@article{mao-2026-computational,
    title = "A Computational Diachronic Analysis of Gen {Z} Mental Health Discourse: A Large-scale {R}eddit Corpus Study from Pre- to Post-{COVID}",
    author = "Mao, Felix",
    editor = "Piperidis, Stelios  and
      Bel, N{\'u}ria  and
      van den Heuvel, Henk  and
      Ide, Nancy  and
      Krek, Simon  and
      Toral, Antonio",
    journal = "International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation",
    volume = "main",
    month = may,
    year = "2026",
    address = "Palma de Mallorca, Spain",
    publisher = "ELRA Language Resource Association",
    url = "https://preview.aclanthology.org/ingest-lrec/2026.lrec-main.874/",
    pages = "11199--11208",
    abstract = "Generation Z{'}s mental health discourse has been uniquely shaped by digital saturation and the COVID-19 pandemic. This study introduces a large-scale corpus of Gen Z mental health discourse on Reddit, comprising over 3 million posts across 11 subreddits (2017{--}2025), identified through behavioral cross-posting between mental health and Gen Z-identified communities. Using a hybrid methodology that integrates statistical corpus linguistics with NLP techniques, we conduct diachronic keyness analysis, sentiment tracking, and topic modeling to examine lexical, syntactic, and semantic patterns across pre-, during-, and post-COVID periods. Our analysis reveals: (1) ritualized support exchanges more pronounced in Gen Z where highly negative self-disclosure functions as an authenticity signal; (2) a pandemic-induced reframing of existing mental health topics, particularly a rise in physical symptoms, followed by a sustained post-pandemic sentiment decline; and (3) a generational divergence where Gen Z favors abstract, existential concerns, unlike the pragmatic focus of non-Gen Z users. This study contributes a replicable approach for analyzing youth discourse and underscores the importance of culturally and linguistically informed digital mental health interventions, which can support Gen Z{'}s modes of expressing distress rather than pathologizing them."
}