An image on Instagram that has vibrant colours can be modified with a feature called Inkwell that turns colour into black and white – the study spotted that more depressed people use Inkwell than non-depressed people.
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A newly invented algorithm can be used to analyze the Instagram feed, photos and even filters used to determine depression and the state of the user’s mental health. Included was a standard clinical depression survey and the participants were also asked to share their Instagram images. On the other hand, healthier users preferred the Valencia filter, which gives a brighter and more colorful feel to the photos. A team from Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine examined how three aspects of movement in time and space which they dubbed “circadian movement”, “normalized entropy”, and “location variance” appear to correlate with symptoms of depression. They also found that Instagram filters are used differently by people with different mental states.
A new study points to yes. They made use of algorithmic face detection, metadata components and color analysis to identify the signs of depression, reports Engadget. By contra t, depressed individuals were found to prefer darker, grayer colors (17). Ibtimes.co.uk also reported that even though depressed people may include faces in the pictures they post, researchers were able to find fewer faces per photo and included “more self-focused language”. They analyzed which filters were related to the number of likes of a post and weighed them against the photo contents.
It was also revealed that users usually choose Inkwell filter, which changes colored images into black-and-white.
Among the findings are that photos posted by people believed to be depressed were darker and used grayer colors. For instance, the researchers found that depressed people were less likely to use filters. These photos, however, featured fewer faces per photo than the healthy control group. Photographs that humans rated as happy or sad were only weakly correlated with depression. As might be expected, the photos from depressed participants’ feeds were more likely to be sad and less happy. Moreover, they are able to discover if we are depressed just by looking at our photos.
The study hopes to be able to help in detecting mental illness in its early stages paving the way for a more effective diagnosis in patients and shows the psychological advantages of researching social media habits. It’s unclear how that would work.
Any Instagram user will probably know that the photo-feed app provides around 23 different filters that you can apply on top of your photo.
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The findings come from a study carried out by Andrew Reece from Harvard University and Christopher Danforth of the University of Vermont.
