Why did they not ask the students directly? Instead of speculating that depressed students were "frequently switching among applications, perhaps from chat rooms to games to email", the researchers could have done a simple usage questionnaire and removed that "perhaps" with some facts.

Sounds like they are trying to demonize those that use the internet for leisure... Look at what they say is associated with depression: High bandwidth applications (online videos/music), chatting/forums, games, and file sharing. I do all of these things for LEISURE... and it doesn't mean I am depressed.

They say they evaluated the students for "depression" prior to analyzing their usage habits, how did they do that? Does their criteria for evaluating depression incidentally line up with people who PREFER to relax in solitude? If you aren't outgoing and social are you necessarily depressed? It sounds like they are trying to shoe-horn everyone into some ideal human form that doesn't exist.

If you couldn't tell I have big problems with these types of labels. Not everyone prefers to go kill their brain cells at the bar, some of us prefer quite peaceful evenings at home doing those things that these researches associate with depression...

This seems like an odd study. There are plenty of easier, more obvious ways to spot signs of depression. Jumping between apps could mean anything. Surely the time and energy put into this research would have been better put to discovering better ways to overcome depression.

This seems like an odd study. There are plenty of easier, more obvious ways to spot signs of depression. Jumping between apps could mean anything. Surely the time and energy put into this research would have been better put to discovering better ways to overcome depression.

A good way is to end capitalism, end competition. Promote development and progress.

Hi, this is the first author of the paper. The idea of this study was to get a deeper understanding of the connection between internet usage and depression. Also, the trends shown here apply strictly to college students, not the general population. Further note that these patterns apply to a majority of depressed college students. There are always cases where none of these might apply to a specific individual.

Thanks for weighing in! Don't let them get you down.. I'm not sure why so many reacted negatively, but this is an interesting and, as far as I know, unique study.

Do you have any plans to conduct a long-term study? I'm curious whether certain usage patterns, esp. IRC, precede or follow onset of depression/depressive symptoms.

Thanks for your encouraging comments :)
We do have plans to make the study more comprehensive - i.e., target larger sample sizes, collect more data, study more factors etc. Another direction would be to look at a combination of factors, instead of looking at them individually.

We are not sure about studying the causality aspect though. It can get very tricky. But it is something we may consider in the future.