Social media's role in reinforcing depression: Insights from Stellenbosch University

A Stellenbosch University researcher has found that negative emotions can be reinforced through social media interactions, with people experiencing depression particularly affected.

For people living with depression, the internet can offer something that is sometimes difficult to find offline: a space where they can speak openly, find others who understand what they are going through and feel less alone.

But those online connections may also have a darker side, with negative emotions potentially reinforcing one another as people interact on social media.

This is what Dr Kurt Marais, a lecturer in the Department of Logistics at Stellenbosch University (SU), set out to investigate as part of his recently completed doctorate in operations research.

Marais studied how emotional sentiment moves through online communities, focusing specifically on depression , and explored how this process could be measured and better understood.

His research focused on a depression-related subreddit on Reddit, where users from different countries, age groups and backgrounds share their experiences, seek advice and offer support to others.

Over a period of 56 days, Marais analysed 12 133 unique posts. The posts averaged 178 words, although the longest contained 5 192 words. Most of the contributions came from users in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, India and Germany.

Among the words that appeared most frequently were “like”, “feel”, “life” and “want”, language that reflected users' attempts to describe their emotional experiences and their desire to feel something beyond depression.

“This is reflected in the frequent use of first-person stop words such as ‘I’, ‘am’, ‘my’ and ‘me’. Words such as ‘feeling’, ‘depression’ and ‘thinking’ appear in the most frequently used word list alongside ‘feel’, ‘depressed’ and ‘think’, respectively.”

The research also uncovered patterns in when people were most likely to post.

Activity increased at the beginning of the week, with Mondays and Tuesdays recording more posts than other days. Saturdays were comparatively quieter.

The day of the week also appeared to influence how people responded. Monday posts attracted more upvotes, while Saturday posts received more comments.

Marais also found that the online community became particularly active late at night.

“Interestingly, the number of posts increased from 10pm until 5am. This supports previous studies showing that people living with depression tend to be more active on social media at night.”