Depressed People Surf the Web Differently 278
An anonymous reader sends this excerpt from Medical Daily:
"Researchers led by Sriram Chellappan from the Missouri University of Science and Technology, collected internet usage data from 216 college students enrolled at the university. The usage data was collected anonymously without interfering with the student’s normal internet usage for a month. The students were tested to see if they had symptoms of depression and analyzed internet usage based on the results. Depressed students tended to use the internet in much different ways than their non-depressed classmates. Depressed students used file-sharing programs, like torrents or online sharing sites, more than non-depressed students (PDF). Depressed students also chatted more and sent more emails out. Online video viewing and game playing were also more popular for depressed students."
So WTF do the non-depressed do with the internet? (Score:5, Insightful)
File-sharing, chatting, email, video games, watching videos--all those are the domain of the depressed, apparently. So wtf do the non-depressed do online, just read the newspaper and post ads on Craigslist?
Re:So WTF do the non-depressed do with the interne (Score:5, Funny)
no point in waiting from some non-depressed (and non-maniacal) person to stop by here and let us know.
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Just in case, we should start development on a "detect-chipper-surfer" iptables module to install on the /. server to filter them out. Better safe than sorry.
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/. IS the filter
They post on Slashdot (Score:5, Funny)
Duh! Slashdot makes everyone happy!
Re:They post on Slashdot (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, I've found that anymore, reading Slashdot tends to just piss me off.
It's not that I have a gripe with Slashdot or the users - it's just that every time I turn around, there's a story about some idiot politicians trying to run/ruin the web or some douchy patent trolls making millions by making folks pay out for using some "invention that the average high school level programmer could figure out in an hour... or .. well, just so much of the tech news nowadays - because it seems that it's all just everyone out to grab as much of the pie as they can and screw anyone who gets in their way.
Wow, maybe I am depressed... nawww.. I know me - when I'm good and angry, I'm not depressed.
Wait? what was the question?
Re:They post on Slashdot (Score:5, Informative)
Movie at 11.
Re:So WTF do the non-depressed do with the interne (Score:5, Insightful)
Makes sense to me that depressed people would do more file sharing. File sharing is a means to an end, not an activity in and of itself. It follows that a depressed person might say, "Fuck it, I'm just going to stay home and watch every episode of Game of Thrones and eat Cheetos until I fall asleep."
Re:So WTF do the non-depressed do with the interne (Score:5, Insightful)
"Fuck it, I'm just going to stay home and watch every episode of Game of Thrones and eat Cheetos until I fall asleep."
That plan sounds pretty rad, actually.
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Note that I do not believe you need to be experiencing depression to follow this plan, and I wish you godspeed, sir! I recommend something to wash down those Cheetos, though.
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What about an orange drink made out of Cheeto powder mixed with water?
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It's that they did MORE of it. I guess the depressed student sits in front of his computer 16 hours a day, while the nondepressed student turns it off and goes off to do something. Also the article says they suffer from ADD-like symptoms... constantly jumping from website to email to downloading and back to the web.
Hmmm.
I guess I'm depressed.
Actually it's more like "bored".
Re:So WTF do the non-depressed do with the interne (Score:4, Funny)
"File-sharing, chatting, email,..."
They have it backwards.
If you watched lots of shared Hollywood crap, you'd be depressed too.
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Watch pr0n, I presume? In fact, doesn't that give you endorphins and all kind of goodies?
Re:So WTF do the non-depressed do with the interne (Score:4, Informative)
So wtf do the non-depressed do online, just read the newspaper and post ads on Craigslist?
They log off more often and do some of the many things that are vital to all facets of human health and have no online equivalent.
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It's their way of coping. Once someone isn't depressed they go out more, which means less of the things like downloading files, playing online games etc.
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Once someone isn't depressed they go out more. . .
Really? I don't know one way or the other, but I wonder. For example, I would expect people who go out all the time, but only to get wasted and hook up with strangers, to demonstrate a higher incidence of depression. Just my gut feeling though.
