Mental Health-Related Behaviors and Discussions Among Young Adults: Analysis and Classification.

BACKGROUND: There have been recurring reports of web-based harassment and abuse among adolescents and young adults through anonymous social networks. OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to explore discussions on the popular anonymous social network Yik Yak related to social and mental health messaging behaviors among college students, including cyberbullying, to provide insights into mental health behaviors on college campuses. METHODS: From April 6, 2016, to May 7, 2016, we collected anonymous conversations posted on Yik Yak at 19 universities in 4 different states and performed statistical analyses and text classification experiments on a subset of these messages. RESULTS: We found that prosocial messages were 5.23 times more prevalent than bullying messages. The frequency of cyberbullying messages was positively associated with messages seeking emotional help. We found significant geographic variation in the frequency of messages offering supportive vs bullying messages. Across campuses, bullying and political discussions were positively associated. We also achieved a balanced accuracy of over 0.75 for most messaging behaviors and topics with a support vector machine classifier. CONCLUSIONS: Our results show that messages containing data about students' mental health-related attitudes and behaviors are prevalent on anonymous social networks, suggesting that these data can be mined for real-time analysis. This information can be used in education and health care services to better engage with students, provide insight into conversations that lead to cyberbullying, and reach out to students who need support.

Demographic-Based Content Analysis of Web-Based Health-Related Social Media.

BACKGROUND: An increasing number of patients from diverse demographic groups share and search for health-related information on Web-based social media. However, little is known about the content of the posted information with respect to the users' demographics. OBJECTIVE: The aims of this study were to analyze the content of Web-based health-related social media based on users' demographics to identify which health topics are discussed in which social media by which demographic groups and to help guide educational and research activities. METHODS: We analyze 3 different types of health-related social media: (1) general Web-based social networks Twitter and Google+; (2) drug review websites; and (3) health Web forums, with a total of about 6 million users and 20 million posts. We analyzed the content of these posts based on the demographic group of their authors, in terms of sentiment and emotion, top distinctive terms, and top medical concepts. RESULTS: The results of this study are: (1) Pregnancy is the dominant topic for female users in drug review websites and health Web forums, whereas for male users, it is cardiac problems, HIV, and back pain, but this is not the case for Twitter; (2) younger users (0-17 years) mainly talk about attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and depression-related drugs, users aged 35-44 years discuss about multiple sclerosis (MS) drugs, and middle-aged users (45-64 years) talk about alcohol and smoking; (3) users from the Northeast United States talk about physical disorders, whereas users from the West United States talk about mental disorders and addictive behaviors; (4) Users with higher writing level express less anger in their posts. CONCLUSION: We studied the popular topics and the sentiment based on users' demographics in Web-based health-related social media. Our results provide valuable information, which can help create targeted and effective educational campaigns and guide experts to reach the right users on Web-based social chatter.

A Study of the Demographics of Web-Based Health-Related Social Media Users.

BACKGROUND: The rapid spread of Web-based social media in recent years has impacted how patients share health-related information. However, little work has studied the demographics of these users. OBJECTIVE: Our aim was to study the demographics of users who participate in health-related Web-based social outlets to identify possible links to health care disparities. METHODS: We analyze and compare three different types of health-related social outlets: (1) general Web-based social networks, Twitter and Google+, (2) drug review websites, and (3) health Web forums. We focus on the following demographic attributes: age, gender, ethnicity, location, and writing level. We build and evaluate domain-specific classifiers to infer missing data where possible. The estimated demographic statistics are compared against various baselines, such as Internet and social networks usage of the population. RESULTS: We found that (1) drug review websites and health Web forums are dominated by female users, (2) the participants of health-related social outlets are generally older with the exception of the 65+ years bracket, (3) blacks are underrepresented in health-related social networks, (4) users in areas with better access to health care participate more in Web-based health-related social outlets, and (5) the writing level of users in health-related social outlets is significantly lower than the reading level of the population. CONCLUSIONS: We identified interesting and actionable disparities in the participation of various demographic groups to various types of health-related social outlets. These disparities are significantly distinct from the disparities in Internet usage or general social outlets participation.