TY  - JOUR
PY  - 2023//
TI  - A linguistic analysis of Instagram captions between adolescent suicide decedents and living controls
JO  - Crisis
A1  - Walker, Alex
A1  - Zirikly, Ayah
A1  - Stockbridge, Melissa
A1  - Wilcox, Holly C.
SP  - ePub
EP  - ePub
VL  - ePub
IS  - ePub
N2  - BACKGROUND: Suicide rates continue to rise for adolescents in the United States. 62% of teenagers use Instagram, and as technology and research in this domain advance, social media posts could provide insights into near-term adolescent risk states and could inform new strategies for suicide prevention. This study analyzed language in captions of teenagers' Instagram accounts in the 3 months before suicide and compared caption language to matched living controls. <br><br>METHOD: The study identified 89 teenagers who died by suicide using obituaries and news reports and 89 matched living control teenagers. Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) software was used to test for differences in specific language categories across linguistic, psychological, and topical categories (e.g., word count, tone, grammar, affective, cognitive, social, punctuation marks, etc.). <br><br>RESULTS: Significant differences between suicide decedents and living controls were found. Adolescent suicide decedents used more words per sentence, more references to sadness, male individuals, drives, and leisure and fewer verbs and references to they, affiliation, achievement, and power. Limitations: Methodological limitations include the use of only public accounts, small sample size, occasional short posts, and lack of adjustment for multiple testing. <br><br>CONCLUSION: Although the sample size is relatively small and only included youth with public accounts, we identified differences in Instagram caption language between adolescents who died by suicide as compared to living controls.<p />  <p>Language: en</p>
LA  - en
SN  - 0227-5910
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1027/0227-5910/a000928
ID  - ref1
ER  -