Your Instagram feed can tell us if you’re depressed, study suggests

Washington Post ^ | August 22 at 10:26 AM | Ariana Eunjung Cha

[BenLurkin]

Researchers Andrew Reece of Harvard University and Chris Danforth of the University of Vermont collected survey information and 43,950 Instagram photos from 166 volunteers recruited through Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, which pays people small amounts to perform tasks.

Each participant was asked to complete a standardized clinical depression survey to assess depression level, answer demographic questions and share information about their use of social media, including their Instagram usernames. They also were asked to self-report their history of depression diagnosis.

...

The key finding in the new study has to do with the curious relationship between mood and color. It turned out increased hue, with decreased brightness and saturation, appeared to predict depression. Hue refers to the shade on a 360-degree color wheel. Brightness is defined as where on the spectrum a color lies between black to white. Saturation is what photographers call “colorfulness,” or the intensity of a color.

In other words, people who are depressed had pictures that were “bluer, grayer and darker.”

[BenLurkin]

The study is the latest in a body of research that looks at how changes in your psychology are reflected in social media. For example, a team from Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine examined how three aspects of movement in time and space — aspects they dubbed “circadian movement,” “normalized entropy” and “location variance” — appear to correlate with symptoms of depression. Another study, out of Sweden, found that frequent cellphone use was associated with stress, sleep disturbances and symptoms of depression among both young adult men and women

[Terry L Smith]

I dont use that, neither! In fact, if not a reply on YouTube, there is no other ‘social media’ that i do use.

[cyclotic]

Not mine. Outside of Linked in and Twitter, I have no social media

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

Or maybe you like dark colors.

[Talisker]

In other words, people who are depressed had pictures that were “bluer, grayer and darker.”

[rktman]

Hmmm. So what do the deep thinking psycho-logists conclude if one has NO internet presence other than email? An extreme, extreme radical right winger trying to hide some sort of evil? :-)

[bgill]

Just wait until they study FR posts.

[Boogieman]

That would be an amazing achievement since my instagram feed doesn’t even exist!

[Albion Wilde]

One of the most fascinating findings has to do with faces. Researchers found that depressed users were more likely than others to post photos with faces. However, they had fewer faces in each photo.

“Fewer faces may be an oblique indicator that depressed users interact in smaller social settings, which would be in accordance with research linking depression to reduced social interactivity,” Reece and Danforth wrote.

So, in other words, if you are a portrait painter or photographer, or you work for a yearbook company, you are a loser according to these ivory tower dweebs. And "it will be on your permanent record."

[SaraJohnson]

That would be a “lone wolf”; possibly a terrorist.

[rktman]

LOL! They ain’t no waitin’ cause they already got all our numbers.