My take on this study is that it may suggest that various internet "social" activities are just the latest coping mechanisms for depression that fall under the category of superficial and ineffectual attempts to reach out to others.
Re:So WTF do the non-depressed do? Facebook (Score:2)
Pintrest. Twitter. All the things media wants them to do and considers profitable territory for advertisement and corporate promotions.
Re:So WTF do the non-depressed do with the interne (Score:4, Interesting)
Researchers believe this haphazard use of the internet is a result of students having difficulty concentrating, which is a common trait associated with depression.
Non-depressed people use those things too, but they tend to complete one task before moving on to the next rather than randomly jumping between them. They're finding a correlation between ADD and depression, which is well known.
Re:So WTF do the non-depressed do with the interne (Score:5, Insightful)
coping mechanism. When your brain is telling you you're all alone, you do everything you can to feel some sort of human connection.
Re:So WTF do the non-depressed do with the interne (Score:5, Insightful)
When I'm depressed, I do everything I can to avoid human connection altogether.
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When I'm depressed, I do everything I can to avoid human connection altogether.
This seems more like my experience. Cannot fathom "connecting" when feeling depressed; rather to stay in the house, put phone in airplane mode, avoid checking email, hunker down & wait for the storm to pass.
Oops, just broke my own guideline, gotta go.
Re:So WTF do the non-depressed do with the interne (Score:5, Insightful)
coping mechanism. When your brain is telling you you're all alone, you do everything you can to feel some sort of human connection.
No. Goddamnit, no.
Look, you extroverted people have no understanding of us, more introverted guys. I understand most people really can't stand to be alone, and start wanting to climb the walls when forced to do that. Not everyone shares these feelings. We prefer interaction online because we want to attenuate the human connection. Being around people for too long drains me. Talking to someone online is manageable, because the person on the other side isn't taking up the entirety of my attention, and I'm free to do other things WHILE interacting. I get a message, and I get to ignore it for a minute while I'm reading an article, then getting around to respond it, then go back to reading the article.
One-on-one people interactions completely monopolize your time, and for that reason is very draining to introverts. You can't just tune out the person for a bit without being extremely rude. When I was in college, my roommate was another introvert. We sometimes, I shit you not, type to each other over instant messaging through our computers while IN THE SAME ROOM.
Re:So WTF do the non-depressed do with the interne (Score:5, Funny)
We sometimes, I shit you not, type to each other over instant messaging through our computers while IN THE SAME ROOM.
yeah ... here in the office, we call that "working" and we do it 10 hours a day.
Re:So WTF do the non-depressed do with the interne (Score:5, Informative)
You may want to take a look at the following ted talk by Sherry Turkle. http://www.ted.com/talks/sherry_turkle_alone_together.html [ted.com]
It discusses exactly your point, and left me feeling sorry for the smart phoney's among us. The jist of her argument is that we only want the good parts of relationships which weakens relationships in general.
Here is a transcript that i have copied from the web. Hopefully slashdot doesnt brutalize it too much:
------------
Just a moment ago, my daughter Rebecca texted me for good luck. Her text said, "Mom, you will rock." I love this. Getting that text was like getting a hug. And so there you have it. I embody the central paradox. I'm a woman who loves getting texts who's going to tell you that too many of them can be a problem.
Actually that reminder of my daughter brings me to the beginning of my story. 1996, when I gave my first TEDTalk, Rebecca was five years old and she was sitting right there in the front row. I had just written a book that celebrated our life on the internet and I was about to be on the cover of Wired magazine. In those heady days, we were experimenting with chat rooms and online virtual communities. We were exploring different aspects of ourselves. And then we unplugged. I was excited. And, as a psychologist, what excited me most was the idea that we would use what we learned in the virtual world about ourselves, about our identity, to live better lives in the real world.
Now fast-forward to 2012. I'm back here on the TED stage again. My daughter's 20. She's a college student. She sleeps with her cellphone, so do I. And I've just written a new book, but this time it's not one that will get me on the cover of Wired magazine. So what happened? I'm still excited by technology, but I believe, and I'm here to make the case, that we're letting it take us places that we don't want to go.
