
Instagram photos reveal predictive markers of depression - minimaxir
https://arxiv.org/abs/1608.03282
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erdevs
Well, I came in skeptical about this, but the analysis seems pretty solid.

To;dr: fairly strong and reliable correlation between depression and posting
images that are bluer, grayer and darker. This is predictive in that users can
be identified as depressed before they are disgnosed. # of faces appearing in
user pics was also indicative of depression. Fewer faces per picture
correlated with depression. # of comments more weakly correlated with
depression, and # of likes was negatively correlated. Mechanical Turk-tasked
humans were also able to fairly accurately identify depressed users, but often
identified different users than the machine.

Statistical methods: Bayesian feature extraction with uninformed priors.
100-tree random forest for classification.

Some points of caution: depression is a broad, fairly fuzzy term. The authors
acknowledge that this complicates matters. Some self-selection bias possible,
as users had to provide permission to access Instagram streams and many users
opted _not_ to.

~~~
glenda
This seems pretty intuitive to me. I don't need this paper to know that
depressed people post darker pictures. But it is kind of interesting to see
this 'formalized'

Also, I think detecting depression premtively via social media is a terrifying
idea.

~~~
et-al
Well I was skeptical, wondering if maybe people posted darker / grayer images
because of where they live; so seasonal affective depression (SAD) was causing
the depression, not that depression was swaying people's filter choices.
However this study seems to account for that causation (I only skimmed it
quickly):

"We also checked metadata to assess whether an Instagram­ provided filter was
applied to alter the appearance of a photograph."

[...]

"A closer look at filter usage in depressed versus healthy participants
provided additional texture. Instagram filters were used differently by
depressed and healthy individuals. In particular, depressed participants were
less likely than healthy participants to use any filters at all. When
depressed participants did employ filters, they most disproportionately
favored the “Inkwell” filter, which converts color photographs to black­ and­
white images. Conversely, healthy participants most disproportionately favored
the Valencia filter, which lightens the tint of photos."

> _Also, I think detecting depression premtively via social media is a
> terrifying idea._

Yeah, they also called their model "Pre­-diagnosis". :)

~~~
ethanbond
That doesn't account for editing outside of Instagram, though, which many
people do exclusively.

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privateersman
This may not be a good thing. Always remember that social media is used by
industry as a means of carrying out background checks. What's this? One of our
job applicants has a poor mental health rating? Let's pick the other one
instead.

~~~
sneak
...which is the right of the employer. They are free to discriminate based on
social media contents, shirt color, or any other non-protected criteria they
choose.

Too many misspellings or rageful comments on social media would be a clear NO
HIRE signal for me.

Why shouldn't they be?

~~~
sevenless
What about the knock-on effects of everyone doing that: a society where it's
common knowledge that the 'wrong kind' of public speech can make you
unemployable?

Isn't that kind of totalitarian?

~~~
lgieron
I think we're already there - stand on a corner of your street and yell ALL
BUSINESS IS EVIL!! and you're pretty much unemployable in nearby businesses.
Do it publicly and under your own name on the internet and you're unemployable
globally by businesses who bother to check. And why would they hire you? You
consider them evil after all.

~~~
sevenless
But how is this fair or moral?

If someone lived in the USSR, wouldn't it be right for them to protest against
communism, even if they had to participate in the communist system to survive?

Would you tell them they should starve if they were against communism?

~~~
colejohnson66
If you think all businesses are bad and go work in a grocery store and
complain about "The Man" to customers, then you'll be fired. It seems
reasonable to not bother with them in the first place. A better "communism"
analogy would be: Someone who works for the USSR but protests communism. It's
not good for business if your own employees are bad mouthing your company.

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plg
seems to me they used the same data that was used to fit the models, to
estimate prediction accuracy. This overestimates prediction accuracy. It would
be better to use data that was not used to fit the models to assess accuracy.
This is known as cross validation

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gf263
Wow, this is cool. I wonder what the end game of machine learning is, given
its inherently successful only with a noisy data-set?

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tedunangst
Obvious next step: automatic police notification of potential suicide in
progress whenever a depressed photo is posted.

~~~
throwaway121211
Palantir will gladly take that contract.

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gsmethells
Wow, it's scary to think that someone could know that about someone else
simply from checking out their Instagram feed.

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onetwotree
I'm surprised that color factors had greater predictive power than presence of
human faces.

~~~
askafriend
I'm an amateur photographer and a lot of pictures I take don't have too many
human faces in them just as an aesthetic thing, and I'm pretty sure I'm not
depressed when posting them :)

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snissn
A note -- if you're linking to arXiv, it's better to link to the abstract
([https://arxiv.org/abs/1608.03282](https://arxiv.org/abs/1608.03282)) rather
than directly to the PDF. From the abstract, one can easily click through to
the PDF; not so the reverse. And the abstract allows one to do things like see
different versions of the paper, search for other things by the same authors,
etc. Thank you!

~~~
resonanttoe
You seem like you might be knowledgable here, so I'll ask this one here.

Is Arxiv considered a Peer Reviewed Journal or is it Cornell's submission
database?

Their site really doesn't allude one way or the other so it makes me think its
just a database.

~~~
detaro
ArXiv is certainly not a peer-reviewed journal. There is some basic review
([https://arxiv.org/help/moderation](https://arxiv.org/help/moderation)) and
an endorsement system
([https://arxiv.org/help/endorsement](https://arxiv.org/help/endorsement)),
other than that you can freely submit content there.

~~~
resonanttoe
Cheers for the clarification :D

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genericacct
Considering that depression is mostly defined as lack of social interaction
picture streams that depict fewer social interactions correlate well with
photographer depression. Much Science.

