Penn Today: The language of loneliness and depression, revealed in social media. “By analyzing Facebook posts, Penn researchers found that words associated with depression are often tied to emotions, whereas those associated with loneliness are linked to cognition.”
University of Arkansas: Social Media Use Linked to Developing Depression Regardless of Personality. “Researchers in public policy and education recently found that young adults who use more social media are significantly more likely to develop depression within six months, regardless of personality type.”
NewsWise: Study Shows Link Between Cyberbullying and Suicidality in Early Adolescence. “Young adolescents who are targets of cyberbullying are more likely to report suicidal thoughts and attempts, an association that goes above and beyond the link between suicidality and traditional offline bullying, according to new research from the Lifespan Brain Institute (LiBI) of Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) and the University of Pennsylvania.”
MedicalXPress: Social media use sheds light on dads’ mental health. “Deakin University researchers have mined Reddit posts and discovered that dads’ posting behaviors in the period surrounding their child’s birth can be a warning sign for depression. Their results were published in JMIR Pediatrics and Parenting.”
London School of Economics: Location-based mobile games like Pokémon Go may help alleviate depression. “Playing location-based games, such as the popular augmented reality game Pokémon Go, may alleviate non-clinical forms of mild depression, a new study from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) has found.”
The Conversation: Ukraine doomscrolling can harm your cognition as well as your mood – here’s what to do about it. “Many people have experienced chronic stress since the pandemic lockdowns. Added to this are the climate crisis, the increasing cost of living and most recently threats to European and global security due to the conflict in Ukraine. To some, it may seem that there is never any good news anymore. This is of course not true, but when we’re doomscrolling – spending an excessive amount of screen time devoted to reading negative news – we can become locked into thinking it is.”
PsyPost: Longitudinal study reveals how using the internet as a form of escape can end in increased depressive symptoms . “New research suggests that using the internet as an escape from worry may be harmless in the short term, but can lead to emotional issues down the line. The study found that people with a greater tendency to use the internet as a distraction had higher average levels of problematic internet use and depression. The findings were published in the journal Computers in Human Behavior.”
Mashable: The intriguing link between depression and misinformation. “Efforts to tamp down misinformation typically don’t focus on mental health but instead emphasize the legitimate role of social media, polarization, and political identity. Until the last few years, researchers hadn’t explored the connection; even [Dr. Roy] Perlis was surprised at how little had been written about it.”
PsyPost: Too much sitting during the pandemic is tied to increased depressive symptoms, study finds. “A study published in Frontiers in Psychiatry has found new evidence that too much sitting can negatively impact mental health. The study found that while mental health tended to improve among US residents in the aftermath of the initial COVID-19 outbreak, those who spent more time sitting showed slower recovery from depressive symptoms.”
PsyPost: An analysis of Twitter posts suggests that people with depression show increased rumination on social media overnight. “People with depression show distinct patterns of online activity, according to a study published in Scientific Reports. Twitter users who said they had a diagnosis of depression were more active on Twitter in the evening, less active in the early morning, and ruminated more on Twitter from midnight to around 6 a.m”
NBC News: Social media use linked to depression in adults. Now you tell me. “While social media has been widely linked to anxiety and depression in teenagers, new evidence suggests that platforms such as TikTok and Instagram can leave middle-aged adults feeling sad, too. The research, published Tuesday in the medical journal JAMA Network Open, is based on a series of surveys of 5,395 adults whose average age was 56.”
Route Fifty: Mental Health Disorders Qualify You for a Covid-19 Booster. It’s Unclear How Many People Know That.. “With an upcoming trip to plan for, psychologist Jacob Dean hopped online to check the eligibility requirements for Covid-19 booster shots in New York City, where he resides. ‘At the beginning of the pandemic I qualified because of body mass, but since then I’ve lost 75 pounds,’ he said. “I was wondering whether I qualified for a booster, and then I saw that anxiety and depression were listed among the underlying conditions. And I was shocked, because they definitely weren’t there before.””
Daily Sabah: COVID-19 pandemic causes huge rise in mental health problems: Study. “The first year of the coronavirus pandemic saw a ‘stark rise’ in mental health disorders, with around 160 million additional cases worldwide, according to estimates by doctors and scientists in Australia and the U.S….Women were also affected more than men and younger people to a greater extent than the elderly, despite the latter being far more vulnerable to severe illness and death if infected.”
Wayne Sutton: 2020 Was The Black In Tech Movement I Waited My Entire Life For, But I Was Too Depressed To Participate.. “What’s hard is even with all the data in the world that shows the monetary gains, the benefits, the innovation of having diverse teams, someone will ask, ‘why are you working on diversity?’ What’s hard is looking someone in the eye, knowing damn well they couldn’t care less about diversity, Black humans or LGBTQIA humans or Latinx humans. What’s hard is knowing the only reason people are even exploring a conversation about diversity or inclusion with you is that the manager or CEO asked them to, or they are afraid of negative press.”
WWNO: Facebook Calls Links To Depression Inconclusive. These Researchers Disagree. “Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers’ biggest fear as a parent isn’t gun violence, or drunk driving, or anything related to the pandemic. It’s social media. And specifically, the new sense of ‘brokenness’ she hears about in children in her district, and nationwide. Teen depression and suicide rates have been rising for over a decade, and she sees social apps as a major reason.”
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