This study examined the relationships between expressions in Tweets, topic choices, and subjective well-being among undergraduates in Japan. The authors conducted a survey with 304 college students and analyzed their Twitter posts using natural language processing (NLP). Based on those who posted over 50 tweets, the authors found that (1) users with higher levels of social skills had fewer negative tweets and higher levels of subjective well-being; (2) frequent users posted both positive and negative tweets but posted more negative than positive tweets; (3) users with fewer negative tweets or with more positive tweets had higher levels of subjective well-being; and (4) “safe” topics such as social events and personal interests had a positive correlation with the users' subjective well-being, while debatable topics such as politics and social issues had a negative correlation with the users' subjective well-being. The findings of this study provide the foundation for applying NLP to analyze the social media posts for businesses and services to understand their consumers' sentiments.

This study investigated how personal characteristics such as generalized trust, self-consciousness and friendship, and desire for self-presentation are related to the subjective well-being of university students who use Twitter in Japan, including the effects of their online communication skills. We conducted a survey in May 2021 with Twitter users and analyzed their log data between January 2019 and June 2021. The log data of 501 Twitter users, including the number of public tweets, retweets, and emotional expressions among different patterns of social media (e.g., Twitter only, Twitter + Instagram, Twitter + LINE + Instagram, etc.) and academic standings, were analyzed using ANOVA and stepwise regression analyses. The results showed that the number of tweets and retweets, with and without photos/videos, increased in 2020 and 2021 compared to 2019, and the ratio of positive sentences remained almost the same for the two-and-a-half-year period of this study. However, the proportion of negative sentences increased slightly. It is clear that the factors which affected the university students’ subjective well-being differed depending on the respective patterns of social media use.

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