And where else but Facebook can you go to see constant updates on what everyone is doing all the time. Status update: i’m taking out the trash. Status update: going to grandma’s house. Status update: Stacy’s coming over for soup…so excited! Seems depressing to me.

Utah Valley University conducted research last year which indicated that people are becoming depressed after viewing Facebook, and not because they find stays updates monotonous like I do. A sample of 425 undergraduate students was surveyed and for those who spent the most amount of time on Facebook, depression was more likely. Why?

Those student perceived that others were happier and had a better life than they do. This phenomenon is known as “Facebook depression”.

A sixteen year old high school comments on the phenomenon:

“If you really didn’t have that many friends and weren’t really doing much with your life, and saw other peoples’ status updates and pictures and what they were doing with friends, I could see how that would make them upset”

She also pointed out:

“It’s like a big popularity contest — who can get the most friend requests or get the most pictures tagged”

There is a lot of debate around the subject of Facebook depression. A key argument is whether it is a symptom of an existing underlying depression or if it is the cause of depression itself.

A good way for parents of children with Facebook depression to view the phenomenon is to realize that Facebook represents a gigantic scoreboard for how their child is doing socially. If self- esteem is low and your child is not very social, Facebook can facilitate depression and a feeling of disconnectedness.

Conversely, if your child is very social and has a lot of connections, Facebook enhances self-esteem and the feeling of being connected. It has a facilitative effects overall. If we constantly remind ourselves that everyone around us is doing better, we will never get in the game and get engaged in what we care about. Also note that this is just a general guideline- not a rule by any means.

Several of the articles I read while preparing this piece compared Facebook Depression to “sitting alone in the high school cafeteria”. So it’s about comparison. Why aren’t I like them? Why doesn’t anybody want to sit with me? Why doesn’t anybody care about me? They have 20 people at their table, I have 2. What’s wrong with me?

But does it stop after high school or college? I haven’t come across the adult research for Facebook Depression but there are several articles out there from people in their 30′s and 40′s who are claiming they have Facebook depression.

This should come as no surprise to anyone. A major need of humans in general, regardless of who you are, is a need to feel connected to others and experience a sense of belonging. This is not B.S., If you are socially isolated, you are bound to be depressed. So the scoreboard theory of Facebook just being a constant reminder is going to be the same for adults.

It feels good to have friends that care about you whether they’re are just casual Facebook friends or real physical companions. We never outgrow these needs, in fact, as you reach retirement age and leave your position in the organization you work for, these belonging need will come full circle from adolescence.

I can’t wait to see the research on how seniors are using Facebook. I know that retirement can be lonely for a lot of people . With limited mobility and budgets, social networking like Facebook could be a lifeline to good social health. Of course we know that some seniors can be more brutal than any adolescent! Should be interesting!

The victim, Christina Jungkans was reportedly attempting to make a left hand turn from an adjacent street at the time of the collision.

The subsequent trial found Maciaszek guilty of reckless homicide however, the prosecuting attorney requested the presiding judge put sentencing on hold until the defendants Facebook posts could be reviewed. Apparently there is something suspicious contained in the posts.

According to Maciaszek, he was suffering from great depression and insomnia at the time of the accident. His lack of sleep and focus is what he attributes to the tragedy. The county prosecutor has not yet released what the nature of the Facebook posts were or how they contradict the defendants testimony but, there are rumors that alcohol could have been involved despite the fact that tests revealed he was not intoxicated at the time of the accident.

Jungkan’s family and friends are devostated by the sudden accident and death of the young girl. Jungkans made plans to be a judge advocate general lawyer after joining ROTC in high school and her friends report that she was always trying to make them better people.

It is still not clear what role the Facebook posts will play in the sentencing of the offender but the case will be before a judge again wednesday.

[Source: Herald News SunTimes

Now, there’s an interesting look at what Facebook can tell us about depressions, specifically. This is rather timely, considering a social media marketer just posted a suicidal-sounding status update this week before going missing (and luckily turning up safe).

Help For Depression put out the following infographic:

Help for Depression

Given that online activity, whether through search engines or social media sites, has become so interwoven into the fabric of our lives, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that people with suicidal inclinations may resort to the Internet for support, information, or even assistance in trying to commit suicide. Acknowledging this phenomenon, Google and Facebook, perhaps the two largest online entities today, have taken steps to hopefully redirect people exhibiting thoughts of suicide.

Although the service has been around since Spring 2010, Google will insert information about prevention for searches that indicate a person may be considering suicide. I tested this out and Googled several suicide-likely phrases (“how to kill myself,” “suicide,” and “I want to die”) in the search engine. Although I got different returns for each search, the following information for how to contact a suicide hotline was promoted at the top of my page every time:

Unfortunately, that kind of information will only be displayed with Google.com, Google UK, and Google Australia. In a recent thread on HackerNews about depression, Google’s Matt Cutts responded to a post from a user that lamented the lack of suicide prevention information for other countries. While Cutts said that getting the numbers for different countries “might be tricky,” he did agree to pass the request on (though, really Google – how hard is that to do?)

