However, as BBC Future will explore this month in our #LikeMinded season, scientists are also looking at how social media can be used to diagnose depression, which could help people receive treatment earlier. Researchers for Microsoft surveyed 476 people and analysed their Twitter profiles for depressive language, linguistic style, engagement and emotion. From this, they developed a classifier that can accurately predict depression before it causes symptoms in seven out of 10 cases.
Researchers from Harvard and Vermont Universities analysed 166 people’s Instagram photos to create a similar tool last year with the same success rate.
How interesting is that? The whole article breaks down as:
- there’s not enough study yet
- more accurate data is coming in
- you can profile depression linguistically from people’s posting (on twitter, but I presume Facebook or debates will do nicely too: on a wee side note, depression is a health issue and under GDPR law it’s a special category of personal data).
- social media seems to act as a depressent
- blue light interrupts natural melatonin (causing sleeping problems)
- social media is addictive (and may need professional treatment!)
- it’s bad for your self-esteem
Obviously, reading the debates forum here is good for my self-esteem. I great pleasure in knowing that I’m superior to most of you...
That’s a joke. Suck it up.
Posting here is not good for the blood pressure. I’m sure that it’s driving many of us insane. Like we’d actually speak to people in the tone we set down on the forum?
Anyhoo. Just thought I’d start a wee debate on something other than trump and brexit.
Is using social media (and posting on the debates forum) bad for you and your health?
It seems to me that world, at least western society, has become significantly more unpleasant since the advent of the internet. I am not convinced that it, or in fact much of the new wave of technology in general, has has a positive effect on us all.
Facebook, once a fun portal to engage with family and friends has become polluted with commercialism, vanity and increasingly blighted with the same schisms we see in here. Communication between people is being distilled by online disinhibition into a concentrate of biliousness and intolerance and I am guilty of succumbing to it. Even world leaders “tweet” their thoughts, it’s astonishing.
Although the fundamental desire for mutual well being and to improve the world around us is what pulls us in the same direction and probably represents 80% of what makes us who we are, we seem to focus on the other 20%.
I find myself increasingly drawn to the idea of a period ‘off of the grid’ where I can metaphorically detoxify and focus my available time and energy on more fullfilling and uplifting activities. But il probalby be back here tomorrow.
Obviously, reading the debates forum here is good for my self-esteem. I great pleasure in knowing that I’m superior to most of you...
That’s a joke. Suck it up.
Like incestuous anal sex is a joke right.
An important point though shav, I fully admit I am not superior to yourself, wolfgang, No.1, suzi, kaka notion (or any other of the dozen control freaks that frequent this message board) when it comes to making decisions about your lives, who you should help, how you should care for your health, how you should prepare for your retirement, your terms of employment etc, if only those folk could return the sentiment, but they can't because they do suffer from some superior holier than thou delusion.
I am not depressed, obsessed nor impressed.
I am not superior, inferior nor am I a worrier.
I can read it, write it or leave it alone.
I am just me...down to the bone.
However, as BBC Future will explore this month in our #LikeMinded season, scientists are also looking at how social media can be used to diagnose depression, which could help people receive treatment earlier. Researchers for Microsoft surveyed 476 people and analysed their Twitter profiles for depressive language, linguistic style, engagement and emotion. F ...[text shortened]... and brexit.
Is using social media (and posting on the debates forum) bad for you and your health?
you're not better than most.
you're better than whodey, or eladar, or quackquack and the rest of that club.
This forum is depressing at times. It's a mystery to me why I keep returning to it. Just a bad habit, I suppose. I was nearly shut of this website for a while. I had finished all my open games and not posted in the forums. I was nearly free.
But then my daughter brought home a boyfriend who fancied himself a chess player, a big talker y'know? Not wanting to be caught out by the whipper snapper I thought I'd brush up on the ol' chess skills a bit and got a few games going. Well we never did find time to play a game, my daughter eventually dumped the lad, and here I am wasting time talking to you lot again.
Merry Christmas you hateful losers. Get away from here and go hug your loved ones.
@sleepyguysaid This forum is depressing at times. It's a mystery to me why I keep returning to it. Just a bad habit, I suppose. I was nearly shut of this website for a while. I had finished all my open games and not posted in the forums. I was nearly free.
But then my daughter brought home a boyfriend who fancied himself a chess player, a big talker y'know? Not wanting to be caught ou ...[text shortened]... you lot again.
Merry Christmas you hateful losers. Get away from here and go hug your loved ones.