Nonverbal Signs on Social Media as a Clue for Identifying Mental Health Status

Mental illnesses are a serious concern in the modern world. Depression and anxiety are amongst the most common mental illnesses and affect the quality of life of individuals and their families. With increased communication via social media, new opportunities arise for researchers to identify mental illnesses. In this study, we aimed to investigate the association between different aspects of nonverbal signs observed on social media, and mental illnesses.

We designed a cross-sectional study on 79 medical students at Roozbeh Hospital in Iran. We used a 3-sectioned self-reported questionnaire which included sociodemographic variables of participants and application use, as well as the Persian-language version of the Beck Depression Inventory and Beck Anxiety Inventory.

We demonstrate that there is a meaningful correlation between anxiety/depression score and the meantime of using applications, the number of followers, and the number of followings(P-value<0.05). Moreover, constant use of emoji’s is correlated with higher anxiety/depression scores (P-value<0.05).

 There is an association between time spent on social media and the level of anxiety or depression. understanding the direction of this association is important for early diagnosis and further intervention. Additionally, there are signs on social media that can be utilized for early identification of depression or anxiety.