Smartphones are surprisingly good at diagnosing depression

You could say that your smartphone knows you better than yourself and, according to some new medical research, that wouldn’t actually be too far from the truth. More specifically, the research suggests that your smartphone could be a better judge of whether or not you’re suffering from depression than an actual self-assessment. One of the biggest things preventing people with depression from getting help is that it can be difficult to actually tell that you’re depressed, and with a whopping 87% accuracy rate when detecting depression, your smartphone could seriously help you. 

Co-dependent relationships are rarely considered positive, especially when one member of the relationship is an inanimate object. But with the advent of the smartphone, it sometimes feels like many of us are more attached to our iPhones and Androids than to our human counterparts. But like any good partner, our smartphones may know us better than we think, and according to a new study published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research, your phone may be more accurate than a self-assessment in determining whether or not you suffer from depression. In fact, researchers claim that phone data can predict with a stunning 87 percent accuracy whether or not a individual displayed signs of depression, all by examining the amount of time an individual spends on his or her smartphone. As study author David Mohr, director of the Center for Behavioral Intervention Technologies at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, told Time magazine, “We found that the more time people spend on their phones, the more likely they are to be more depressed.” Furthermore, spending copious amounts of time on one’s cellphone is often linked with spending a lot of time at home or by oneself, two other potential symptoms of depression.