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Depression
Negative Moods Are Revealed in Teen Girls’ Language
New research finds girls use more “I/me” words when they’re feeling bad.
Posted January 15, 2024 Reviewed by Devon Frye
Even without realizing it, we can communicate feelings of depression in our facial expressions, the way we move, and in what or how much we say to others. One linguistic marker of depression that has long interested researchers is the use of first-person pronouns like I, me, and mine. When people are depressed or anxious, they tend to become more self-focused, so it makes sense that several studies across multiple languages have linked using more first-person pronouns with depression.
In a new study, researchers examined whether smartphone messages sent by adolescent girls could reveal signs of depression or anxiety. They found that when girls were in a worse mood than usual, their smartphone keystrokes seemed to indicate more self-focus.
Smartphones tend to be the primary way teens keep in touch with their peers and maintain these relationships. In the U.S., nearly all adolescents either have their own smartphone or one they can use regularly.
Adolescents—and especially adolescent girls—tend to be exquisitely sensitive to the ins and outs of social relationships. And adolescent girls are particularly vulnerable to depression or anxiety. New research led by scientists at the University of Oregon took a close look at the emotional lives of adolescent girls, using messages the girls sent via their smartphones as clues to their moods.
For this new study, which was published in the journal Clinical Psychological Science, researchers carefully analyzed the smartphone messages sent by a group of thirty adolescent girls (ages 11-15), most of whom were recruited from two school districts in Oregon. All of the girls were already enrolled in a multi-year program of research focused on adolescent girls’ development.
For this specific study, the girls first downloaded an app to their smartphone that recorded their keystrokes for four weeks. They were instructed to keep using their phone as they typically would. The girls in the study also completed assessments focused on symptoms of anxiety and depression.
During the weeks when the girls’ keystrokes on their phones were being recorded, the researchers also employed a tool called “ecological momentary assessment” (or EMA). This increasingly popular research approach involves collecting data about participants' feelings or experiences in real-time, throughout their everyday lives. Every morning, the girls would receive an alert asking them about their mood over the previous day. The girls rated how they had been feeling on a scale from 0-100.
The researchers used these combined sources of data to look for links between what the girls were typing into their phones and how they were feeling. The analyses focused only on keystrokes from apps girls would typically use to communicate with others: social media apps, email, and texts.
Overall, when the girls in the study were feeling worse than usual, they used more first-person pronouns in their texts, posts, and messaging. This was true regardless of whether the girls had high or low symptoms of depression at the start of the study.
This finding is consistent with the notion that negative emotions can turn our focus inward, while being in a good mood makes it easier to focus on the things and people around us. Interestingly, the researchers also searched the girls’ keyboard communications for negative emotion words (think sad, anxious, or lonely), but didn’t find evidence that these types of words were linked with the girls’ scores on measures of depression or anxiety.
In addition to using more “I” or “me” focused language, when girls were in a worse mood, they tended to text more words. When they were in a better-than-usual mood, they texted fewer words. However, this pattern only held for girls who had a more negative overall mood over the course of the study.
This finding could suggest that these girls were reaching out to others for support when their moods were particularly negative (a positive coping mechanism), but it could also suggest that these girls were using their smartphones to ruminate with others about their negative experiences (a more negative coping mechanism). A limitation of the study is that researchers could not identify which keystrokes were from private communications to a friend (e.g, a text saying, “I feel so awful today, can we hang out?”) vs. public posts on social media (e.g., an Instagram post with the caption “I feel like everything is terrible”).
This novel study is a reminder of how quick we can be to turn inward and focus on ourselves when we’re in a negative mood, even though breaking out of this self-focus can be a powerful mood booster. If you feel yourself slipping into “me, me, me” mode, try to engage in a task that breaks your self-focus. If your text messages and posts seem to be all about you, try to connect with others by asking them about their own lives and listening carefully when they respond.
