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Facebook Posts May Point To Depression, Study Finds (nbcnews.com)
People's Facebook posts might predict whether they are suffering from depression, researchers reported this week. From a report: The researchers found that the words people used seemed to indicate whether they would later be diagnosed with depression. The findings offer a way to flag people who may be in need of help, but they also raise important questions about people's health privacy, the team reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. People who were later clinically diagnosed with depression used more "I" language, according to Johannes Eichstaedt of the University of Pennsylvania and his colleagues. They also used more words reflecting loneliness, sadness and hostility. "We observed that users who ultimately had a diagnosis of depression used more first-person singular pronouns, suggesting a preoccupation with the self," they wrote. That is an indicator of depression in some people. The team recruited 683 people who visited an emergency room for their study and asked to see their Facebook pages. Most were not depressed, but 114 had a depression diagnosis in their medical records.
More broadly: social isolation causes depression.
Socially isolated people often turn to Facebook to try to relieve their social isolation, but sitting alone in a room and pretending some pixels on your monitor are your friends is not a long-term viable substitute for actually spending time with people, so that mostly doesn't work.
There's nothing unique about Facebook, one could get equally depressed by spending all one's time alone with Fortnight or Slashdot or Instagram or any other software.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
social isolation causes depression.
... and depression causes social isolation. It is hard to break the loop.
sitting alone in a room and pretending some pixels on your monitor are your friends is not a long-term viable substitute for actually spending time with people
Exactly. Pixels are not enough. That's why I got a RealDoll.
First clue that you have a mental health problem: you're on FaceBook.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.