11 ms·

How Depressives Surf the Web

219 points by sew 14y ago

jtchang 14y ago
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 14y ago
  Exactly.. So basically people who are engaged fully in the "web" experience are depressed?
  - wickedchicken 14y ago
    > 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 14y ago
      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.
      - ehsanu1 14y ago
        Or, you have an bias for optimism, like most people. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8rmi95pYL0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8rmi95pYL0
      - koide 14y ago
        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.
        deleted 14y ago
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      - deleted 14y ago
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    - Produce 14y ago
      My solution to this is to read them as sparingly as possible. What's the use of getting depressed over something you can't change? A smarter solution is to use as much of your time as possible to help yourself and others while only concerning yourself with issues you have influence over.
  - pjscott 14y ago
    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 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 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayes_theorem
    - notJim 14y ago
      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.
      - evoxed 14y ago
        That seems to be one of the major laments in Thinking, Fast and Slow (Kahneman). Us humans, even when we're 'ready for it', tend to be remarkably inflexible in adopting concepts which conflict with our basic or social intuitions...
DanielBMarkham 14y ago
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.
- mpdaugherty 14y ago
  Having too many tabs open at one time can definitely hurt my concentration. I can remember multiple times in the last few weeks when I just wanted to look up some specific information or send a single email, but upon switching back to Chrome, ended up answering other emails in my inbox or looking at tabs I had left open with articles that I wanted to read. I've started making sure I use an app (Pocket) to keep track of articles so I can close the browser tab immediately and read one article at a time exclusively, and on my schedule (e.g. sitting in a taxi or on the subway). For emails, I guess I should write them in a text editor before switching to GMail, so I just have to copy, paste, send.
_delirium 14y ago
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.
- DanielBMarkham 14y ago
  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.
  - jQueryIsAwesome 14y ago
    Totally; some companies may use it to identify depressed employees just to fire them (because they think depressed people is less efficient).
    - waterlesscloud 14y ago
      Hmm. I wonder if that would be possible to do without risking lawsuits. Wouldn't depression fall under a medical condition?
      - steve-howard 14y ago
        It does, but if you identify it before it can be reported, don't leave a paper trail, and find another reason (because there's always a reason if you want there to be one), you can probably get around that. I'm not suggesting that it would be ethical or even a good idea, but it's certainly possible that an early-detection system could be used to be very evil indeed.
      - denzil_correa 14y ago
kasbah 14y ago
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.
mwsherman 14y ago
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 14y ago
  Here's a pdf of the paper: http://web.mst.edu/~chellaps/papers/12_tech-soc_kcmwl.pdf 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.
  - waterlesscloud 14y ago
    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.
    - stefer 14y ago
phene 14y ago
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 14y ago
  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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snitzr 14y ago
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 14y ago
  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 14y ago
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 14y ago
  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.
brianjyee 14y ago
"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??
billpatrianakos 14y ago
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?
- deleted 14y ago
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tgrass 14y ago
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.
gojomo 14y ago
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?
deleted 14y ago
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sparknlaunch 14y ago
> "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.
ilaksh 14y ago
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.
FJim 14y ago
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 14y ago
  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!
mcnemesis 14y ago
"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 :-)
dakrisht 14y ago
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
geuis 14y ago
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 14y ago
  mstromb posted the pdf of the paper: http://web.mst.edu/~chellaps/papers/12_tech-soc_kcmwl.pdf 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
suprgeek 14y ago
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.
Shenglong 14y ago
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.
frfr 14y ago
this makes me depressed
abalashov 14y ago
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 14y ago
  I think you misunderstand what a statistical correlation actually means and entails.
Atropos 14y ago
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_truth_table http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modus_ponens#Justification_via_...) 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 14y ago
  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.
jcfrei 14y ago
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/ 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.
jakeonthemove 14y ago
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 :-)...
mkhattab 14y ago
I think the article describes the behavior of escapists. The constant need to be distracted in order to avoid facing one's own reality.
- agumonkey 14y ago
  Something around this. Procrastinators, depressed, escapists, there's common trait. Internet is such a wonderful constant stream of more-distracting-interesting things.
- loceng 14y ago
  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 14y ago
    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 14y ago
      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/ http://writingcenter.unc.edu/handouts/procrastination/)
ExpiredLink 14y ago
Correlation is not causation.
loceng 14y ago
Here's a different way to look at it: Is it our environment (including the scope of the web) that makes us depressed?
seppvom 14y ago
interesting study. would be very interesting if internet surfung/computer usage and which elements increase the propability of developing depression.
TazeTSchnitzel 14y ago
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.
pixelcort 14y ago
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.
ambler0 14y ago
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.
stefer 14y ago
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.
why_fileSharing 14y ago
> 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.
RyShiki 14y ago
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 14y ago
  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.
droidist 14y ago
They use p2p file sharing more and watch more videos. That makes sense. When I'm feeling depressed I tend to watch lots and lots of TV. But then I get more depressed because I'm wasting my time watching TV. It's like a drug, the cure becomes the cause. "I need a TV embrace" - Ben Lee
yaix 14y ago
Waiting for a new category in Google Adsense, next to "content based ads" and "interest based ads", will we soon see "disorders based ads"?
ciarog 14y ago
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.