Over the past 15 years, I've studied technologies of mobile communication and I've interviewed hundreds and hundreds of people, young and old, about their plugged in lives. And what I've found is that our little devices, those little devices in our pockets, are so psychologically powerful that they don't only change what we do, they change who we are. Some of the things we do now with our devices are things that, only a few years ago, we would have found odd or disturbing, but they've quickly come to seem familiar, just how we do things.
So just to take some quick examples: People text or do email during corporate board meetings. They text and shop and go on Facebook during classes, during presentations, actually during all meetings. People talk to me about the important new skill of making eye contact while you're texting. (Laughter) People explain to me that it's hard, but that it can be done. Parents text and do email at breakfast and at dinner while their children complain about not having their parents' full attention. But then these same children deny each other their full attention. This is a recent shot of my daughter and her friends being together while not being together. And we even text at funerals. I study this. We remove ourselves from our grief or from our revery and we go into our phones.
Why does this matter? It matters to me because I think we're setting ourselves up for trouble -- trouble certainly in how we relate to each other, but also trouble in how we relate to ourselves and our capacity for self-reflection. We're getting used to a new way of being alone together. People want to be with each other, but also elsewhere -- connected to all the different places they want to be. People want to customize their lives. They want to go in and out of all the places they are because the thing that m
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I am keenly interested in a future where everything is different.
What people like you forget is that changes in technology are fundamentally trivial compared with changes in politics or economics.
A technological future that abolished poverty and disease, dismantled all political and economic power structures, redistributed wealth equally and removed the need to waste time working for a living would be great, but what we actually get are expensive toys, but made cheaper.
Meanwhile, children communicate in a sort of pidgin English through text messages, and do their
Re:So WTF do the non-depressed do with the interne (Score:4, Insightful)
Um, I agree, but what the hell does that have to do with what the GP was saying?
Depressed people (people whose "brain is telling you you're all alone") do everything they can to feel some sort of human connection. Whether they're extroverted, and go to lots of parties, or they're introverted, and connect to people in a manageable online environment, or they're extroverted, and use online communications because the barrier of entry is lower, is irrelevant according to the GP's argument.
Sounds like you're jumping on your introverted/extroverted hobbyhorse without even checking to see if it makes sense in the context of the argument you're addressing.
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We'd be the first to sign up for voluntary solitary confinement. (ok, that may just be me)
It's not just you. I hear horror stories about how terrible it is to be in solitary confinement and all I can think is, that's like my whole life for months at a time. Much rather be in solitary than in the *shudder* general population.
Or anyway, as a guy who's never been to prison, that's what I'd opt for, given the choice.
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There is being solitary and then there is solitary confinement. Much like yourself I also live alone and love it, but I see the difference between the two.
The main difference is control. While I am alone, this is the main beauty of it: I can just trully relax and do whatever I need/want knowing that I am ultimately in control of the situation. I can spend it doing various chores at home, indulge myself on the net, go for a walk in the woods and even end my solitude for a brief while to talk to a good friend
Re:RTFA (Score:5, Insightful)
If you'd RTFA, you'd see that depressed people do these things more than normal people, and they chat in a seemingly random pattern because they exhibit an inability to focus, which is a sign of depression.
I read the article and I'd say the GP's point is valid. All it does is claim that depressed people do more of the very generic internet activities mentioned and switch between these activities more often, while making no mention of what things non-depressed people do instead. Therefore, at most I see a claim that depressed people may surf the web *more*, but no compelling evidence of how they do so *differently*.
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Non-depressed people socialize on Facebook and share interesting things with their friends. Depressed people go to Google+, limit their circles heavily and follow geek celebrities instead of their friends (if they have any).
This is a grossly overstated, bordering on deeply insulting, generalization. I would never go on Google+.
Re:RTFA (Score:4, Insightful)
But then the receptionist started filling the stream with hardcore feminist rhetoric
i.e. she complained once about always being asked to make teas and coffees for everybody
Re:RTFA (Score:5, Funny)
Linux is cool though . . .
