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How Depressives Surf the Web

nytimes.com

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Re: How Depressives Surf the Web

#11

Post by pjscott »

Tyrant505 wrote: post #4
jtchang wrote: post #2

Looks like the entire population of HN is in line for some Zoloft. That and I can now refer to the number of tabs I have open as my flow duration entropy number.

Exactly.. So basically people who are engaged fully in the "web" experience are depressed?

Not quite! This is making a statement about conditional probability, but you got the condition reversed: people who are depressed are more likely to be "engaged fully in the 'web' experience".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conditional_probability

To find out the chances that a heavy web user is depressed, you have to also consider the other things that can cause someone to use the web heavily. There's a really slick theorem for calculating this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayes_theorem

Re: How Depressives Surf the Web

#12

Post by Mz »

phene wrote: post #10

P2P? Oh, you must be depressed. Use the internet more often or leave your computer on? Depressed! Tend to surf the web and a variety of sites? How haven't you killed yourself by now?

How haven't you killed yourself by now?

Lack of opportunity?

It turns out thinking hard that "I wish I were dead." is not actually lethal?

Because this is a bullshit study and a lot of the measures are things I correlate with high IQ and boredom?

Re: How Depressives Surf the Web

#13

Post by snitzr »

I've often felt like the internet is a gathering place for people who are stressed out by the real world and seek a refuge. It's a symptom. When the real world causes a certain level of anxiety, this can lead to depression.

If you imagine how people you might label as happy and social IRL use the net, they're online either to work or reinforce their real life connections. For them, the net is a tool rather than a destination. This article is a broad overview, but it seems to make sense in general.

I highly recommend reading Learned Optimism. It's not just some empty feel good self-help book, it has scientific rigor and explanations of the causes of much of depression.

Re: How Depressives Surf the Web

#14

Post by jQueryIsAwesome »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #7
_delirium wrote: post #5

Well, this article started interesting, and ended in a somewhat scary proposal that universities log students' internet usage and data-mine it using robo-depression-screening software that would report them to counselors. The caveat ("raises privacy concerns that would have to be addressed") does not really reassure me... My hope is that's just a cynical eye-on-funding thing thrown in, and the researchers are really…

Also in the past we have learned that there is many times a huge gap between how a technology could be used and how it actually ends up being used.

Totally; some companies may use it to identify depressed employees just to fire them (because they think depressed people is less efficient).

Re: How Depressives Surf the Web

#15

Post by stephengillie »

This study found that almost 1 in 3 students at the Missouri University for Science and Technology, who have the spare time to take part in psychology research, are depressed. Then this study tracked the internet usage of those depressed students to see how depressed people interact with internet services differently than non-depressed people.

Re: How Depressives Surf the Web

#16

Post by genwin »

wickedchicken wrote: post #8
Tyrant505 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly.. So basically people who are engaged fully in the "web" experience are depressed?

> So basically people who are engaged fully in the "web" experience are depressed? How could you read comments on HN, reddit and youtube and not be depressed?

Bingo. Or the news in general. If you're not depressed to some degree you're probably oblivious to what's going on in the world at large, or (possibly worse) don't care.

Re: How Depressives Surf the Web

#17

Post by mstromb »

mwsherman wrote: post #9

Admittedly this article a high-level overview, but I see a lot of hand-waving use of statistical terms. For example, how is “30 percent of the participants met the criteria for depressive symptoms” in line with “10 to 40 percent of college students at some point experience such symptoms”. It’s not: 30% have depressive symptoms now vs 10% having symptoms at some point? One of those two numbers is way off, or they are…

Here's a pdf of the paper: http://web.mst.edu/~chellaps/papers/12_tech-soc_kcmwl.pdf

It's interesting seeing my alma mater show up here. I wouldn't be surprised if Rolla students exhibited a higher rate of depression than the norm. Having spent 4 years there, I knew a lot of people that were bitter about being there. It's a small state engineering school in the middle of nowhere, without any particular pedigree or notoriety, known mostly, at least among other students in the midwest, for it's St. Patrick's Day festivities and drinking culture.

At any rate, I'd certainly want to see a sample from a different or at least more diverse population before I would think my browsing habits said anything about my general mental state. Beyond what was mentioned about, the sample at Rolla was presumably first- and second-year students living in the dorms as the rest would not be sharing an internet connection in a way that makes monitoring per student feasible.

Re: How Depressives Surf the Web

#18

Post by waterlesscloud »

jQueryIsAwesome wrote: post #14
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also in the past we have learned that there is many times a huge gap between how a technology could be used and how it actually ends up being used.

Totally; some companies may use it to identify depressed employees just to fire them (because they think depressed people is less efficient).

Hmm. I wonder if that would be possible to do without risking lawsuits. Wouldn't depression fall under a medical condition?

Re: How Depressives Surf the Web

#19

Post by Agathos »

stephengillie wrote: post #15

This study found that almost 1 in 3 students at the Missouri University for Science and Technology, who have the spare time to take part in psychology research, are depressed. Then this study tracked the internet usage of those depressed students to see how depressed people interact with internet services differently than non-depressed people.

I read the article didn't see any claim that these patterns of usage caused depression. The emphasis seemed to be on using them as a signal for diagnosis of a pre-existing depression.

Re: How Depressives Surf the Web

#20

Post by waterlesscloud »

mstromb wrote: post #17
mwsherman wrote: post #9

Admittedly this article a high-level overview, but I see a lot of hand-waving use of statistical terms. For example, how is “30 percent of the participants met the criteria for depressive symptoms” in line with “10 to 40 percent of college students at some point experience such symptoms”. It’s not: 30% have depressive symptoms now vs 10% having symptoms at some point? One of those two numbers is way off, or they are…

Here's a pdf of the paper: http://web.mst.edu/~chellaps/papers/12_tech-soc_kcmwl.pdf It's interesting seeing my alma mater show up here. I wouldn't be surprised if Rolla students exhibited a higher rate of depression than the norm. Having spent 4 years there, I knew a lot of people that were bitter about being there. It's a small state engineering school in the middle of nowhere, without any particular pedigree or no…

I wonder if engineering school students are more depressed on average. It was certainly my impression while attending one that the students were more stressed than they average college student at other schools.
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