Memes are making us overweight, according to researchers

God bless memes

In these scary times, memes give us strength. Which do you like? I like the woman being annoyed at her boyfriend looking at another girl. And the man with the butterfly. And the man who offers you free real estate. And The Simpsons memes. Simpsons memes are the best. Anyway, it turns out, memes are bad. They are making us fat. Sorry, memes are cancelled now. Wait, what? According to research submitted to a UK parliamentary committee, they could be contributing to teenage obesity. In a letter entitled "Analysing the Effects of Internet Memes on Young Teenagers’ Health and Health Behaviours", researchers from Loughborough University said:

“A substantial number of individuals on Twitter share health-related Internet memes, with both positive and negative messages,” they wrote, noting that many “contain inappropriate material.”

According to CNN, an image of an overweight child with the text "Free Food? Count Me In!" was sent along with with the letter as an example of the dangerous spicy memes affecting our youth (We are pretty sure this what they are referring to). Another offender was apparently an image of a man made of pizza, with frankfurters for legs and a potato smiley as a face. Dangerous stuff. Dank, dangerous stuff. To be fair, there is a deeper point in their research. Popular culture can normalise damaging behaviors, and memes can definitely be part of that. https://twitter.com/Hollud/status/1053144202035441664