Are we depressed ? (Score:2)
I mean, the folks who are posting on /.
Are we _that_ depressed ?
Meanwhile, the non-depressed folks supposed to play shoot-'em-up while cursing like a seaman (apologies to seamen everywhere)
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Thanks(?) for sharing.
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Now I spend 18 hours a day browsing slashdot. Sometimes I get too drunk and tell everyone to go to hell. Then I feel bad the next day and come back, just to get drunk again and discuss Linux.
Wow, Mr. McBride, how the mighty have fallen.
Chin up, Joseph Smith loves you.
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Isn't there a #depressed channel on IRC?
Re:RTFA (Score:5, Funny)
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Wow. Enzyte withdrawal hit Smilin' Bob worse than anyone could have imagined.
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I believe that downloading movies depresses you. I noticed that when I download more movies I get more depressed. I download dozens of movies and they all suck. There is nothing worth stealing anymore.
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To paraphrase TFA and Steven Wright (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:To paraphrase TFA and Steven Wright (Score:5, Funny)
Wouldn't they drown then?
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Don't they call that 'swimming' ? ( or drowning )
Dressed People (Score:5, Funny)
I read the title as "dressed" people. I thought, "well of course dressed people surf the Internet differently than naked people".
Correlation and Causality (Score:3, Insightful)
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I'm tired of people trotting out "correlation doesn't equal causation" to dismiss practically every study they don't like. Correlation doesn't necessarily prove causation, but the point is that it's often a strong indicator of a link. For example, the random, chaotic pattern of chatting behavior exhibited by the depressed students makes sense because one sign of depression is an inability to focus and remain undistracted.
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Unless it's global warming. Then it can never be true. Don't disprove me now /.
Of course! (Score:2)
Correlation does not mean causation (Score:3)
Gary Gutting (Philosopher, Notre Dame) had a blog piece in the NYT last week that tackles this head on:
How Reliable Are the Social Sciences? [nytimes.com]
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There seems to be a pretty high correlation between studies showing correlations and people saying that correlation doesn't imply causation. I wonder if there's a causal relationship?
No way... (Score:3)
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So basically, people that are depressed look for things that might make them feel better such as entertainment from videos, movies and games. They send more emails to reach out to other people trying to connect in an attempt to feel better. If you think about it, should anyone really be surprised?
We might be interested to know whether these things actually make people feel better, as opposed to offering no help or making things worse.
However, if these things actually made people happy, why would they be more common among the depressed? It seems to me that the correlation would be reversed.
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I've been there, and in my case computer games were both the solution and the problem. In the short term they give you the endorphin boost you need to feel that you're living an interesting life, and hence stop you topping yourself, but over the medium to long term your original problem - that your life feels like a thankless, meaningless struggle - is still there and getting worse as you're avoiding your problems with all this displacement activity, not taking steps to solve them.
Self-medicating with t
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Haters anonymous. Sounds great, but "Internet" still sounds better.
tail wagging the dog (Score:3)
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"The internet is MAKING the people depressed!"
Then cheer up and watch some Fox News!
Oh.
Entitlement, ego-centrism. sloth (Score:2, Interesting)
I wonder if depression is correlated with an entitlement mentality and ego-centrism. It is definitely correlated with a lack of exercise.
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I wonder if depression is correlated with an entitlement mentality and ego-centrism.
No and no. Likely the opposite of those is true.
It is definitely correlated with a lack of exercise.
Agreed.
what else? (Score:2)
Okay so what were the non-depressed people doing? I wasn't aware there was anything else to do on the Internet.
Boredom (Score:2)
Sounds more like they've misdiagnosed those with depression; they sound like they're bored -- not depressed
selection of students (Score:2)
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It must have been rather difficult to get these students also because who would agree to have all their online activities monitored and analyzed.
Um, practically anyone who uses the internet without jumping through hoops to try to avoid it?
