
How Depressives Surf the Web - sew
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/17/opinion/sunday/how-depressed-people-use-the-internet.html?_r=1&hp
======
DanielBMarkham
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 worrying:

 _We hope to use our findings to develop a software application that could be
installed on home computers and mobile devices. It would monitor your Internet
usage and alert you when your usage patterns might signal symptoms of
depression. This would not replace the function of mental health
professionals, but it could be a cost-effective way to prompt people to seek
medical help early. It might also be a tool for parents to monitor the mood-
related Internet usage patterns of their children._

One of the things I've noticed over the period of creating a lot of
applications and sites is that _any interaction with a computer can be
interpreted in the opposite way from which it was intended_. (I nominate this
as Markham's Law of Technology Reciprocity) Upvote an article on HN? You're
not just tagging articles for quality, the system is also tagging you to see
what kinds of articles you upvote (whether or not that information is used or
not is not important here). Have a lot of tabs on your browser and switch
between them? You're not just engaging sites with the browser; the browser is
also engaging you on how you spend your time. Show Facebook who you would like
to invite to be a friend? Facebook is watching who you pick as folks you want
to associate with socially. You are not just interacting with the net; the net
is closely watching you. It's a two-way street.

This can lead to some scary places. Having a computer monitor my actions and
"help" me identify my emotional state and mental health could be awesome -- or
it could be a tool that lets outsiders climb inside my head in ways no human
has ever dreamed of before. If you think keeping your DNA information secret
is important, you'll be having heart palpitations when you start thinking this
stuff through. There's this world of data mining out there that mostly has to
do with your internal thoughts, beliefs, and emotions. I'll repeat: I think
this is a good thing. But hell if I'm happy about the trend in general.

~~~
vidar
What is in those 30-40 tabs? I am genuinely curious!

~~~
philwelch
Here are my tabs:

Window 1:

1\. Episode guide for Babylon 5, which I'm currently watching my way through
on days that I'm not watching Euro 2012 matches.

2\. Strategy guide for a game I play.

3\. Scott Chacon's "Pro Git" book, which I've been meaning to read.

4\. A reddit/r/metal thread recommending doom metal bands, since I've liked a
few doom metal songs on that subreddit and are meaning to get into the genre
more.

5, 6. More reddit/r/metal threads for similar reference.

7\. A blog post on Pry, the Ruby REPL/debugger

8\. A web caching tutorial, which I found on Hacker News

9\. A blog post about "Real World Clojure", which I found on Hacker News

10\. A listing of 2 minute tutorials about R, which I found on Hacker News

11\. A European seedbox provider's front page

12\. This, which I've been meaning to share with my girlfriend, and which I
found on Hacker News: <http://amasci.com/amateur/whygnd.html>

13\. A wiki page about a comedian, as a reminder to check out his work later,
since he's purportedly similar to two other comedians I like

14, 15. Youtube links to metal songs from /r/metal

16\. Hacker News itself

17\. A reddit/r/soccer thread with a video I've been meaning to watch

18\. My monthly budget in a Google Docs spreadsheet

19\. An interesting looking article about Copland, Apple's project to replace
the Mac OS before they bought NeXT.

20\. An old Ars Technica post about Mac OS X memory management that mentions
Copland; a false positive in a recent Google search about the topic.

21\. Bus directions from home to work on Google Maps

22\. The purported homepage of "Balance of Power: 21st Century", which is
down.

23\. The Wikipedia article about the original Balance of Power game.

24\. Similar to 22--this is actually the homepage, 22 is the top-level domain.

25, 26: This article and thread from HN:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4114295>

27, 28: Other HN threads

29: My threads

30: Reddit

31, 32: Various Reddit threads

33: An installment of Dinosaur Comics

34, 35: An HN thread--the same one, since I open "reply" links in a new tab.

36: This HN thread.

37: The tab I am typing this comment in.

38: This HN thread again.

39: My HN threads again.

Window 2: 1\. The homepage for orgmode, which I've been meaning to look into.

2\. A Trello board for a personal project.

3, 4: A page about "GTD for hackers", which I found on HN awhile back

5, 6: Other random self-improvement links

Window 3: 5 tabs of Coursera and other online course pages

Window 4: 16 tabs of technical subjects I've been meaning to look into

Probably less a sign of depression and more a sign of a surfeit of RAM and
whatever mentality lies behind a cluttered desk....

~~~
darklajid
I kind of like

    
    
      3, 4: A page about "GTD for hackers", which I found on HN awhile back
    

drowning in that list.

Maybe I should be happy about Firefox (granted: Beta) being extremely buggy
for me when restoring sessions. Just today it killed my equally big list of
things I meant to look at again and never did.

~~~
philwelch
There's a saying among people with messy desks: "clean desk, empty mind".
Personally I don't mind having so many tabs, but once it affects performance I
go and clean them up. Many of the tabs I listed are now gone, and while a few
new ones are open, I think I have fewer in aggregate.

------
_delirium
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 interested in the science, only gesturing towards this
other suggestion as a way of ticking the "potential future applications" box
that funding agencies like. But it's hard to tell.

~~~
electromagnetic
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 your S.O.
will dump your ass and you'll get depressed again. Then you get over it.

Fund proper counselling problems to reach out to kids at high risk of suicide
and stop giving a shit if everyone is happy. 99.9% of depressed people aren't
going to lynch themselves otherwise there wouldn't be a human race.

A very slim number of people get depressed and try to commit suicide. Normally
there are a shit ton of signs that _everyone around them_ ignore. If _everyone
around them_ actually paid attention to these depressed people before they
became suicidal, you'd cut the suicide rate to 1 in 1000 of what it is right
now.

~~~
kijin
> _without having to log thousands of peoples internet usage._

> _why the high ups seem so intent on making sure we're HAPPY._

You just rediscovered the age-old correlation between a desire for
totalitarian control and a preoccupation with superficial happiness. The
theory is that the best way to ensure that existing structures of power and
domination remain in place in perpetuity is to ensure that everyone is happy.
Because happy people don't complain loudly. In _Brave New World_ , the unhappy
Bernard was the only insider who challenged the norms of a society where
everyone was supposedly happy. In that book, the authorities try their
damnedest to keep everyone happy, occupied, and productive so that there will
be no occasion for some depressed dude to start mulling over the deficiencies
of the system. Because people tend to see those deficiencies more clearly when
they're unhappy and dissatisfied with the status quo.

Seriously, we need depressed folks, autistic folks, OCD folks, and all these
other kinds of people in our world in order for progress to happen. Happy
people won't fix what they don't think is broken!

~~~
readme
Very insightful.

I have to point out one little oversight though:

> Seriously, we need depressed folks, autistic folks, OCD folks, and all these
> other kinds of people in our world in order for progress to happen. Happy
> people won't fix what they don't think is broken!

It almost sounds like you're implying that people are either happy, or have
one of n classifiable psychological disorders. The reality is that the
disorders are statistical classifications that fit an infinite number of
shades of the human condition. Umbrellas.

Personally I consider myself hapilly-awake? I guess I know we live in a very
suboptimal world but I am happy to exist and do my best to change what I can
about it.

~~~
kijin
Thanks for catching that oversight, I didn't intend to imply that people with
currently acknowledged mental disorders are unhappy. Hey, I'm an aspie and I'm
not terribly unhappy about it, either. But I sure am dissatisfied (i.e.
unhappy) with the way the world around me is.

The kind of happiness that "higher ups" want to propagate, on the other hand,
often involves accepting the status quo and just trying to fit in.

~~~
electromagnetic
I think you accidentally highlighted a problem our society, at least our
media, tries to portray in that "depression is a mental disorder". You only
have to see the commercials for anti-depressants to see this.

The world becomes very easy for government when you can lump every unhappy or
disgruntled citizen as having a mental disorder, so you can medicate and
silence them.

Governments are in the very uneasy position of being who the peasantry get
angry at. Feudal lords understood this danger very well. The middle-eastern
and north-african dictators have been learning this. How long before our own
politicians have to learn this lesson before we get our fair and responsible
government back?

It won't take guns to topple our government. It will take people protesting.
If you can unite a fraction of a populace, you can topple industries and
topple governments simply by orchestrating where your dollars go. Want an end
to walmart and their policies? Get 10% of their shoppers to start buying from
Target or whomever who treat their workers better, or support local
communities better. If it happens country wide, walmart has too much equity
sunk into brick and mortar that they can't rapidly restructure. 10% less
income from stores across the board mean stores taking losses, means stores
breaking even. Lay off staff and you lose more customers. Close stores, and
you lose more customers. Even if you close stores, it's going to be 6 months
to a year to get the equity back into working capital.

If 10% of the population with held taxes. That's 230 billion dollars in unpaid
taxes. Governments will change quickly when you can't do anything to penalize
these people. Fine them? They wont pay, and there's way too many to
effectively jail, and if you do you lose even more taxes from what they would
spend on food and goods.

~~~
readme
Exactly. Given some of the things that happen in our world depression is a
perfectly normal human state. Get meds if you want them, but don't feel like
you're not normal just because you're not smiling.

------
mwsherman
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 comparing apples to oranges.

There is no mention of how strong the correlations are (though one would
expect such in the full paper). This is a small number of people – around 200
– all of which are of a similar age & occupation.

The idea that this evidence would lead one to consider monitoring implies a
certainty and generality about the results which appears unjustified.

~~~
mstromb
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.

~~~
_delirium
That's a major problem with many (maybe even most) psych studies. I don't
think anyone who's thought about it at length really thinks these kinds of
populations of convenience ("recruited N students at my university") are a
good way to do science, but they are... convenient, so they keep getting used.
At some schools, psych students have to participate in a certain number of
studies for credit, which makes it easier to get participants, while likely
further biasing the participant pool.

It's part of the traditional split between quantitative and qualitative
psychologists (and sociologists), each of whom gets one side of the equation
stronger. The qualitative side typically goes "out into the world" and tries
to interview a target community, building an understanding and iterating to
fill in gaps in the understanding. They often succeed in quite good coverage,
but don't produce statistical results. The quantitative side typically wants
to measure statistically significant results on pre-specified, narrower
questions, but often does so only on populations on convenience, rather than
going "out into the world" and really understanding the populations that are
out there.

~~~
pnathan
A comment I've heard before from a psych researcher is that psych research at
universities is the really the research into undergrads taking psych
courses...

~~~
disgruntledphd2
This is very, very true. In fact, Heinrich et al wrote a wonderful paper
decrying this very problem.

humancond.org/_media/papers/weirdest_people.pdf

Unfortunately, its not going to change, because of the pressures on academics
to publish, publish, publish inclines them to take full advantage of these
samples of convenience.

Its actually even worse, because the majority of psych papers are based on
American psych students, so there's not even much of a good geographic spread
in the ridiculously limited samples psychologists use.

------
jtchang
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.

~~~
Tyrant505
Exactly.. So basically people who are engaged fully in the "web" experience
are depressed?

~~~
wickedchicken
> 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?

~~~
genwin
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.

~~~
koide
Or you just accept you alone can't solve the world problems and take the small
steps you can.

For the record, I get angry at the world problems, not depressed.

------
Atropos
I disagree with all the negative comments here, if I understand the article
correctly, they found a correlation like "IF you are depressed, THEN you might
anxiously check your emails all the time'' They arent saying this internet use
pattern makes you more likely to be depressed (See
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modus_ponens#Justification_via_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modus_ponens#Justification_via_truth_table))

In my personal case, I have bipolar depression and I have gone through several
depressive episodes and have definately changed my internet usage during them
as described in the article. So I believe this research has value and I will
probably build a tool for self-tracking these variables...

What I disagree with is that there should be a central software to notify
"counselors'' of this behavior. I believe there would be too many false
positives and it would be a huge intrusion of privacy.

Maybe a system where users by the software get an automated "Need help?" email
once where they can schedule an anonymous appointment with 1 click at the
student health center or something would be fine. But it should really just be
a relatively cheap way to screen for students who might be in trouble and
contact them proactively, the internet usage itself shouldnt be logged or
discussed as a problem ever...

~~~
nosse
I have one depressed friend. Anytime I visit him, it eventually turn into a
Youtube party. This tendency is by far worse than with any of my other
friends.

I'd love to track my personal wellbeing, right now my only metrics are "am I
hooked to some flash game or not" and "did I go jogging this week or not".
Tracking my web surfing could give something in like "it seems you're having a
lousy afternoon" which would be more handy because I might snap out of it.

------
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.

------
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

------
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.

~~~
Exenith
You're probably right. It seems like a crutch for some people. Instead of
battling through it and becoming stronger, they escape to the Internet and
never truly overcome the issue. Personally, getting rid of the bigger
pleasures in my life really helped to face the bigger pains. Maybe I'm a
unique and special snowflake, but I doubt it.

------
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.

~~~
Agathos
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.

------
kasbah
I don't understand how they correlated what they defined as depressive
internet usage to depressive people while retaining peoples privacy.

Also, I don't think and application that pops up and says "You are acting
depressed" is going to help very much.

------
brianjyee
"OTHER characteristic features of “depressive” Internet behavior included
increased amounts of video watching, gaming and chatting."

So what uses of the internet would NOT indicate depression??

------
RyShiki
This is bullshit. I'm under the spell of heavy depression but I hit none of
the main points of the article. I'm not a gamer, I almost never watch movies
and don't use much P2P, I only listen to music maybe three to four times a
month because I can't get in the mood much these days, the only use I have for
email is for billing, subscriptions and anything that _requires_ it.

"It would monitor your Internet usage and alert you when your usage patterns
might signal symptoms of depression"

I'm not a depressive under their criteria. The software they hope for is
broken before they even wrote a single line of code.

You know what helps coping with depression ? Alcohol, smoking, not standing in
front of a computer downloading loads of crap to listen and watch.