219 points by sew 14y ago

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 14y ago
Exactly.. So basically people who are engaged fully in the "web" experience are depressed?
- wickedchicken 14y ago
  > 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 14y ago
    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.
    - ehsanu1 14y ago
      Or, you have an bias for optimism, like most people. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8rmi95pYL0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8rmi95pYL0
    - koide 14y ago
      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.
      - deleted 14y ago
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  - Produce 14y ago
    My solution to this is to read them as sparingly as possible. What's the use of getting depressed over something you can't change? A smarter solution is to use as much of your time as possible to help yourself and others while only concerning yourself with issues you have influence over.
- pjscott 14y ago
  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 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 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayes_theorem
  - notJim 14y ago
    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.
    - evoxed 14y ago
      That seems to be one of the major laments in Thinking, Fast and Slow (Kahneman). Us humans, even when we're 'ready for it', tend to be remarkably inflexible in adopting concepts which conflict with our basic or social intuitions...

DanielBMarkham 14y ago

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.

mpdaugherty 14y ago
Having too many tabs open at one time can definitely hurt my concentration. I can remember multiple times in the last few weeks when I just wanted to look up some specific information or send a single email, but upon switching back to Chrome, ended up answering other emails in my inbox or looking at tabs I had left open with articles that I wanted to read. I've started making sure I use an app (Pocket) to keep track of articles so I can close the browser tab immediately and read one article at a time exclusively, and on my schedule (e.g. sitting in a taxi or on the subway). For emails, I guess I should write them in a text editor before switching to GMail, so I just have to copy, paste, send.

_delirium 14y ago

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.

DanielBMarkham 14y ago
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.
- jQueryIsAwesome 14y ago
  Totally; some companies may use it to identify depressed employees just to fire them (because they think depressed people is less efficient).
  - waterlesscloud 14y ago
    Hmm. I wonder if that would be possible to do without risking lawsuits. Wouldn't depression fall under a medical condition?
    - steve-howard 14y ago
      It does, but if you identify it before it can be reported, don't leave a paper trail, and find another reason (because there's always a reason if you want there to be one), you can probably get around that. I'm not suggesting that it would be ethical or even a good idea, but it's certainly possible that an early-detection system could be used to be very evil indeed.
    - denzil_correa 14y ago

kasbah 14y ago

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.

mwsherman 14y ago

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 14y ago
Here's a pdf of the paper: http://web.mst.edu/~chellaps/papers/12_tech-soc_kcmwl.pdf 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.
- waterlesscloud 14y ago
  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.
  - stefer 14y ago

phene 14y ago

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 14y ago
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?
- deleted 14y ago
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snitzr 14y ago

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 14y ago
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 14y ago

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 14y ago
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.

brianjyee 14y ago

"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??

billpatrianakos 14y ago

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?

deleted 14y ago
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tgrass 14y ago

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.

gojomo 14y ago

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?

deleted 14y ago

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sparknlaunch 14y ago

> "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.

ilaksh 14y ago

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.

FJim 14y ago

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 14y ago
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!

mcnemesis 14y ago

"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 :-)

dakrisht 14y ago

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

geuis 14y ago

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 14y ago
mstromb posted the pdf of the paper: http://web.mst.edu/~chellaps/papers/12_tech-soc_kcmwl.pdf 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

suprgeek 14y ago

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.

Shenglong 14y ago

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.

frfr 14y ago

this makes me depressed

abalashov 14y ago

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 14y ago
I think you misunderstand what a statistical correlation actually means and entails.

Atropos 14y ago

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_truth_table http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modus_ponens#Justification_via_...) 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 14y ago
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.

jcfrei 14y ago

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/ 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.

jakeonthemove 14y ago

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 :-)...

mkhattab 14y ago

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

agumonkey 14y ago
Something around this. Procrastinators, depressed, escapists, there's common trait. Internet is such a wonderful constant stream of more-distracting-interesting things.
loceng 14y ago
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 14y ago
  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 14y ago
    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/ http://writingcenter.unc.edu/handouts/procrastination/)

ExpiredLink 14y ago

Correlation is not causation.

loceng 14y ago

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

seppvom 14y ago

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

TazeTSchnitzel 14y ago

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.

pixelcort 14y ago

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.

ambler0 14y ago

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.

stefer 14y ago

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.

why_fileSharing 14y ago

> 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.

RyShiki 14y ago

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 14y ago
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.

droidist 14y ago

They use p2p file sharing more and watch more videos. That makes sense. When I'm feeling depressed I tend to watch lots and lots of TV. But then I get more depressed because I'm wasting my time watching TV. It's like a drug, the cure becomes the cause. "I need a TV embrace" - Ben Lee

yaix 14y ago

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

ciarog 14y ago

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.