As we reported last time, the pandemic caused a marked increase in feelings posting, and we can see now that that wasn’t simply caused by an increase in social media use. The rise has remained and created a new norm.

As it stands, for the January to August period, the number of people posting how they feel online is up 23.8% compared to 2019, and just about steady (down just 2%) compared to 2021.

To get an understanding of how different emotions compare, let’s break down the above chart at the emotion level.

Happiness and excitement top the list by far, and there’s no sign of that changing. So there’s some positive news for you for once.

The only ranking change on the cards right now is ‘scared’ taking third place from ‘sad’. The gap between them is as small as it’s ever been, so we’ll have to wait and see how that plays out. On top of this, levels for both have dropped significantly since their pandemic rise.

What’s also interesting is that you can pick out major world events in this chart, such as:

• As the reality of the pandemic became apparent you can see marked rises in people saying they felt sad or scared, while excitement and happiness dropped
• The rise in anger in late May coincides with the murder of George Floyd
• The jump in ‘Other’, which contains annoyed, anxious, and stressed, came as Americans went to the polls in the 2020 presidential election. The spike drivers here were for feelings of stress and anxiety
• The three spikes in anger this year all relate to the overturning of Roe v Wade by the US Supreme Court

There are positive stories in the data too, such as happiness peaking when BTS was named artist of the year at the AMAs. What’s abundantly clear is that our social media use is intrinsically linked to our emotions, whether they push us to post more or less.

Emotional shifts

Next we want to lay out how our emotions have changed when we compare years – in this case for the January to August periods in 2019, 2021, and 2022.

As we already know, all types of emotion posts are up compared to the pre-pandemic world of 2019. The number of users saying they were scared, anxious, and angry grew the most, which is to be expected considering the events of the last couple of years.

But when we compare 2022 to 2021, there’s signs of a shift in the opposite direction for some emotions. While excitement and happiness have remained stable, we can see much larger falls for anxiety, sadness, and stress.

There’s a long way to go to see the negative posts return to pre-pandemic levels, but to see social media becoming a slightly more positive place is surely a good thing.

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