Citation

Frey WR. Biomed. Inform. Insights 2018; 10: e1178222618797076.

Affiliation

School of Social Work, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2018, Libertas Academica)

DOI

10.1177/1178222618797076

PMID

30158823

PMCID

PMC6111393

Abstract

As the lives of young people expand further into digital spaces, our understandings of their expressions and language on social media become more consequential for providing individualized and applicable mental health resources. This holds true for young people exposed to high rates of community violence who may also lack access to health resources offline. Social media may provide insights into the impacts of community violence exposure on mental health. However, much of what is shared on social media contains localized language and context, which poses challenges regarding interpretation. In this perspective, I offer insights gained from the Beyond the Bullets: The Complexities and Ethical Challenges of Interpreting Social Media Posts workshop during the Digital Interventions in Mental Health conference in London, England: (1) social media as an underutilized environmental context in mental health services; (2) interpreting the meaning of social media posts is challenging, and there are additional challenges when users are exposed to offline violence and (3) the importance of having various perspectives when interpreting social media posts to build contextually nuanced and theoretically based understandings of digital social behavior.

Language: en

Keywords

Social media; digital mental health; gun violence; qualitative analysis; social work; youth