Understanding Correlations of Loneliness in India and USA

Abstract

Loneliness is a global public health issues contributing to a variety of mental and physical health issues. It also increases the risk of life-threatening conditions as well as contributes to burden on the economy in terms of the number of days lost to productivity. Loneliness is a highly varied concept though, which is a result of multiple factors. To understand loneliness this paper carries out a comparative analysis of USA and India through Twitter data on the keywords associated with loneliness. The comparative analysis on loneliness is in the vein of comparative public health literature and to contribute to develop a global public health map on loneliness. The results showed that the dynamics of loneliness through the topics correlated vary across geographical locations. Social media data can be used to capture the dynamics of loneliness which can vary from one place to another depending on the socioeconomic and cultural norms and sociopolitical policies.