Instagram Knows When You Are Depressed

In this age of data collection, chances are that the social media you use know when you’re sad, even if you don’t. This may unlock another potential in the DTx solutions.

Let’s face it. Talking about what bothers us isn’t always easy. Especially, if a person is dealing with depression. In many conservative societies, depression is an often overlooked social concern, easily admonished and dismissed by those who think it’s not a big deal. Oftentimes, this led to people not opening up for fear of being perceived as weak or vulnerable. Ultimately, it leads to suicide.

South Korea has a notorious reputation for this as the nation has had many high profile suicides by celebrities as a result of depression, most notably Sulli and Goo Hara, both who tragically died last year in October and November. This had a huge impact on the public and reignited discussions about social and mental health issues.

More often than not, authorities are increasingly relying on social media to understand the motives for suicide because victims usually leave their last words there. Instagram is one of them. And it does more.

So How Is Instagram Detecting Depression?

According to research done by Andrew Reece and Christopher Danforth of Harvard University, Instagram photos reveal predictive markers of depression. Using data from 166 individuals, this study allows for the harness of psychological data encoded in visual social media.

There is a good reason using Instagram for health screening — there are more than 100 million new posts per day and these photographs can provide invaluable insight associated with how many “likes” and comments they get. The data collection was outsourced using Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk) and the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D) questionnaire was used to screen participant depression levels.

The results? Healthy, non-depressed individuals generally preferred brighter, more vivid colors while depressed individuals were found to prefer darker, grayer colors. The study also discovered that depression is strongly associated with reduced social activity, proving that markers of depression are observable in Instagram user behavior.

The most interesting part of this study is that these depressive signals are detectable in posts made even before the date of the first diagnosis, meaning that Instagram has an unknown potential of diagnosing depression amongst its users even before users know they have it.

What does it mean for the future of DTx?

As we have noted repeatedly in past posts, digital health has a huge potential to save millions of lives. The research by Reece and Danforth proves that if depression can be revealed just from analyzing Instagram photos, then it’s a huge potential to treat depression more cheaply and efficiently. This removes the time and emotional stress of suffering from depression, not including the effort it’ll take to see a doctor and then getting diagnosed for having depression.

There will, of course, be concerns about safety and privacy but it can be for those who chose to opt-in.

This study can potentially revolutionize how we understand diagnoses even before we start using DTx, making DTx even more revolutionary, powerful, and effective. Perhaps in the future, there will be ways to know if asthma or diabetes is coming before we know it.

PiCO GO Again

We plan to launch PiCO GO this year, a revolutionary product that combines all the features and technology from PiCO Home, to herald our entry as a wearable digital therapeutics for pediatric asthma patients, into the medical market.

To inquire more about Brilliant & Company, please do not hesitate to drop us a line:

• CEO / Ryan Yun / ryan.yun@brilcom.com
• Global Marketing Manager / Steve Tan / steve.tan@brilcom.com