Why your friends may be more susceptible to influence than you are
Reports and Proceedings
Updates every hour. Last Updated: 31-Jul-2025 06:11 ET (31-Jul-2025 10:11 GMT/UTC)
When it comes to susceptibility to influence on social media, “It’s not just about who you are—it’s about where you are in a network, and who you’re connected to,” said Luca Luceri, a lead scientist at USC’s Information Sciences Institute (ISI). A new study by Luceri and his team finds that the likelihood someone will be influenced online isn’t spread evenly across a social platform. Instead, it clusters.
They call this the Susceptibility Paradox; it’s a pattern in which users’ friends are, on average, more influenceable than the users themselves. And it may help explain how behaviors, trends, and ideas catch on—and why some corners of the internet are more vulnerable to influence than others.
A holistic approach reveals the global spectrum of knowledge on the impact of cumulative heat exposure on young students, according to an article published July 30 in the open-access journal PLOS Climate by Konstantina Vasilakopoulou from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Australia, and Matthaios Santamouris from the University of New South Wales, Australia. The article aims to shed light on the social and economic inequalities caused within and across countries, the potential adaptive measures to counterbalance the impact of overheating, and forecasts about the cognitive risks associated with future overheating.