Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Formative Research
Date Submitted: Apr 1, 2023
Open Peer Review Period: Apr 1, 2023 - May 27, 2023
Date Accepted: Jul 7, 2023
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited.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.
Who is Vulnerable to a Surge in Suicide-Related Tweets? A Case-only Design Study
ABSTRACT
Background:
As the use of social media becomes more widespread, its impact on health cannot be ignored. However, limited research has been conducted on the relationship between social media and suicide.
Objective:
This study aims to identify the characteristics underlying individuals’ vulnerability to suicide brought about by an increase in suicide-related tweets.
Methods:
A case-only design was used to investigate individuals who died by suicide from January 1, 2011 through December 31, 2014. Logistic regression was used to estimate the interaction between the surges in suicide-related tweets and personal characteristics of the suicide victims as case-only odds ratios (OR) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs). For the sensitivity analysis, unexpected deaths other than suicide were considered.
Results:
During the study period, there were 159,490 suicides and 115,072 unexpected deaths, and the number of suicide-related tweets was 2,804,999. Following a three-day lag of a highly tweeted day, there were significant interactions for those who were aged 40 years or younger (OR=1.09, 95% CI 1.03–1.15), male (OR=1.12, 95% CI 1.07–1.18), divorced (OR=1.11, 95% CI 1.03–1.19), and living in urban areas (OR=1.26, 95% CI 1.17–1.35). No significant interactions were observed for other unexpected deaths.
Conclusions:
This study revealed the interactions of personal characteristics associated with susceptibility to suicide-related tweets. In other words, individuals with these characteristics can be interpreted as being vulnerable to surges in suicide-related tweets.
Citation
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Copyright
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