ArticleNpj mental health research2022
Head versus heart: social media reveals differential language of loneliness from depression.
Article in Npj mental health research, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 13 papers.
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Who cites it
13 citing papers in PubMed, 19 citations in OpenAlex.
- The Role of Social Media Interaction in Developing Intercultural Digital Communication Competence: A Systematic Literature Review.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Review
- Media hype regarding psychedelic treatments for depression and PTSD from 2017 to 2024.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Digital phenotyping and ASCVD risk: An exploratory cross-sectional analysis using online behavioral data.American heart journal plus : cardiology research and practice · 2026Article
- Multidimensional Loneliness Among University Students: A Latent Profile Approach.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2025Article
- Understanding Loneliness Through Analysis of Twitter and Reddit Data: Comparative Study.Interactive journal of medical research · 2025Article
- Loneliness and socioemotional memory.The British journal of social psychology · 2025Article
- How developments in natural language processing help us in understanding human behaviour.Nature human behaviour · 2024Review
- Disentangling boredom from depression using the phenomenology and content of involuntary autobiographical memories.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Synthesizing perspectives: Crafting an Interdisciplinary view of social media's impact on young people's mental health.PloS one · 2024Article
- Linguistic markers for major depressive disorder: a cross-sectional study using an automated procedure.Frontiers in psychology · 2024Article
- Analysing loneliness forum posts, the comments they elicit, and the responses to these comments.PLOS mental health · 2024Article
- Analyzing text message linguistic features: Do people with depression communicate differently with their close and non-close contacts?Behaviour research and therapy · 2023Review
- Different Affordances on Facebook and SMS Text Messaging Do Not Impede Generalization of Language-Based Predictive Models.Proceedings of the ... International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media. International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
8 authors at 4 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
We study the language differentially associated with loneliness and depression using 3.4-million Facebook posts from 2986 individuals, and uncover the statistical associations of survey-based depression and loneliness with both dictionary-based (Linguistic Inquiry Word Count 2015) and open-vocabulary linguistic features (words, phrases, and topics). Loneliness and depression were found to have highly overlapping language profiles, including sickness, pain, and negative emotions as (cross-sectional) risk factors, and social relationships and activities as protective factors. Compared to depression, the language associated with loneliness reflects a stronger cognitive focus, including more references to cognitive processes (i.e., differentiation and tentative language, thoughts, and the observation of irregularities), and cognitive activities like reading and writing. As might be expected, less lonely users were more likely to reference social relationships (e.g., friends and family, romantic relationships), and use first-person plural pronouns. Our findings suggest that the mechanisms of loneliness include self-oriented cognitive activities (i.e., reading) and an overattention to the interpretation of information in the environment. These data-driven ecological findings suggest interventions for loneliness that target maladaptive social cognitions (e.g., through reframing the perception of social environments), strengthen social relationships, and treat other affective distress (i.e., depression).
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.