Previously submitted to: JMIR Mental Health (no longer under consideration since Nov 08, 2025)
Date Submitted: Nov 7, 2025
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited.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.
Social Big Data as a Potential Predictor of Youth Mental Health: A Systematic Review
ABSTRACT
Background:
Social media platforms generate rich data that can offer insights into youth mental health. Understanding how these data were associated with youth mental health is essential for uncovering the mechanisms of social media and youth mental health.
Objective:
The objective of this systematic review is to synthesise evidence on the association between social big data variables and mental health outcomes among young people.
Methods:
This review was pre-registered in PROSPERO. Studies were retrieved from five databases, namely PsycINFO, Web of Science, IEEE, PubMed, and Scopus, by using a predefined search strategy on 26 July 2023 and updated on 10 September 2024. One of the Study Quality Assessment Tools was used to evaluate the quality of the included studies.
Results:
Thirty-five studies (23 cross-sectional,12 longitudinal) were included with sample sizes ranging from 21 to 20,112. Data was collected from various social media platforms, with Facebook being used most frequently. Social big data variables could be divided into four categories, including content characteristics, social interaction characteristics and experience, social network characteristics, and social media usage characteristics. Most frequent social big data variables studied are psychological states and self-presentation, and emotion variables. Suicide, depression, substance use, emotional states, and self-harm were the mental health outcomes analysed most frequently.
Conclusions:
These findings indicate that the mental health of young people is associated with some social big data variables, in particular, negative emotions and psychological state and self-presentation. Some results suggest that social big data offer promising opportunities for early identification, monitoring and prediction of youth mental health. Future research should emphasise model transparency, vulnerable young people, specific age groups and integration into clinical e-mental health systems. Clinical Trial: PROSPERO (registration number: CRD42024519146) https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/PROSPERO/view/CRD42024519146
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