Trigger Warning: This article discusses suicide attempts, thoughts of suicide, and suicidal context. If you are struggling, please reach out for help.
Texting has become a way of life. Few generations are aware that there was life before texting. Born into wifi and instant communication, younger generations have learned how to express themselves through emoticons and emoticons. Communicating with peers and family members via text, one is able to skew what they are trying to express. By texting about emotional matters, people feel they can compartmentalize the depth of their emotional experience by using emojis or simple language in text. It can be easy for a friend or a family member to miss the subtext of a conversation, which might indicate that the person they are talking to is struggling with depression, anxiety, and even thoughts of suicide.
This confused communication style translates to social media as well. Social media platforms are designing algorithms to notice the use of words, lyrics, or even pictures which might indicate self-harm, threat of suicide, or a problem with mental health. Talking openly about suicide attempts, depression, or anxiety is helpful to staying out of your head and helping others. However, social media platforms and texting conversations aren’t always the most effective way to get help.
Below is a collection of information from The Daily Mail UK, citing numerous research efforts analyzing the context of texts and social media posts.
If you are struggling with depression, anxiety, and thoughts of suicide, please call the National Suicide Prevention Hotline at 800-273-TALK or text the Crisis Text Line at 741741.
- Words like nervous, sometimes, hard, and feeling can indicate anxiety, according to the analysis provided by The Crisis Text Line
- Messages with a context of stress include words like bad, guess, and anymore
- Stress is also made evident through the use of the words mom and parents
- The crying face emoji might be a more effective indication of distress than using blatantly obvious words like suicide
- Wednesday is apparently “the most anxiety-provoking day of the week,” the article reports, and “crises involving self-harm often happen in the darkest hours of the night”
- Research into Twitter analyzed hundreds of emotionally charged tweets from “…users who had talked openly about a suicide attempt” as well as tweets from a control group who had no displays of suicidal context. “… The researchers found that some in the group that talked about attempting suicide employed a narrow range of emoji representing sadness more frequently, such as blue or broken hearts.”
Life is worth living. LEAD Recovery Center wants to show you how you can become a leader in your life and live it to the fullest by learning how to thrive. For information on our extended care programs for substance abuse, self-harm, and mental health, as well as other issues, call 1-800-380-0012.