Not "different", but "more" (Score:4)
That's neither surprising nor a bad thing since the main thing that people do with the internet is communicate with others. The primary problem for depressed people is feeling that they are alone and isolated in their suffering.
In that respect, particularly for college students who may be away from their homes for the first time in their lives, the internet is probably a good (and ready) palliative.
Get Help? (Score:3)
I use BT, chat, email, FG and even play WoW and flash games. So I guess I'm in trouble:
Come see the symptoms inherent in the system, Help Help, I'm being depressed!
Avoiding People (Score:5, Insightful)
It's called escapism. I watched vidoes and played games so I wouldn't have to think of my miserable life. Of course doing those things didn't help fix my problems, so I always ended up feeling worse sometime afterwards. But I didn't have any motivation to get any real work done. I don't do online chats and don't have many (if any) friends to send emails to (not that I would have anything to say), but I prefer online communications compared with face to face. It's a lot easier to write a response than it is to stand next to someone and try to completely hide your depression. People don't like being around other depressed people; it's depressing.
Maintaining face is extermely difficult when you're really depressed. Happy people make you want to cry because you're never that happy and can't ever get there. You also haven't acoomplished anything (you sat around for 3-4 hours being too depressed to do anything), so when people ask you "what's up" you have no answer. There's only so many ways to sound busy.
what else? (Score:2)
If depressed people did more file-sharing programs, torrents, online sharing sites, chatting more, email, online video viewing, and game playing...what did the non depressed people do? What's LEFT?
Thought it said something funny (Score:3)
For a second there, I thought the title was "Depressed People Surf the Web Diffidently," whereupon I thought, "Of course."
Then I read it again....
advertising? (Score:5, Interesting)
it's an advertiser's job to make you unhappy. if you are content with what you have, and only wish to buy things you need, a lot of worthless junk would never get sold. think about how your (imaginary?) girlfriend/wife goes shopping to make herself feel better. materialism is condemned by just about every religion that preaches happiness through the "denial of the crystalline" -- to quote a Meshuggah song (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9IiP-Vdx_F8). advertisers want to create depression in you because it's proven to drive sales. you spend to fill the void, and the void is created by attachment to status and the expensive crap required to get it. all of this was true for tv, and now it's our interactive tv, the internet.
http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/news/releases/consumerism-and-its-antisocial-effects-can-be-turned-onor-off.html [psychologicalscience.org]
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it's an advertiser's job to make you unhappy. if you are content with what you have, and only wish to buy things you need, a lot of worthless junk would never get sold.
Yeah, but as an utter non-consumer with virtually zero desire to buy stuff (even when I really ought to buy stuff, like decent clothes - I'm probably an embarrassment to my non-imaginary girlfriend), it doesn't mean one won't get depressed. Unfortunately.
PS Fucking hell & god damn it.
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Wait for it (Score:2)
...The grand converse fallacy, where people try to conclude from this that if depressed Internet users do X, Y, and Z, then if someone is doing X, Y, and Z, it's an indication that they're depressed and in need of "help."
In Other News ...Bored People Entertain Themselves (Score:3)
People that are extremely bored and that in all likelihood would like to no have to endure 1, 2 or 3 more years of boring lectures that aren't -in many cases- in touch with reality (spin intended) use their computers to:
- Have distracting hobbies such as collecting stuff (Used file-sharing programs)
- Chat with people that have nothing to do with their field of study
- Communicate with friends and relatives unrelated to studies.
- Role play and live more exciting live (Online video viewing and game playing)
- Entertain themselves with video
I can relate to them. I felt that way during part of my time at university (5 full years non-stop, about 180 lectures per month and 700 books later, I really really felt like escaping some "nights").
My advise is, if you are in that situation, know it's temporary. I can say that the "stay hungry, stay poor, my friends" from Steve Jobs isn't bullshit. It really means do what you like...once you enter the "security road to nowhere" it's very difficult to change. I had the luck of going for adventure to some other country, and that was one of the most rewarding decisions I ever made. Bake a backup plan, and then go for Plan A...trust your luck more than you trust your security (but always have boring Plan B ready).
