Student Thoughts: Smartphones may be able to detect depression

We are living in the information era. As technology continues to be improved and developed, it enraptures people with all the perks and benefits it has to offer.

This opinion article was originally featured in PantherNOW and focuses on how smart phones have advanced to the point they can help detect depression.

Check out the article’s excerpt below and click the link if you want to read the full story!

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Maytinee Kramer/Contributing Writer

We are living in the information era. As technology continues to be improved and developed, it enraptures people with all the perks and benefits it has to offer. Today, one practically needs a smartphone to survive in the first world. If you look around, you may notice that nearly everyone is face-down staring at a screen. Smartphones today can track fitness, sleep and nutrition, and now they may be able to track and warn their users of depression too.

Many of us are more attached to our iPhones and Androids than to our human counterparts, so like a good partner, our smartphones should know us better than we think. It was found in a study that the more time spent using a phone and the fewer places you visit, the more likely you are to be depressed. However, with accurate self-assessment, a smartphone can help determine whether one may suffer from depression or not.

Through an app called Purple Robot, a small sample size of individuals was tracked in their location, movement, moods and feelings, phone usage and other relevant activities. For two weeks, Purple Robot collected information every five minutes and sent it back to researchers at Northwestern University for analysis. When the data was compared against a PHQ-9, a nine-question test used to survey signs of depression, it was found that the app successfully identified 87 percent of individuals at risk for depression.

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via Student Thoughts: Smartphones may be able to detect depression

Photo Credit: Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash

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