Social Media Insights Into US Mental Health During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Longitudinal Analysis of Twitter Data

Abstract

Background The COVID-19 pandemic led to unprecedented mitigation efforts that disrupted the daily lives of millions. Beyond the general health repercussions of the pandemic itself, these measures also present a challenge to the world’s mental health and health care systems. Considering that traditional survey methods are time-consuming and expensive, we need timely and proactive data sources to respond to the rapidly evolving effects of health policy on our population’s mental health. Many people in the United States now use social media platforms such as Twitter to express the most minute details of their daily lives and social relations. This behavior is expected to increase during the COVID-19 pandemic, rendering social media data a rich field to understand personal well-being. Objective This study aims to answer three research questions: (1) What themes emerge from a corpus of US tweets about COVID-19? (2) To what extent did social media use increase during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic? and (3) Does sentiment change in response to the COVID-19 pandemic? Methods We analyzed 86,581,237 public domain English language US tweets collected from an open-access public repository in three steps. First, we characterized the evolution of hashtags over time using latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) topic modeling. Second, we increased the granularity of this analysis by downloading Twitter timelines of a large cohort of individuals (n=354,738) in 20 major US cities to assess changes in social media use. Finally, using this timeline data, we examined collective shifts in public mood in relation to evolving pandemic news cycles by analyzing the average daily sentiment of all timeline tweets with the Valence Aware Dictionary and Sentiment Reasoner (VADER) tool. Results LDA topics generated in the early months of the data set corresponded to major COVID-19–specific events. However, as state and municipal governments began issuing stay-at-home orders, latent themes shifted toward US-related lifestyle changes rather than global pandemic-related events. Social media volume also increased significantly, peaking during stay-at-home mandates. Finally, VADER sentiment analysis scores of user timelines were initially high and stable but decreased significantly, and continuously, by late March. Conclusions Our findings underscore the negative effects of the pandemic on overall population sentiment. Increased use rates suggest that, for some, social media may be a coping mechanism to combat feelings of isolation related to long-term social distancing. However, in light of the documented negative effect of heavy social media use on mental health, social media may further exacerbate negative feelings in the long-term for many individuals. Thus, considering the overburdened US mental health care structure, these findings have important implications for ongoing mitigation efforts.

More Frequent Internet Use during the COVID-19 Pandemic Associates with Enhanced Quality of Life and Lower Depression Scores in Middle-Aged and Older Adults

“…However, the results regarding information-searching also highlight the potential downsides of internet use. This accords with a recent study [ 27 ] showing generally increased use of social media in 2020, which for some served as a coping mechanism to combat isolation, but caused deleterious effects on mental health in others: the role of greater exposure to crisis-related news was important in explaining this. Thus, while the current findings support the suggestion that addressing the “digital divide” and implementing strategies that facilitate internet use amongst older people might benefit mental health and counter isolation during the crisis [ 5 ], some forms of information access might not be beneficial.…”

Mental Health among Adults during the COVID-19 Pandemic Lockdown: A Cross-Sectional Multi-Country Comparison

“…We also found that higher levels of resilient coping and hope were associated with reduced anxiety and depression symptoms, highlighting the potential protective effects of resilient coping, positive psychosocial strength, and proactive behaviors during public health crises [ 18 , 19 ]. Our results suggest that interventions that include strategies to enhance resilient coping and build hope such as community-wide mindfulness-based stress reduction training [ 34 ], web-based programs to promote positive psychology [ 35 ] and use of social media to enhance social connectedness and support [ 36 ], may be beneficial and help prevent mental health symptoms [ 33 ].…”

“…Future research should include more representative samples and multiple follow-ups to further our understanding of the short- and long-term effects of the COVID-19 lockdown on the mental health of the global population. Future studies should also develop population-based, culturally appropriate interventions that promote positive mental health and mitigate risk exposures in order to reduce the mental health burden during this and other global emergencies [ 34 , 35 , 36 ].…”

Qualitative analysis of visual risk communication on twitter during the Covid-19 pandemic

“…Various world leaders have utilised the platform to inform, boost morale and prompt political discussion [ 36 ]. Given such uptake, it is not surprising that health measures trended in the Twittersphere [ 37 – 39 ]. This study documents several health risk measures communicated, often in combination.…”

“…This pattern could reflect citizens’ desire for official guidance at the outset of the pandemic when everything was in a state of uncertainty. The shift towards individual voices from March onwards aligns with the stay-at-home mandates when individual social media use generally increased [ 39 ]. The prominence of individual voices highlights the importance of citizens (particularly influencers) sharing health messages among their networks, enabling health messages to reach broader segments of the population and promoting solidarity and inclusiveness.…”