What did you want them to do? (Score:2)
Depressed students tended to use the internet in much different ways than their non-depressed classmates. Depressed students used file-sharing programs, like torrents or online sharing sites, more than non-depressed students (PDF). Depressed students also chatted more and sent more emails out. Online video viewing and game playing were also more popular for depressed students."
I mean Jesus, what else is there?
Dear God ... Someone put me on suicide watch! (Score:2)
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Little disposable income?
That is why we constantly have apple articles and things about the latest android gadgets?
I would suggest that you would have been right a long time ago, but slashdot these days skews older.
I know you are just trying to shill for your crappy slashdot alternative though.
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Little disposable income?
That is why we constantly have apple articles and things about the latest android gadgets?
Why do you think the disposable income becomes so little? So many gadgets...
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The Apple articles are often negative because Apples often does bad things. Yet, they make very good hardware (Typing this on my macbook air). Android gadget articles do also cover the expensive devices. The fact that you found one article does not prove much.
I dismiss Hacker News because it is crappy. Slashdot is no longer the forefront of technology, it just isn't as crappy as Hacker News. Heck, slashdot was always days behind, even years ago. Reddit is even worse.
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It's hard to really compare the two, since they're aimed at different audiences and topics. Hacker News (HN, news.ycombinator.com) is probably closer to a combination of Reddit and the /. Firehose than Slashdot proper, so you get a lot more random blog articles posted (or "Show HN" posts to show off the poster's latest creation). In the case of Slashdot, a lot of those either get filtered out at firehose level or merged into one summary referencing two or three related articles. The better HN submissions
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My employer disagrees:
http://thehackernews.com/ [thehackernews.com] has been blocked. Reason: The category of Hacking has been blocked by your System Administrator
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http://news.ycombinator.com/ [ycombinator.com] might work better...
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This will sound like a troll, but it would be interesting to cross reference this study with Slashdot's demographic. Slashdot posts a LOT of Bittorrent and piracy news, as well as a ton of news about very cheap gadgets in the $100 range. I wouldn't be surprised to find that the majority of the demographic is made up of single, depressed techies with little disposable income, which would explain the almost obsessive interest in piracy, online rights, and cheap gadgets.
There's a sharp contrast in tone between the angry subject matter of Slashdot comments and the comments on practically every other popular tech news site. For example, Hacker News, where the demographic is mostly made up married, financially established programmers and Silicon Valley investors, actively discourages the kinds of angry comments that often get modded +5 here.
Oh, you're a troll.
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Re:This is the problem you inevitably fall into wh (Score:5, Insightful)
I hope that your point is that not all depressed people can be lumped into one category.
People who have experienced episodes of major depression might resent your assertion that they got that way because they were "lonely" or "bored" -- or even "sad."
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I've had major depression for a long time, and I can tell you chronic insomnia is a symptom of depression. My dad sleeps no more than 5 hours a night, but man, is he ready to go during the day.
Especially with seasonal effects, my sleep cycle gets better in the summer such that I don't have to take sleeping pills to fall asleep.
A common cause of insomnia in depressed people is directly related to the medication(s) they take. Often times, those mess up your whole sleep cycle.
Also, you tend to want to rest m
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though imo chronic insomnia is possibly the leading cause.
So, based upon essentially nothing, you've got it figured out. Great.
Maybe you could solve hunger & world peace when you've got a minute, m'kay?
More seriously, you might have a point in a few, rare cases, but likely you're mixing cause & effect. Depressed people can tend to sleep until it aches to lay in bed any longer. It's not dealing with insomnia, it's avoiding the pain of being conscious.
Re:This is the problem you inevitably fall into wh (Score:5, Informative)
Except you're wrong. Depression is also caused by things like hormone imbalance (postpartum depression), prolonged grief, or serotonin deficiency, to name a few. In fact, loneliness and boredom are symptoms of depression, not the other way around (as you suggest). When depressed, people lose motivation, which to boredom, and have an overwhelming sense of worthlessness, which leads to loneliness.
