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How Depressives Surf the Web

nytimes.com

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Re: How Depressives Surf the Web

#41

Post by SoftwareMaven »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #3

Fascinating stuff. Just today I was looking at the 30-40 tabs I bring up each time I start Chrome and I was wondering: doest having all this data in front of me help me remember to do various internet chores? Or does it get in the way? Better still, is it a sign I'm actually experiencing some other condition that shows itself in my context-switching? I think there's something to this. Having said that, I found this w…

Ironically, I know my internal state and the state identified by the study are antithetical. I realize the states are identified by statistics, but what happens when you really are an outlier?

Re: How Depressives Surf the Web

#42

Post by zaptheimpaler »

electromagnetic wrote: post #26
_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…

It would be simple to create a program to log the usage and recommend the user seek counselling, without having to log thousands of peoples internet usage. I don't get why 1) everyone has to be HAPPY , and 2) why the high ups seem so intent on making sure we're HAPPY . Here's reality: life can be utterly fucking shitty. People get depressed. Then you get over it and life goes on and eventually someone will die, or yo…

in many cases, depression is a mental disorder, not just the opposite of happiness. It's often caused by easily correctable physiological problems. In these cases, it makes sense to correct the underlying factors. In addition, a huge percentage of college students report being depressed. I still disagree with monitoring peoples internet activity, but for privacy reasons, not the reasons you mentioned.

Re: How Depressives Surf the Web

#43

Post by dakrisht »

This is all bullshit. Speculation. And to think it came from the NY Times.

"P2P packets" are signs of depression in a college campus because people are sharing files? Am I reading this right?! They're sharing movies and music - that's where it all started.

Certain users with high email usage?? How can you identify spam vs. actual? How can you state that some people simply aren't busy and receive a ton of email (including professors)?? And then this leads to speculation of "anxiety" symptoms. Haha. Great correlation there.

Who writes this crap.

Not only is the data they collected so broad and irrelevant, it cannot be accurately used against empirical (medical, depression-related) data to come up with some crap story that users that P2P are depressed.

The notion of them logging and analyzing detailed user data in the future is the cherry on top to a fascinatingly stupid read!

Goodnight, back to my IDE

Re: How Depressives Surf the Web

#44

Post by dakrisht »

FJim wrote: post #33

Absolute twaddle. This is not science -- this is the science industry. This work is so subjective on so many levels as to be worse than worthless -- rather than increasing humanities knowledge by even a modicum, this 'research' positively reduces human knowledge by simply adding noise. It's a shame that PhD's can't just lecture and are forced to do research. This is the crap we end up with.

Biggest bullshit I've read all week. Hilarious. Check out the post I just created on this so as to avoid spewing more in your thread!

Re: How Depressives Surf the Web

#45

Post by DanBC »

electromagnetic wrote: post #26
_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…

It would be simple to create a program to log the usage and recommend the user seek counselling, without having to log thousands of peoples internet usage. I don't get why 1) everyone has to be HAPPY , and 2) why the high ups seem so intent on making sure we're HAPPY . Here's reality: life can be utterly fucking shitty. People get depressed. Then you get over it and life goes on and eventually someone will die, or yo…

> Here's reality: life can be utterly fucking shitty. People get depressed. Then you get over it and life goes on and eventually someone will die, or your S.O. will dump your ass and you'll get depressed again. Then you get over it.

There's a difference between being reasonably unsatisfied with life because of poor life situations (grief, for example, is normal) and reactive depression (grief won't go, and now you're depressed not grieving) and other forms of depression. (No rational reason for depression but you are anyway.)

> A very slim number of people get depressed and try to commit suicide.

Compared to what? Suicide rates have been dropping in the most of the UK, but it's still a significant public health issue.

Re: How Depressives Surf the Web

#46

Post by geuis »

Another question about this study is the effect of self-selection. In order for the researchers to collect the specific traffic data for the group of people in the study, I am assuming that the students had to give permission, i.e. sign a waiver, to permit such access.

Given that if I knew I was in a study, and that my internet usage was going to be studied, that would affect my usage of the internet. I might not download movies, or watch as much porn. Perhaps I wouldn't visit Facebook from the university networks.

Even if unconscious of the act, knowledge that they were being studied could easily have affected the resulting data. I would like to see if and how this was controlled for.

Re: How Depressives Surf the Web

#47

Post by notJim »

pjscott wrote: post #11
Tyrant505 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

Wow... I have recently taken courses that taught Baye's Theorem, and even more recently read a long, well-written piece about how even qualified people often misinterpret statistics (the way your parent did which is not congruent with Baye's theorem), and yet I still interpreted the stat in the same, incorrect way.

Re: How Depressives Surf the Web

#48

Post by jim-greer »

geuis wrote: post #46

Another question about this study is the effect of self-selection. In order for the researchers to collect the specific traffic data for the group of people in the study, I am assuming that the students had to give permission, i.e. sign a waiver, to permit such access. Given that if I knew I was in a study, and that my internet usage was going to be studied, that would affect my usage of the internet. I might not dow…

mstromb posted the pdf of the paper: http://web.mst.edu/~chellaps/papers/12_tech-soc_kcmwl.pdf

The section on data collection doesn't sound like there was any opt-in

Re: How Depressives Surf the Web

#49

Post by suprgeek »

The Science in this study is suspect at best (possibly wrong is another interpretation). There is some hand waving about how "privacy concerns" were addressed by not looking at What was happening on the computers but "how the internet was used". then they go on to describe exactly what was happening on the participants computer. They are also using a second-degree correlation: answers on a survey to internet usage; as opposed to a direct correlation - already diagnosed depressives surfing habits.

Re: How Depressives Surf the Web

#50

Post by Shenglong »

My first thought was that this might be fascinating, but it turns out to be more redundant than anything else.

If you're constantly out with friends or playing sports, you probably aren't going to have time to use your email all day, play games, share files, and watch videos. If you're staying at home all day... well, to one extent or another, that sort of defines "depression" in a very broad sense.

I'm not sure how this article made it to the top.

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