How Depressed People Use the Internet

There were two major findings. First, we identified several features of Internet usage that correlated with depression. In other words, we found a trend: in general, the more a participant’s score on the survey indicated depression, the more his or her Internet usage included these (rather technical-sounding) features — for instance, “p2p packets,” which indicate high levels of sharing files (like movies and music).

Our second major discovery was that there were patterns of Internet usage that were statistically high among participants with depressive symptoms compared with those without symptoms. That is, we found indicators: styles of Internet behavior that were signs of depressive people. For example, participants with depressive symptoms tended to engage in very high e-mail usage. This perhaps was to be expected: research by the psychologists Janet Morahan-Martin and Phyllis Schumacher has shown that frequent checking of e-mail may relate to high levels of anxiety, which itself correlates with depressive symptoms.

» via The New York Times (Subscription may be required for some content)

Notes

  1. inceptionofperception reblogged this from teachingliteracy
  2. chocouture reblogged this from teachingliteracy and added:
    There were two major findings. First, we identified several features of Internet usage that correlated with depression....
  3. ruzargh reblogged this from teachingliteracy
  4. folketymology reblogged this from teachingliteracy
  5. papercranesweare reblogged this from teachingliteracy
  6. thechatterbox reblogged this from teachingliteracy
  7. fuuturetense reblogged this from teachingliteracy
  8. being-caroline reblogged this from angelintime
  9. afairytalename reblogged this from teachingliteracy
  10. doughnutio reblogged this from infoneer-pulse and added:
    An interesting read.
  11. reapandprosper reblogged this from infoneer-pulse
  12. sublunarie reblogged this from teachingliteracy
  13. pinkandrainyclouds reblogged this from edmundherondale
  14. ekmoore reblogged this from infoneer-pulse
  15. puzzlepiecesoflife reblogged this from teachingliteracy
  16. evolar reblogged this from infoneer-pulse
  17. mayonessa reblogged this from teachingliteracy
  18. antesocialbook reblogged this from editoral
  19. editoral reblogged this from thesun-rises
  20. paintedstars reblogged this from teachingliteracy