How Depressives Surf the Web

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/17/opinion/sunday/how-depressed-people-use-the-internet.html?_r=1&hp

by sew • 14 years ago

219 112 14 years ago

nytimes.com

jtchang• 14 years 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• 14 years ago

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

wickedchicken• 14 years 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?

pjscott• 14 years 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

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

DanielBMarkham2• 14 years 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• 14 years 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.

larrys2• 14 years ago

"Markham's Law"

I will second that! But isn't the "You are the product" law prior art for that?

Groxx• 14 years ago

I fear the day Clippy asks me if I want help writing that snarky comment.

gregholmberg• 14 years ago

" ... wenn du lange in einen Abgrund blickst, blickt der Abgrund auch in dich hinein." [0]

"... when you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you." [1]

Nietzsche was a quotable fellow. [2]

[0] "Wikiquote - Nietzsche - Beyond_Good_and_Evil - Aphorism 146" http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Beyond_Good_and_Evil#Aphorism_1...

[1] "When you stare into .. " http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/39793.html

[2] "Nietzsche quotes" http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/Friedrich_Nietzsche

SoftwareMaven• 14 years ago

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

vidar• 14 years ago

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

atto• 14 years ago

I do this as well. Right now, I have 41 open, which is about normal. At work, I have another 50 or so open.

I primarily use tabs as a "live bookmark", both positive ("remind me to look at this later"), and negative ("I don't want to deal with this now, but should later"). I usually browse non-linearly, where I go through an entire page opening interesting links in new tabs before moving on. Thus, I end up with tons of tabs that, by default, stay open. I usually do a quick clean up every few days.

A sample:

1) JavaScript cheat sheet. I've been needing to brush up.

2) A recipe that I want to try soon.

3) Ask HN page on best Git GUI for Windows. We're switching to Git at work, and most developers use Windows, so I need to find something that will make the transition easier.

4) "How to Read Mathematics". I'd normally add this to Pocket and read on my Kindle, but I also want to send it to old professors.

5) A couple tabs for a pair of prescription sunglasses I'm considering buying,

6) My side project's Trello page.

7) Several pages with design ideas for my side project (both JS and CSS)

8) Long Ask Reddit threads I wanted to die off before I read them.

9) A couple blog posts I've been wanting to read, but not long enough to add to Pocket.

10) Links that I've opened after seeing HN's homepage. etc.

http://i.imgur.com/Plmzb.png

philwelch5• 14 years ago

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....

loceng4• 14 years ago

People use technology to cope, if they need. As we speak, I have 38 tabs open - and that's just on this computer. As you said, this helps me remember various chores online - email tabs open, still need to reply to them - news article open, still want to read that when I have a chance - etc..

I am a visual person and that's why tabs help me, they are queues. Perhaps what I need is to learn some discipline in opening a 'TODO' task list daily, though then I find that overwhelming; Maybe I need to try to give that a bit more of a chance, and maybe I just haven't found the right tool(s) that work for me?

I imagine if I found a way to be more organized then my creative flow and potentially creative capacity would be diminished. I would potentially become too fixed on organization as the main importance, and that would take away from fluidity that creativity needs; Perhaps I need this, I don't know.

If a service that tracked my behaviours was used to suggest better tools for me to use based on my patterns, then that'd be neat - however because they are a business and want to make profits - I can see it being used in less-than-pure ways.

plf• 14 years ago

I'm curious, did Newton name Newton's law himself or did other people do that for him? Did Gantt name his diagrams? Isn't it a bit vain to name a law with your own name?

kaybe• 14 years ago

At the very least, it will earn you 20 points on the crackpot index: http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/crackpot.html

_delirium2• 14 years 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.

DanielBMarkham2• 14 years 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• 14 years ago

Totally; some companies may use it to identify depressed employees just to fire them (because they think depressed people is less efficient).

electromagnetic2• 14 years ago

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.

larrys2• 14 years ago

"99.9% of depressed people aren't going to lynch themselves otherwise there wouldn't be a human race."

Exactly. But you know the way society is. 99% of the men or woman who cheat don't kill their spouse but that info being uncovered certainly increases greatly the suspicion that they committed the crime.

kijin3• 14 years ago

> 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!

zaptheimpaler2• 14 years ago

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

DanBC2• 14 years ago

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

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

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

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

koide2• 14 years ago

I just wanted to point out that non depressive people is not necessarily happy people and have hard times when life's shitty, they just have emotional rewards (not only emotional punishments) when confronting (and overcoming) the shit.

Produce2• 14 years ago

I'm still trying to figure out why we need higher ups in the first place.

On a less anarchistic note, we need to start questioning the mental health of our society as a whole (the abyss might stare back at you but you stared first, stick with it).

That there is an obsession with everyone being in a particular state is indicative of anxiety. That it cannot comprehend the fact that our emotional states are the products of our physical and social environments indicates denial.

It's just like family therapy - no single member of a family can be mentally ill in isolation - the whole family needs treatment. So it is with humanity - the sky high levels of reported anxiety and depression are not isolated to the individuals suffering from them, they are a result of the very fabric of our society. It's the way we look at and treat each other, it's the inequality, the prejudice, the hatred, the litigation, the constant shifting of blame and severe lack of responsibility that's endemic in our culture. THAT is what's making people feel bad.

Treating individuals is patching the symptoms and not addressing the root causes.

steve-howard2• 14 years ago

My concern is that in my years of struggling with my depression (and my current state of doing quite well), I've had people make heavy-handed attempts to "help" me and I've had people who actually helped me. There's no guarantee that anyone who can guess without my telling them that I'm depressed is going to be the kind of person I'm willing to trust.

kasbah• 14 years 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• 14 years 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• 14 years ago

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.

waterlesscloud2• 14 years 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.

_delirium2• 14 years ago

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.

stefer3• 14 years ago

As a current student, I can verify that this is accurate.

lostlogin• 14 years ago

Exactly what I was poised to write. After a howler like that, reading on is hard.

phene• 14 years 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• 14 years 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?

snitzr• 14 years 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• 14 years 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• 14 years 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• 14 years 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• 14 years 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• 14 years 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?

tgrass• 14 years 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• 14 years 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?

sparknlaunch• 14 years 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• 14 years 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• 14 years 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.

dakrisht2• 14 years 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• 14 years 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 :-)

dakrisht2• 14 years 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• 14 years 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• 14 years ago

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

suprgeek• 14 years 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• 14 years 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• 14 years ago

this makes me depressed

abalashov• 14 years 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• 14 years ago

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

Atropos• 14 years 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_...)

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• 14 years 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• 14 years 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/ 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• 14 years 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 :-)...

mkhattab2• 14 years 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• 14 years ago

Something around this. Procrastinators, depressed, escapists, there's common trait. Internet is such a wonderful constant stream of more-distracting-interesting things.

loceng4• 14 years 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.

mkhattab2• 14 years 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.

ExpiredLink• 14 years ago

Correlation is not causation.

loceng4• 14 years 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• 14 years ago

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

TazeTSchnitzel• 14 years 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• 14 years 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• 14 years 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.

stefer3• 14 years 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• 14 years 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• 14 years 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• 14 years 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.

yaix• 14 years 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• 14 years 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.

How Depressives Surf the Web

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