What Your Social Media Posts Say About Your Stress Level Right Now

• The mental health of teenagers is most impacted by the pandemic.
• Increases in addiction and substance use-related content on social media may indicate that the public is self-medicating.
• Tweets show more negative indicators and trends of mental health in states that are more harshly impacted by COVID-19.

As stay-in-place orders continue to stay in place, many people turn to social media outlets to connect with others and express their feelings about the pandemic.

But can our posts represent how we’re psychologically and emotionally handling the situation without us realizing it?

Amit Sheth, PhD, a professor and founding director of the Artificial Intelligence Institute at the University of South Carolina, says yes.

Since mid-March, Sheth has used artificial intelligence techniques to collect and analyze over 700 million tweets on Twitter and about 700,000 news articles about the COVID-19 pandemic.

His intention is to better understand how Americans are dealing with depression, anxiety, and addiction caused by COVID-19.

“The primary analysis shows the expected impact of triggers — increased cases and deaths, and school and business closings — that we capture as a Social Quality Index, which aggregates indicators of mental health and addiction,” he told Healthline.

By dissecting the data in different ways, such as by geography, time, and demographics, Sheth said patterns emerge.

For example, different generations show different responses to the COVID-19 pandemic.

He used algorithms to estimate age and categorize into three age ranges:

• GenZ: Under 23 years old
• Millennials: 23 to 35 years old
• Other: Anyone older than 35

While teenagers and young working adults are experiencing the same objective threats, Sheth said they interpret and respond to them differently.

“Young working adults revealed a consistent initial negative reaction that tended to stabilize over time. Aggregated measures of mental health can mask underlying concerning patterns, particularly in teenagers. They may not explicitly demonstrate increased anxiety and depression content initially, but instead, compensate with substance abuse. Though maladaptive, this pattern may suggest a lack of self-awareness,” he said.

Carol Landau, PhD, professor of psychiatry at Brown University and author of “Mood Prep 101: A Parent’s Guide to Preventing Depression and Anxiety in College-Bound Teens,” said rates of depression and anxiety have been rising in teens since before the pandemic.

While young adults have maintained some life structure while working from home, Landau says teens have been isolated from their friends, which is a major motivator for going to school.

“Teens often turn to substances; it may not be a lack of ‘self-awareness’ so much as a lack of access to care,” Landau told Healthline.