced by young people, and the waning symbolic power of traditional highbrow culture associated with an older generation of middle-class people. It is also argued that the classificatory struggles over hipster tastes and lifestyles have a spatial dimension as bound up with the public controversies and social anxieties linked to gentrification in neoliberal Britain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Background and aims The concept of national drinking culture is well established in research and policy debate, but rarely features in contemporary alcohol policy analysis. We aim to demonstrate the value of the alternative concept of social practices for quantitatively operationalizing drinking culture. We discuss how a practice perspective addresses limitations in existing analytical approaches to health-related behaviour before demonstrating its empirical application by constructing a statistical typology of British drinking occasions. Design Cross-sectional latent class analysis of drinking occasions derived from retrospective 1-week drinking diaries obtained from quota samples of a market research panel. Occasions are periods of drinking with no more than 2 hours between drinks. Setting Great Britain, 2009-11. Cases A total of 187 878 occasions nested within 60 215 nationally representative adults (aged 18 + years). Measurements Beverage type and quantity per occasion; location, company and gender composition of company; motivation and reason for occasion; day, start-time and duration of occasion; and age, sex and social grade. Findings Eight occasion types are derived based primarily on parsimony considerations rather than model fit statistics. These are mixed location heavy drinking (10.4% of occasions), heavy drinking at home with a partner (9.4%), going out with friends (11.1%), get-together at someone's house (14.4%), going out for a meal (8.6%), drinking at home alone (13.6%), light drinking at home with family (12.8%) and light drinking at home with a partner (19.6%). Conclusions An empirical model of drinking culture, comprising a typology of drinking practices, reveals the dominance of moderate drinking practices in Great Britain. The model demonstrates the potential for a practice perspective to be used in evaluation of how and why drinking cultures change in response to public health interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the relief of travellers in Warwickshire, England. By using an unusually rich set of Constables’ Accounts for the parish of Grandborough, it interrogates the relationship between charity, local justice, and both official and popular perceptions of migration. It argues that the large number of migrants who passed through rural parishes were categorised by the local constable according to cultural and discretionary criteria. This ‘typology’ of travellers determined the nature and extent of the relief they might receive and the actions that might be taken against them. Socially threatening migrants, such as poor pregnant women, the sick, and vagrants, also found themselves affected by this same ‘proscriptive calculation’, often to their detriment. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]