How Far Can Oversharing On Facebook Go?

In my first blog post, I looked at a study which reported on if users of Facebook posted statuses that were considered symptoms of depression. My second source happens to be another study by Megan Moreno and her fellow psychologists called “A Pilot Evaluation of Associations Between Displayed Depression References on Facebook and Self-reported Depression Using a Clinical Scale”. This time around the scientists asked college students who posted statuses that had depression symptoms to take an online PHQ-9 depression scale. I’m going, to be honest, why did this study really need to take place wouldn’t you assume that if someone said they were sad a lot that they are going to say they are sad on a quiz they volunteered to take? Well, that’s the whole point of science studies is prove or disprove this theory that they had. Just thought I’d mention that because I had the previous comment about my source being biased.

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According to Moreno “Though it did not reach statistical significance (p = 0.056), there was a trend that suggested depression symptom displayers were more likely than non-displayers to score into one of the depression categories (mild, moderate, or severe) based on the PHQ-9 “ With this finding does that mean I can just start going through my friends Facebook profiles and diagnose them with depression? Not exactly Moreno shuts this down very quickly by stating “These preliminary findings do not suggest that Facebook should be used to formally diagnose depression; a diagnosis of depression is comprised of symptom patterns over time. Without clinical context including duration, severity, and frequency of the displayed symptoms, formal diagnosis cannot be without clinical evaluation. However, as Facebook displays are marked with a date, it would be possible to observe not only individual references but patterns over time.” Posting on Facebook that you're sad once doesn’t mean you have depression like a teen saying there going to kill themselves because their parents wouldn’t let them go a party. It is something that has to be diagnosed by a doctor to see if the person experiencing the sadness matches the multiple symptoms such as the long time feeling of this way.

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The most interesting part of the study I found was that even though they did find evidence of people posting depressing statuses did have a correlation with the PHQ-9 tests diagnosing them. They study found that people who didn’t post such statuses also could have depression. “Findings do not suggest that Facebook displays of depression symptoms are an effective method to rule out depression, as many of the non-displayers PHQ-9 scores suggested depression”

My second blog post talked about how Facebook caused Envy when users “surveillance” other users. With my third source, it appeared that people used Facebook to post about their feelings.

A couple more questions arose to me while reading this including: Should Colorado ask institutions to look more into their students Facebook profiles to see symptoms? And Should Facebook release the PHQ-9 test to all of its users so if they wanted to know if they had depression they could have easy access?

Moreno, Megan Andreas, MD,M.S.Ed, M.P.H., et al. "A Pilot Evaluation of Associations between Displayed Depression on Facebook and Self-Reported Depression using a Clinical Scale." The Journal of Behavioral Health Services & Research, vol. 39, no. 3, 2012., pp. 295-304 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11414-011-9258-7.