Table 1.

Qualitative themes and definitions for participant posts and their friends’ responses.

Themes		Definition
Participant post
	Emotion	Emotion or feeling that does not use the word depressed.
	Bad day	Reference to having a bad day or a bad one-time experience doing something.
	Song	Lyrics of a song or mention of a music video.
	Private message	A type of message that is only available to the recipient via Facebook, email, phone, text.
	Depressed mood	Reference to symptoms of a major depressive episode, which included (1) depressed mood, (2) decreased interest or pleasure in day-to-day activities, (3) increase/decrease in appetite, (4) increased/decreased sleep, (5) psychomotor agitation or retardation, (6) loss of energy, (7) feelings of guilt, worthlessness, negative self-appraisal, (8) indecisiveness, (9) difficulty in concentrating, (10) recurrent thoughts of death or suicidal ideation.
	Emoji/emoticon	The emoticon of a sad face.
	Quote	The use of someone other than the profile owner’s words to express emotions.
	Joke	Making fun of depression or being sarcastic.
	Asked for help	Follow-up the content of the post with saying need help.
Friend response
	Support or motivating gestures	An individual saying supporting or motivating words to the participant.
	Asked a question	Questioned individual on how they were doing.
	Contact in alternative communication	An individual contacted the participant using some other form of communication, such as email, text, phone call, etc.
	Liked	An individual clicked like to their post or commented on Facebook.
	Private message	Contact the individual through nonpublic methods.
	Empathize	Understand and feel the feelings of another, “walk a mile in their shoes.”
	Sympathize	Compassion or commiserating with another, “I’m sorry that you are feeling this way.”
	Negative	An individual responding in an unsupportive way.
	No response	Received no response from friends after they posted.