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. 2022 Oct 18;1(1):16.
doi: 10.1038/s44184-022-00014-7.

Head versus heart: social media reveals differential language of loneliness from depression

Tingting Liu  1   2 , Lyle H Ungar  3   4 , Brenda Curtis  5 , Garrick Sherman  3 , Kenna Yadeta  5 , Louis Tay  6 , Johannes C Eichstaedt  7 , Sharath Chandra Guntuku  8
Affiliations

Head versus heart: social media reveals differential language of loneliness from depression

Tingting Liu et al. Npj Ment Health Res. .

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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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no competing interests.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1. Loneliness and depression have large overlaps in language markers, illustrated by words and phrases and top four Facebook topics.
All correlations in the table are controlled for age and gender. The collections of words and phrases results are present with a minimum significant level at p < .05. Risk = correlations with r > 0, protective = correlations with r < 0. r = Pearson’s correlation coefficient, the range of r values: [min r-value, max r-value]. 95% CI 95% confidence interval: [lower bound, upper bound]. ***p < .001, **p < .01. *p < .05. All p-values were corrected using the Benjamini–Hochberg False Discovery Rate correction. The font size of the word in each word cloud represents the correlation strength, the larger the size the stronger the correlation was.
Fig. 2
Fig. 2. Unique Facebook topics predicting loneliness versus depression.
Distinct Latent Dirichlet Allocation Topics were extracted and correlated with depression and loneliness scores, controlling for loneliness and depression scores in addition to age and gender, respectively. The top 15 correlated topics were categorized and labeled by two psychologists and presented with one example under each label to showcase the topic contents. The font size of the word in each word cloud represents the correlation strength, the larger the size the stronger the correlation was. Risk = correlations with r > 0, protective = correlations with r < 0. r = Pearson’s correlation coefficient. 95% CI 95% confidence interval: [lower bound, upper bound]. All correlations in the table are significant at the p < .01 level. ***p < .001, **p < .01. All p-values were corrected using the Benjamini–Hochberg False Discovery Rate correction.
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