Measuring the Impact of Anxiety on Online Social Interactions

For individuals with anxiety disorders, maladaptive feelings and negative beliefs can interfere with daily activities and importantly, social relationships. Literature has examined both direct and indirect influences of an individual’s anxiety on their social interactions, however, how they co-vary temporally remains less explored. As individuals appropriate social media platforms more pervasively, can anxiety play an equally significant role in impacting one’s online social interactions? This paper seeks to answer this question. Employing a dataset of 200 Twitter users, their timeline, and social network data, we examine the relationship between manifested anxiety and various attributes of social interaction of a user by employing Granger causality and time series forecasting approaches. We observe that increases in anxiety levels of an individual result in increased future interaction with weak ties, indicating a tendency to seek support from the broader online community. We discuss how our findings provide novel insights and practical lessons around the impact of an individual’s mental health state on their online social interactions.