Facebook has implemented a more direct line of intervention by allowing users to now report suicidal content to Facebook. The social media site launched a new reporting service yesterday that will put users who post statements or material that indicates they could be suicidal in touch with a crisis counselor through a chat messaging system. A person must be reported by one of their friends before being contacted by a counselor, but after that they will be able to chat with a prevention specialist from the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline to receive assistance with their crisis.

The process for reporting a potentially suicidal Facebook user isn’t exactly clear cut on their site as I couldn’t find any option that allowed me to report someone immediately. I ended up doing a search on Google for “how to report suicidal content facebook” and quickly found my way to this page:

In addition to following the links for immediate assistance, by clicking on the link to report suicidal content to Facebook, a user will arrive at here:

Additionally, here is the link for the page to report suicidal content on Facebook.

If anyone you know has posted statements on Facebook that indicate they may be at risk for suicide, please do not hesitate to notify Facebook. Also, if anyone you know has expressed any intent to possibly commit suicide, do not hesitate to get them help.

The more often participants engaged in sexual activity online the higher their level of depression and anxiety were. Thirty percent had high levels of anxiety and 35 percent were moderately to severely stressed.

"But there’s also a chance that depressed people are spending time on these sites to help lift their mood or reduce stress,” said Squirrell.

Certainly, correlation doesn’t always (if ever) imply causation, and the jury is still out as to whether sad men are more likely to seek sexual gratification, or if lack of actual physical contact produces temporary euphoria followed by depression because of amplified absence.

TechRadar reports “BitchBuzz” founder and self-described sex expert Cate Sevilla (public LinkedIn profile doesn’t indicate academic background, though) rejects the implications of the study. “I think that there are a lot of men out there that look at and watch porn online that are perfectly healthy – it’s just a part of their sexuality,” she said, though the study didn’t seem to refute that assessment to begin with. Sevilla suggests obsession among some is the real problem.

Another recent study suggested cybersex, on a stress-relief level, or even masturbation, were no substitutes for good old fashioned coitus—those magic endorphins just aren’t released by simulation. It’s likely necessary for survival that reproductive sex is more rewarding emotionally.

Something else simulated or cybersex lacks, which deserves more study as to the effect on depression and anxiety, is the release of oxytocin, a hormone released during labor, but also is generated by physical touch as a bonding chemical between mothers and infants during breastfeeding, and also between lovers. 

Freudian psychoanalysts could have a field-day with those implications—lack of intimacy driving mama’s boys online in pursuit of unfulfilling digital relationships—but let’s not mine the depths of the spooky subconscious today, thank you. But it’s at least plausible that the bonding experience induced by real sex is not accessible in cyberspace—hence all the depression. 
 
 

Svetlana Gladkova at Profy has a very interesting article in which she looks at what advertising was like during the Great Depression, and uses that to project what it would (or should) be like during our current (and upcoming) economic woes:

There was quite a number of examples of successful brands during the Great Depression, including Chevrolet cars, Camel cigarettes and Procter & Gamble (that gave birth to the phenomenon of soap opera during those hard times). And all of them relied heavily on advertising because they realized that they needed advertising to create and maintain brand loyalty. They simply pretended there was nothing particularly wrong with the economy and consumers still had money to spend – and this proved to be the right approach for them.

We should also keep in mind that advertising is one of the measures to demonstrate to consumers that the company is healthy. After all, not all the consumers have a daily habit of tracking stock market behavior to know what’s going on – yet when they see a company spending money on advertising, they think everything is fine with the company.

As I talked about in an article for SmallBusinessNewz a while back, branding a need can be an effective strategy for advertising, and after reading Gladkova’s article, I have to say that the concept has probably never been as important to a campaign’s success as it is in such rocky economic times.

Advertisers need to make consumers see not only why they should buy their product, but why they actually "need" their product. You convince them that the need is there, and then show them why your product is the solution to that need.

The example I looked at before was a press release from GoDaddy that looked at an IDC study showing that half of small businesses in the U.S. didn’t have websites. In a way, they "brand the need" for a websites, and then of course, the product they are selling the consumer is a domain.

Sidenote: Another way to keep customers during a weak economy is to save them money. This means coupons, sales, and promotional giveaways. Customers are bound to spend more money with you if you can save them more money than they would save with one of your competitors.

But back to Internet advertising (spending is 15.2% in the US and 21% in the UK by the way). As iEntry CEO and WebProNews publisher Rich Ord noted in a recent article about Gawker’s layoffs, Gawker’s own sales are way up from last year. WebProNews sales are up 40% from last year. It is true that we’re seeing many layoffs from big Internet companies lately, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Internet advertising is fine. If anything, perhaps more attention should be paid to this advertising medium than ever before. At least until people start dropping their Internet access as an expendable expense, but last time I checked, broadband use was the highest it’s ever been.

Online advertising is global, meaning that it has a much further reach than any other form of advertising, which is another point for the industry. What do you think about the future on online advertising?