JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Hikikomori syndrome is a form of severe social withdrawal prevalent in Japan but is also a worldwide psychiatric issue. Twitter offers valuable insights into personal experiences with mental health conditions, particularly among isolated individuals or hard-to-reach populations.

Objective:

This study aims to examine trends in firsthand and secondhand experiences reported on Twitter (X) between 2021-2023 in the Japanese language.

Methods:

Tweets were collected from the Twitter Academic Research API filtered for keywords: ‘#引きこもり,’ ‘#ひきこもり,’ ‘#hikikomori,’ ‘#ニート,’ ‘#脱ひきこもり,’ ‘#不登校,’ and ‘#自宅警備員’. The Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT) language model was used to analyze all native Japanese-language posts collected. Themes and sub-themes were then inductively coded for in-depth topic exploration of topic clusters relevant to first and secondhand experiences with hikikomori syndrome.

Results:

We collected 2,018,822 tweets, which was narrowed down to 379,265 tweets in native Japanese-language from January 2021-January 2023. After examining topic clusters outputted by BERT, 4 topics were determined relevant to study aims. 400 of the most highly interacted tweets from these topic clusters were manually annotated for inclusion and exclusion, of which 159 tweets were identified as relevant to hikikomori experiences. Of these relevant tweets, 78 were identified as firsthand and 81 as secondhand accounts. Within firsthand reports, themes identified included seeking social support, personal anecdotes, debunking misconceptions, and emotional ranting. Within secondhand reports, themes included seeking social support, personal anecdotes, seeking and giving advice, and advocacy against negative stigma of hikikomori.

Conclusions:

This study provides new insights into experiences reported by online users regarding hikikomori syndrome specific to Japanese-speaking populations. Although not yet found in diagnostic manuals classifying mental disorders, the rise of online lifestyles as a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic, raised the importance of discussions regarding hikikomori syndrome in online spaces. Results indicate that social media platforms may represent a virtual space for those experiencing hikikomori syndrome to engage in social interaction, advocacy against stigmatization, and participation in a community that can be maintained through a virtual barrier and minimized sense of social anxiety.