Previously submitted to: JMIR Mental Health (no longer under consideration since May 13, 2021)
Date Submitted: Dec 8, 2020
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
COVID-19, Social Distancing, & Adolescent Mental Health on Twitter: An Online Content Analysis
ABSTRACT
Background:
In the early days of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) crisis, high engagement with pandemic-related social media was correlated with a 22.6% increase in anxiety and a 48.3% increase in depression. Before the start of the pandemic, young people were already at an elevated risk of anxiety and depression, with 20% of college students reporting at least one mental health condition. Currently, it is unclear what role COVID-19 messaging on social media has played in the adolescent mental health response to the pandemic.
Objective:
The purpose of this study was to explore co-occurrences between mentions of social distancing and mental health on Twitter, as well as linguistic elements of these posts.
Methods:
Our study was an online content analysis on Twitter. Tweets with hashtag #COVID19 were sampled from March 2020 and April 2020. Social media demographics were determined for both months. These Tweets were then evaluated for individual and co-occurrence mentions of social distancing and mental health. The presence of media (images, videos, or hyperlinks) was also recorded. The Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) program we used measured the prevalence of language under the categories of anxiety, anger, sadness, and risk, as well as the usage of 1st person singular pronouns and 1st person plural pronouns. Additionally, overall emotional tone was determined for both datasets. Descriptive statistics were used to analyze social media demographics and post content. LIWC scores between March and April were compared with independent t-tests.
Results:
A national sample of 100 Tweets with hashtag #COVID19 were collected. 50 Tweets were sampled from March 2020 and April 2020 respectively. Among March Tweets, 44% (n = 22) referenced social distancing, 48% (n = 24) referenced mental health, and 22% (n = 11) referenced both. Among April Tweets, 54% (n = 27) referenced social distancing, 22% (n = 11) referenced mental health, and 12% (n = 6) referenced both. The mean LIWC scores between March and April decreased 1.46 points for singular pronouns (p = 0.0271). There was no significant difference between March and April Tweets in the LIWC scores for anxiety, anger, sadness, risk, and plural pronouns.
Conclusions:
Between March and April, we found that references to social distancing became more frequent, while references to mental health decreased. Likewise, singular pronoun usage decreased significantly. These findings do not imply a diminished mental health impact, but rather suggest an increased focus on collective action over individual sentiment. Future studies should utilize interviews and focus groups to further examine the relevant mental health implications among individual adolescents.
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Copyright
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