When someone is deficient in serotonin, they find that it takes an incredible amount of stimuli to bring their serotonin levels up to normal. You know that feeling of satisfaction you get when you complete a project or task? Those who are serotonin deficient don't get that feeling, and instead feel overwhelmed by the very thought of starting the task. Because it takes so much stimuli to bring their serotonin levels up to normal, they seek out quick fixes, like eating sweets, watching TV, and playing video games simultaneously; or masturbating 5-10 times a day. That's just to feel normal.
So in short, STFU, because you have no idea what you're talking about.
Re:This is the problem you inevitably fall into wh (Score:5, Informative)
Indeed.
I've been depressed lately, mainly due to unsatisfactory job, sleep deprivation (family = family + 1) and financial drowning (expenses rose, debt rose, income didn't, and that for years). And at work, when "new" projects come in, everyone feels excited, and I see no reason why they shouldn't. I immediately jump to analyzing the usefulness of whatever comes our way and well, frankly, most times I can't find any. I am doing my job, and I am doing it well, I just don't feel happy about it. As a matter of fact, I haven't felt happy in a long, long time.
I don't know what sort of magical substance I lack and I don't really care. I do, however, know what can get me back on track, and that's financial stability. Sadly, my employer treats me like shit and I'm spiraling down because I ceased trying to look happy and shit when going to job interviews.
So yeah, I feel like I'm pretty much done for. I browse a few sites, circling around all day long, I play the same game when I get back from work and that's pretty much it. One difference, though: I'm not alone. At home I'm with family and at work I'm surrounded by work mates. But I wish I would be alone, and not temporary, but in an "I am Legend" kind of way. Me in an empty world would be fucking awesome.
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I didn't have it as hard, but was getting pretty frustrated seeing the same trends starting to happen in my own life. If I didn't beat it, I at least made some improvements. I did two things at once - changed jobs to get a fresh start and started working on an advanced degree (part time). I also was able to lean on student loans to float through an unexpected financial challenge.
I finish my MS at the end of this year, and I have to say the two changes really helped me. I was so busy I couldn't despair about
Re:This is the problem you inevitably fall into wh (Score:5, Insightful)
Please see a psychiatrist.
They really, really do help. You will not be looked down upon, you will be given specific to you help rather than just the generic "How to feel better" crap you find in books and online. Also it will not be the "Here take this pill and go away" treatment that you get from general practitioners. It might be a little pricy (Especially if you don't have insurance), but worth every single penny! This is your direct quality of life and means to make a living we are talking about here.
At the very least they will advise you on how to get out of this self-feeding loop. Without proffessional help (Your family and friends are doing all they know to help you, but they just don't know how to do that) you will not be able to break out of this and things will just get steadily worse. Take it from someone that have been in this situation for several years before finally biting the bullet and seeking help.
Finally if it gets so bad that you seriously start planning out your suicide, you owe it to everyone that care or ever cared about you to seek proffessional help immediately! Taking your own life will send the people you know right into deep depression themselves: Do you really want them to go through what you are in now?
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe ditch some of the expenses, or better yet, declare bankruptcy and walk away from your financial obligations. It's worked for millions of Americans over the past few years and it only costs a couple hundred bucks to pay off FICA...
Downward sprials and upward spirals (Score:2)
A lot of life circumstances (especially lack of good sleep) can put us on a downward spiral where we let things slide and things get worse, especially as we turn to junky comfort foods. Here is some health advice I put together to help with an upward spiral, but it is true that it is easier to follow with more social support and community (and less worries over money): http://www.changemakers.com/discussions/discussion-493#comment-38823 [changemakers.com]
Watch out especially for vitamin D deficiency and how using the computer
Re: (Score:2)
I do, however, know what can get me back on track, and that's financial stability. Sadly, my employer treats me like shit and I'm spiraling down
Wow, get a different job. There's no reason for your employer to treat you like that. Unless of course your work is shit, in which case you better improve your skills.
And sleep more. Not that it's easy with family++.