Analyzing Trends of Loneliness Through Large-Scale Analysis of Social Media Postings: Observational Study.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Loneliness has become a public health problem described as an epidemic, and it has been argued that digital behavior such as social media posting affects loneliness.

Objective

The aim of this study is to expand knowledge of the determinants of loneliness by investigating online postings in a social media forum devoted to loneliness. Specifically, this study aims to analyze the temporal trends in loneliness and their associations with topics of interest, especially with those related to mental health determinants.

Methods

We collected a total of 19,668 postings from 11,054 users in the loneliness forum on Reddit. We asked seven crowdsourced workers to imagine themselves as writing 1 of 236 randomly chosen posts and to answer the short-form UCLA Loneliness Sc

SUBMITTER: Mazuz K 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7199140 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature