11 ms·

Instagram photos reveal predictive markers of depression

215 points by mcone 9y ago

jbob2000 9y ago
TL;DR - If you post a lot of gray pictures of yourself with a sad face that nobody likes or comments on, you are probably depressed. They used the color of the photographs, number of people in the photos, level of engagement, and happiness rated by Mechanical Turk to determine depression.
- foxbarrington 9y ago
  "The more comments Instagram posts received, the more likely they were posted by depressed participants"
  - EGreg 9y ago
    In general I call this the Magarshak score: How many comments vs shares does a content post have? Comments - disagree with it, want to correct something, controversy Shares - agree with it, want to spread it more widely, echo chamber
    - jnbiche 9y ago
      Wouldn't that be the Magarshak ratio?
      - 5ilv3r 9y ago
        No because 100:100 and 0:0 would be equal in value but far different in meaning. It must be a score and not a ratio.
        jnbiche 9y ago
        Yes, but that's not what this ratio purports to measure. Also, the fact that you wrote n:n with the colon in between would make it by definition a ratio.
    - foota 9y ago
      I think this works better for something like Facebook, Instagram comments tend to be compliments.
      - cgore 9y ago
        Yeah, it's really weird to me coming from the rest of the Internet to have random people I've never met say things like "Beautiful", "Great work", "I love it", etc., instead of, say, what you'll get in the comments of a youtube video.
        imcrs 9y ago
        Sadly, if it's just a single compliment with no relation to the actual image posted, it's likely a bot doing the commenting. This is a common way for people to boost their follower count.
        Retra 9y ago
        That's all I ever see on my employer's blogs and announcements, and is far more depressing to me than any honest criticism would be.
- ge96 9y ago
  Hahaha... mechanical Turk, I was one of those, the xxx ones were at least entertaining
  - frandroid 9y ago
    What kind of tasks were you hired to do on this latter topic?
    - ge96 9y ago
      Tagging scenes Genders in the scene Positions etc... I'm curious how ML will do that, not how but accuracy would be cool to make (train) the model. Also with thumbnails that capture the viewer's attention. The other jobs were brute searching sites in hopes to improve SEO. Transcribing photos of receipts (funny those ads, some poor schmuck being paid 12 cents per 10 min job). Oh I remember an awkward one it was some social site's user photo uploads, I had to tag images with babies. So weird to see so many 'public' yet seemingly intimate photos. Not nude, just random people's photos. I did this for a whole week as much as I could do sanely, made $55 not worth it. Washing plates makes more money.
      - slig 9y ago
        > The other jobs were brute searching sites in hopes to improve SEO. I'm curious on how this works. Do you basically search for specific keywords and click on specific URLs in order to signal Google that the URL is more relevant?
        ge96 9y ago
        That sememed to be the basis of it but this was a couple of years ago or more say 2010-2012 something like that man that was a while back wow. Yeah you had to search some term and find the link. It seemed to work as they would be beyond the first page result usually or at least not #1 but say #4 on page 1. But it could be biased you know based on your own search history I often check externally with say Tor to see how sites rank from other viewpoints than my own. Anyway hope that is helpful. You could also just sign up and look around. I think I still have a 99.99% satisfaction rate a lot of jobs you need something close to that to apply but it is shit work though. Some go up to $1.00+ woweee but those take like half an hour to do it's ridiculous.
- jogjayr 9y ago
  Wait so they didn't actually go back and see if the people they identified as depressed had a diagnosis of clinical depression?
  - graphememes 9y ago
    What, you thought this was an actual scientific study?
    - jogjayr 9y ago
      Ok I went back and read more: "Data collection was crowdsourced using Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk) crowdwork platform. Separate surveys were created for depressed and healthy individuals. In the depressed survey, participants were invited to complete a survey that involved passing a series of inclusion criteria, responding to a standardized clinical depression survey, answering questions related to demographics and history of depression, and sharing social media history. We used the CES-D (Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale) questionnaire to screen participant depression levels [26]. CES-D assessment quality has been demonstrated as on-par with other depression inventories, including the Beck Depression Inventory and the Kellner Symptom Questionnaire [27, 28]. Healthy participants were screened to ensure no history of depression and active Instagram use. See Additional file 1 for actual survey text." So it sounds like they found depressed and healthy subjects via MTurk and verified them using surveys. I guess that's slightly more rigorous than just "people on MTurk thought the person in this photo looks depressed"
    - matthewmacleod 9y ago
      It literally is a peer-reviewed scientific study. Middlebrow cynical dismissals are boring.
      - nylonstrung 9y ago
        a peer-reviewed scientific study at the height of the replication crisis
krakensden 9y ago
And in 10 years, this will be a part of your Citizen Score. I should burn this nickname and be more diligent about persona management. Or get off social media entirely.
- agumonkey 9y ago
  I used to think similarly, these days I tend to be in fear is feeding the system, with a good deal of 'government do not scare me'... Western Europe ones that is.heh
- 4ad 9y ago
  > Or get off social media entirely. That will also be part of your Citizen Score, or it will impact your life like having a bad Citizen Score. Kind of like how you can't get a loan because you haven't had a loan before and you don't have a credit rating.
  - anigbrowl 9y ago
    It certainly will be as long as people sit around moaning about what is going to be imposed on them rather than asserting any opinions about how society should work.
- davidreiss 9y ago
  > Or get off social media entirely. Wouldn't that be a bigger red flag?
  - notheguyouthink 9y ago
    Red flag of what, though? Eg, I stay away from social media, and create burners for just about everything (rotating burners semi frequently depending on how many random details I post, etc) - so what am I an indicator of? I try to be a Ghost. I'm sure a ghost is an indicator for some things, but the majority of it is just speculation right? I have trouble thinking of how a lack of information about someone could be harmful as a source of information. Now, I could see it becoming harmful in that I have to have some type of Citizen Score to apply for jobs, be accepted for loans, get insurance, etc etc. That's quite reasonable, imo. Yet, it's still seems different than being a source of information, e.g. this person is unstable, or this person is depressed, etc.
droopybuns 9y ago
We used ML and assumptions like: "Group photos are an indicator of happiness" to guess if a person is depressed. God help the millennials. The only winning move is not to play.
- computerex 9y ago
  They didn't use that as an indicator of depression. All they did was pass into the model the number of faces in the frame. The analysis afterwards suggested that depressed people tend to not have group photos.
  - baby 9y ago
    Shit, I don't have group photos :(
    - 0xptr 9y ago
      I guess I should photoshop more people in my stock facebook placeholder :^(
    - coldtea 9y ago
      Do you also have the other markers? It's not like a single marker determines everything. It's not even like having ALL markers means one is 100% depressed. It merely gives you a confidence score in the person being depressed.
      - a_t48 9y ago
        On the other hand, if you do have all the markers, maybe you should step back and consider.
  - EGreg 9y ago
    Well doh People who don't hang out with other people are more at risk for depression AND they are less likely to have group photos. This is called a latent variable.
have_faith 9y ago
User, it appears you are trying to upload a photo displaying negative emotions. Please upload a new photo expressing a happiness quotient of at least .75 as per terms and conditions.
- ankushnarula 9y ago
  Excellent. But more likely this user will see an uptick in ads for self-help products and antidepressants.
  - pasbesoin 9y ago
    And lose their jobs, mortgages, insurance, etc., to low scoring resulting from data mining.
  - dwringer 9y ago
    I wonder more about how this data affects what the people they know see.
    - forgotmysn 9y ago
      i would be surprised if it did. from my limited knowledge of targeted advertising, the ads aren't based on network data but individual behavior.
  - honestoHeminway 9y ago
    People who have bought black and white posters also bought rope. Our only rope now for only 0.42 €.
- wink 9y ago
  Trust the Computer. The Computer is Your Friend.
- ringaroundthetx 9y ago
  Please read the article and contribute something useful instead of your off-broadway Black Mirror episode. The algorithm didn't focus much on emotions of the subjects in the photos.
vlucas 9y ago
Not just photos, but in general I've found that the people who are continuously posting how happy their lives are and how everything is great are most likely the ones who are utterly miserable. I have been seeing a woman's posts lately who is going through a bitter, ugly divorce, and it's astounding how she represents everything publicly via Facebook when I know the full story due to a family member being involved.
- vit05 9y ago
  Someone that is miserable is not exactly someone that is suffering from depression. This research is for finding a clinical condition and make less expendable the cost of health programs, not to evaluate the life of others based just on opinions. Suicides are the second-leading cause of death among teenagers. But, some people are just "not a happy person". That doesn't mean that they are unhappy, sad or suffering from depression. I really like this comics from Oatmeal that talk about that. http://theoatmeal.com/comics/unhappy http://theoatmeal.com/comics/unhappy the essay that this comic is based thttps://outline.com/r6q4Ga https://outline.com/r6q4Ga
fredley 9y ago
Clippy, 2018: It looks like you're depressed, can I help you with that?
mmjaa 9y ago
Corrolary: Instagram usage makes you depressed!
motoboi 9y ago
Would be great to have this as a service where you could analyze your own instagram feed for signs of trouble.
jpalomaki 9y ago
Would it be acceptable for Facebook to try to make you less depressed by changing what you see on your feed?
- prawn 9y ago
  Whether or not it's acceptable, I think we'll see apps/bots employed to do this. I'm not sure there's much in that process that makes money for Facebook, so big players might avoid it.
- zeckalpha 9y ago
  They've tried it: http://www.pnas.org/content/111/24/8788.full.pdf http://www.pnas.org/content/111/24/8788.full.pdf
- eternalvision 9y ago
  They do this, or at least have done this. If a "digitally depressed" person has exhausted all possible suggested friends, FaceBook proceeds to suggest friends that they assume will be sexually attractive to you, as an example.
dkns 9y ago
166 isn't really a representative sample, is it?
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

215 points by mcone 9y ago

jbob2000 9y ago

TL;DR - If you post a lot of gray pictures of yourself with a sad face that nobody likes or comments on, you are probably depressed. They used the color of the photographs, number of people in the photos, level of engagement, and happiness rated by Mechanical Turk to determine depression.

foxbarrington 9y ago
"The more comments Instagram posts received, the more likely they were posted by depressed participants"
- EGreg 9y ago
  In general I call this the Magarshak score: How many comments vs shares does a content post have? Comments - disagree with it, want to correct something, controversy Shares - agree with it, want to spread it more widely, echo chamber
  - jnbiche 9y ago
    Wouldn't that be the Magarshak ratio?
    - 5ilv3r 9y ago
      No because 100:100 and 0:0 would be equal in value but far different in meaning. It must be a score and not a ratio.
      - jnbiche 9y ago
        Yes, but that's not what this ratio purports to measure. Also, the fact that you wrote n:n with the colon in between would make it by definition a ratio.
  - foota 9y ago
    I think this works better for something like Facebook, Instagram comments tend to be compliments.
    - cgore 9y ago
      Yeah, it's really weird to me coming from the rest of the Internet to have random people I've never met say things like "Beautiful", "Great work", "I love it", etc., instead of, say, what you'll get in the comments of a youtube video.
      - imcrs 9y ago
        Sadly, if it's just a single compliment with no relation to the actual image posted, it's likely a bot doing the commenting. This is a common way for people to boost their follower count.
      - Retra 9y ago
        That's all I ever see on my employer's blogs and announcements, and is far more depressing to me than any honest criticism would be.
ge96 9y ago
Hahaha... mechanical Turk, I was one of those, the xxx ones were at least entertaining
- frandroid 9y ago
  What kind of tasks were you hired to do on this latter topic?
  - ge96 9y ago
    Tagging scenes Genders in the scene Positions etc... I'm curious how ML will do that, not how but accuracy would be cool to make (train) the model. Also with thumbnails that capture the viewer's attention. The other jobs were brute searching sites in hopes to improve SEO. Transcribing photos of receipts (funny those ads, some poor schmuck being paid 12 cents per 10 min job). Oh I remember an awkward one it was some social site's user photo uploads, I had to tag images with babies. So weird to see so many 'public' yet seemingly intimate photos. Not nude, just random people's photos. I did this for a whole week as much as I could do sanely, made $55 not worth it. Washing plates makes more money.
    - slig 9y ago
      > The other jobs were brute searching sites in hopes to improve SEO. I'm curious on how this works. Do you basically search for specific keywords and click on specific URLs in order to signal Google that the URL is more relevant?
      - ge96 9y ago
        That sememed to be the basis of it but this was a couple of years ago or more say 2010-2012 something like that man that was a while back wow. Yeah you had to search some term and find the link. It seemed to work as they would be beyond the first page result usually or at least not #1 but say #4 on page 1. But it could be biased you know based on your own search history I often check externally with say Tor to see how sites rank from other viewpoints than my own. Anyway hope that is helpful. You could also just sign up and look around. I think I still have a 99.99% satisfaction rate a lot of jobs you need something close to that to apply but it is shit work though. Some go up to $1.00+ woweee but those take like half an hour to do it's ridiculous.
jogjayr 9y ago
Wait so they didn't actually go back and see if the people they identified as depressed had a diagnosis of clinical depression?
- graphememes 9y ago
  What, you thought this was an actual scientific study?
  - jogjayr 9y ago
    Ok I went back and read more: "Data collection was crowdsourced using Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk) crowdwork platform. Separate surveys were created for depressed and healthy individuals. In the depressed survey, participants were invited to complete a survey that involved passing a series of inclusion criteria, responding to a standardized clinical depression survey, answering questions related to demographics and history of depression, and sharing social media history. We used the CES-D (Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale) questionnaire to screen participant depression levels [26]. CES-D assessment quality has been demonstrated as on-par with other depression inventories, including the Beck Depression Inventory and the Kellner Symptom Questionnaire [27, 28]. Healthy participants were screened to ensure no history of depression and active Instagram use. See Additional file 1 for actual survey text." So it sounds like they found depressed and healthy subjects via MTurk and verified them using surveys. I guess that's slightly more rigorous than just "people on MTurk thought the person in this photo looks depressed"
  - matthewmacleod 9y ago
    It literally is a peer-reviewed scientific study. Middlebrow cynical dismissals are boring.
    - nylonstrung 9y ago
      a peer-reviewed scientific study at the height of the replication crisis

krakensden 9y ago

And in 10 years, this will be a part of your Citizen Score. I should burn this nickname and be more diligent about persona management. Or get off social media entirely.

agumonkey 9y ago
I used to think similarly, these days I tend to be in fear is feeding the system, with a good deal of 'government do not scare me'... Western Europe ones that is.heh
4ad 9y ago
> Or get off social media entirely. That will also be part of your Citizen Score, or it will impact your life like having a bad Citizen Score. Kind of like how you can't get a loan because you haven't had a loan before and you don't have a credit rating.
- anigbrowl 9y ago
  It certainly will be as long as people sit around moaning about what is going to be imposed on them rather than asserting any opinions about how society should work.
davidreiss 9y ago
> Or get off social media entirely. Wouldn't that be a bigger red flag?
- notheguyouthink 9y ago
  Red flag of what, though? Eg, I stay away from social media, and create burners for just about everything (rotating burners semi frequently depending on how many random details I post, etc) - so what am I an indicator of? I try to be a Ghost. I'm sure a ghost is an indicator for some things, but the majority of it is just speculation right? I have trouble thinking of how a lack of information about someone could be harmful as a source of information. Now, I could see it becoming harmful in that I have to have some type of Citizen Score to apply for jobs, be accepted for loans, get insurance, etc etc. That's quite reasonable, imo. Yet, it's still seems different than being a source of information, e.g. this person is unstable, or this person is depressed, etc.

droopybuns 9y ago

We used ML and assumptions like: "Group photos are an indicator of happiness" to guess if a person is depressed. God help the millennials. The only winning move is not to play.

computerex 9y ago
They didn't use that as an indicator of depression. All they did was pass into the model the number of faces in the frame. The analysis afterwards suggested that depressed people tend to not have group photos.
- baby 9y ago
  Shit, I don't have group photos :(
  - 0xptr 9y ago
    I guess I should photoshop more people in my stock facebook placeholder :^(
  - coldtea 9y ago
    Do you also have the other markers? It's not like a single marker determines everything. It's not even like having ALL markers means one is 100% depressed. It merely gives you a confidence score in the person being depressed.
    - a_t48 9y ago
      On the other hand, if you do have all the markers, maybe you should step back and consider.
- EGreg 9y ago
  Well doh People who don't hang out with other people are more at risk for depression AND they are less likely to have group photos. This is called a latent variable.

have_faith 9y ago

User, it appears you are trying to upload a photo displaying negative emotions. Please upload a new photo expressing a happiness quotient of at least .75 as per terms and conditions.

ankushnarula 9y ago
Excellent. But more likely this user will see an uptick in ads for self-help products and antidepressants.
- pasbesoin 9y ago
  And lose their jobs, mortgages, insurance, etc., to low scoring resulting from data mining.
- dwringer 9y ago
  I wonder more about how this data affects what the people they know see.
  - forgotmysn 9y ago
    i would be surprised if it did. from my limited knowledge of targeted advertising, the ads aren't based on network data but individual behavior.
- honestoHeminway 9y ago
  People who have bought black and white posters also bought rope. Our only rope now for only 0.42 €.
wink 9y ago
Trust the Computer. The Computer is Your Friend.
ringaroundthetx 9y ago
Please read the article and contribute something useful instead of your off-broadway Black Mirror episode. The algorithm didn't focus much on emotions of the subjects in the photos.

vlucas 9y ago

Not just photos, but in general I've found that the people who are continuously posting how happy their lives are and how everything is great are most likely the ones who are utterly miserable. I have been seeing a woman's posts lately who is going through a bitter, ugly divorce, and it's astounding how she represents everything publicly via Facebook when I know the full story due to a family member being involved.

vit05 9y ago
Someone that is miserable is not exactly someone that is suffering from depression. This research is for finding a clinical condition and make less expendable the cost of health programs, not to evaluate the life of others based just on opinions. Suicides are the second-leading cause of death among teenagers. But, some people are just "not a happy person". That doesn't mean that they are unhappy, sad or suffering from depression. I really like this comics from Oatmeal that talk about that. http://theoatmeal.com/comics/unhappy http://theoatmeal.com/comics/unhappy the essay that this comic is based thttps://outline.com/r6q4Ga https://outline.com/r6q4Ga

fredley 9y ago

Clippy, 2018: It looks like you're depressed, can I help you with that?

mmjaa 9y ago

Corrolary: Instagram usage makes you depressed!

motoboi 9y ago

Would be great to have this as a service where you could analyze your own instagram feed for signs of trouble.

jpalomaki 9y ago

Would it be acceptable for Facebook to try to make you less depressed by changing what you see on your feed?

prawn 9y ago
Whether or not it's acceptable, I think we'll see apps/bots employed to do this. I'm not sure there's much in that process that makes money for Facebook, so big players might avoid it.
zeckalpha 9y ago
They've tried it: http://www.pnas.org/content/111/24/8788.full.pdf http://www.pnas.org/content/111/24/8788.full.pdf
eternalvision 9y ago
They do this, or at least have done this. If a "digitally depressed" person has exhausted all possible suggested friends, FaceBook proceeds to suggest friends that they assume will be sexually attractive to you, as an example.

dkns 9y ago

166 isn't really a representative sample, is it?

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]