Can a person’s online presence say anything about their mental health?

A study found that a professional psychologist can identify depression from someone’s social profile 42% of the time correctly.

It appears that depressed people post less brightly colored, more neutral, greyer, and darker pictures.

Having a lot of comments along with fewer likes, posting a lot, posting pictures of the face rather than the body, and sharing them with fewer people all correlate with depression. Finally, those who are depressed are also less likely to apply filters to their photos.

It is possible to imagine that one day special technologies could diagnose depression from online activity alone and reach and help more people than is now possible.