The digital footprints of adolescent depression, social rejection and victimization of bullying on Facebook

Online Social Networking Sites (SNSs) are immensely popular, especially among adolescents. Activity on these sites leaves digital footprints, which may be used to study online behavioral correlates of adolescent psychological distress and to, ultimately, improve detection and intervention efforts. In the present work, we explore the digital footprints of adolescent depression, social rejection, and victimization of bullying on Facebook. Two consecutive studies were conducted among Israeli adolescents (N = 86 and N = 162). We collected a range of Facebook activity features, as well as self-report measurements of depression, social rejection, and victimization of bullying. Findings from Study 1 demonstrate that explicit distress references in Facebook postings (e.g., "Life sucks, I want to die") predict depression among adolescents, but that such explicit distress references are rare. In Study 2, we applied a bottom-up research methodology along with the previous top-down, theory driven approach. Study 2 demonstrates that less explicit features of Facebook behavior predict social rejection and victimization of bullying. These features include 'posts by others', 'check-ins', 'gothic and dark content', 'other people in pictures', and 'positive attitudes towards others'. The potential, promises and limitations of using digital Facebook footprints for the detection of adolescent psychological distress are discussed. •Two consecutive studies investigated whether and how Social Network Sites (SNS) can be used to detect adolescents' distress.•Study 1 focused on explicit references to distress and Study 2 also examined less explicit Facebook activities.•Explicit depression references were rare, but when they appeared they predicted "real life", offline depression.•Social rejection and victimization of bullying can also be detected through less explicit, digital footprints.•These digital footprints include for example 'posts by others', 'gothic and dark content', and 'other people in pictures'.