~~~
sid05
There are depressed people who don't use the internet at all. Your symptoms
would just fall into something like "IRL symptoms". I think the the study is
trying to point out a detection mechanism for depressives who use internet. It
wouldn't be a holistic diagnosis. That said I'm not sure corelation and
causation in this study. I feel like people can use the internet for "escape"
and "entertainment" and still lead perfectly fulfilling lives.

------
ambler0
I was surprised not to find a discussion of correlation vs causation here. If
you accept the correlation, I think there are different plausible ways to
interpret it.

It could be that the way we interact with the computer is a symptom of our
depression, or it could well be that the way we use computers is causing
depression (or both).

I have heard of other work associating things that split our attention, e.g.
listening to podcasts while working, reading with the the television on, etc,
with mood disorders. From the other side, the practice of mindfulness, which
seems antithetical to these activities in that it advocates simply paying
attention to one thing at a time, appears to be a path to happiness for many.

------
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.

~~~
jim-greer
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

------
gojomo
I'm not sure the researchers are giving enough credence to the idea that the
depressive's very next click might finally reveal the secret to happiness and
fulfillment. I mean, it might? Right? RIGHT?

------
tgrass
For that depression that is environmental, and caused by factors like stress,
isolation and boredom, the internet would be a welcome salve. Engagement on
facebook and HN reduce isolation and boredom.

------
jakeonthemove
Maybe it's the way they surf that makes them depressed :-)? I don't know, I
always have a ton of stuff running at the same time, including Web tabs,
software, email accounts, etc. And I'm not depressed, that's for sure - when
I'm depressed, I install Skyrim, Crysis or another open world game and
completely immerse myself into the virtual world, not giving a crap about
anything around me. Thank God I don't like WoW :-)...

------
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.

------
ciarog
How does increased amounts of online chatting lead to a diagnosis of
depressive symptoms? To be honest, my brain is so slowed down by depression, I
can't muster much energy to chat or comment excessively online.

Besides, in my opinion, having 20+ tabs of news and information etc helps
stave off depression. It sure beats sitting staring blankly at a wall or
wallowing in it by reading self-help books.

------
mkhattab
I think the article describes the behavior of escapists. The constant need to
be distracted in order to avoid facing one's own reality.

~~~
loceng
Lots of sub-personalities involved with that behaviour. Focusing on helping
people determine why their sub-personalities exist, why they formed, is the
key. And you need to become aware of those behaviour patterns, and learn how
to better organize when you need to; Get things sorted immediately, so there's
not just a big pile + learn how to prioritize it.

I feel we all give our brains far too much to try to comprehend, list size
wise, when it comes to tasks to do. People that become really good at it find
their own very unique way, from what I have read and where I see my own
endeavours leading me.

~~~
mkhattab
Perhaps it's not that we overload our brains with information, rather it's the
way society expects us to be. We turn into walking talking trivia machines.
There's so much information that it becomes a necessary skill to separate or
distill essential information from the non-essential.

I've noticed that many of the techniques or guidelines out there on the web
involve resisting society or technology in someway. For example, quitting
Facebook and Twitter, helped improve productivity and satisfaction. Saying
"no" to many of the things that define and shape the society we live in,
indicates to me, at least, that there's nothing abnormal with being depressed
or being an escapist. It's the natural response, I believe.

~~~
DanBC
I agree with you until you say that "depressed" is normal. Really, it isn't,
it is abnormal. It is also treatable. People who eat better, get exercise, and
regulate their use of stimulants / sedatives tend to do well. Adding in a
course of cognitive behaviour therapy (from an experienced practitioner)
effectively cures many people. Adding medications helps lots of people too.

Perhaps you're saying that modern life pushes people away from healthy eating
and exercise and sensible worklife balance and towards alcohol and caffeine,
and that depression is the natural result of that. In which case, I agree.

You mention information overload. Here's a nice example of sub-optimal advice
about procrastination. It's too long for anyone prone to procrastination to
actually read.

(<http://writingcenter.unc.edu/handouts/procrastination/>)

~~~
loceng
Define normal. ;)

------
ilaksh
Maybe they're depressed because they spend too much time on the internet and
therefore have no friends. Or they have no friends and therefore they are
depressed and spend too much time on the internet entertaining themselves
whereas people who have lots of friends just leave Facebook open all day.

------
why_fileSharing
> we recruited 216 undergraduate volunteers > we had the participants fill out
> a questionnaire (~15 questions that LITERALLY ask you if you feel depressed.
> so, the survey asks you "hey, are you depressed?" about fifteen times, with
> various wordings.) > 30 percent of the participants met the criteria for
> depressive symptoms

Okay. Sounds reliably conclusive.

> Next, we had the university’s information technology department provide us
> with campus Internet usage data for our participants for February. This
> didn’t mean snooping on what the students were looking at or whom they were
> e-mailing; it merely meant monitoring how they were using the Internet.

...how "they" were using the internet. During February. In Missouri.

> the more a participant’s score on the survey indicated depression, the more
> his or her Internet usage included ... “p2p packets”

O RLY

> By Sriram Chellappan (professor of computer science) and Raghavenra
> Kotikalapudi (software development engineer), IEEE

Pretty striking that they correlate fear mongering with file sharing, and then
draw a line connecting to eavesdropping and traffic analysis. Is this article
MPAA/RIAA propaganda? I can't tell.

------
jcfrei
this article seems to me as a hint that we need to redefine depression - the
term has become ubiquous (synchronous with the rising term of burnout) and
looking thru the test on <http://cesd-r.com/> it seems to me at a large part
of the correlation could come from the loss of focus amongst the test persons.
this would also be in line with the higher usage of various web applications
(which obviously dosen't contribute to your concentration). calling this as a
form of depression just doesn't seem like the appropriate term.

------
TazeTSchnitzel
Some cast doubt on this, but as a teenager who is partly depressed... it
sounds about right.

Procrastination, multi-tasking, frequent email checking, lack of focus. It all
sounds very familiar.

------
yaix
Waiting for a new category in Google Adsense, next to "content based ads" and
"interest based ads", will we soon see "disorders based ads"?

------
pixelcort
It's interesting how this contrasts with the style of The Slow Web movement,
which was also recently on the front page of Hacker News.

------
loceng
Here's a different way to look at it: Is it our environment (including the
scope of the web) that makes us depressed?

------
FJim
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.

~~~
dakrisht
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!

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ExpiredLink
Correlation is not causation.

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seppvom
interesting study. would be very interesting if internet surfung/computer
usage and which elements increase the propability of developing depression.

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frfr
this makes me depressed

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billpatrianakos
I was shocked that they threw in the part about developing an application to
alert people that they may be depressed. This is the one amd only study on
this and they have the nerve to pitch a software idea at the end? Honestly, at
this point using their application to detect early signs of depression is like
going to a phrenologist or getting your palms read - and taking it seriously.
There needs to be more studies with reproducible results. What ever happened
to science?

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phene
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?

~~~
Mz
_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?

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stefer
Hey, I attend Missouri S&T.

I was offered the opportunity to participate in this survey.

At the time I thought it was offered by the IST (Information Science and
Technology) department which does some human computer interaction stuff. As a
result I decided I wasn't interested because the IST department has a really
really bad reputation on campus (rightly so - I'm an IST undergrad and have
witnessed gross incompetence first hand).

Turns out it was done by the Comp Sci department, which has a good reputation,
but not so much for its research. Still, they are competent people which is
more than I can say about the IST department.

Anyways, I find these results interesting. I don't know how they got p2p
statistics, as it is painfully difficult to get IT to let me download linux
ISOs.

I also share the concerns about the parent monitoring thing.

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mcnemesis
_"OTHER characteristic features of “depressive” Internet behavior included
increased amounts of video watching, gaming and chatting."_

Well, then I guess G+ users are on the better side of things given that games
are being scrapped off of the platform - sorry for all you depressed FB users
:-)

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sparknlaunch
> _"Another example: the Internet usage of depressive people tended to exhibit
> high “flow duration entropy” — which often occurs when there is frequent
> switching among Internet applications like e-mail, chat rooms and games."_

Surely most people switch between applications and mediums? If not, then I
fall within the 'depressive' category. Dual monitors plus smart phones and an
iPad don't help things.

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abalashov
I must be depressed to an extent I simply do not realise. I love when
scientific 'professionals' inform me as to what my mental and emotional state
truly is!

~~~
dschobel
I think you misunderstand what a statistical correlation actually means and
entails.

