Finally, finally, FINALLY people are starting to pay attention to how much time new mothers spend on social media, how that may impact their experience with postpartum depression, and how we might utilize social media to create programs that support women with PPD or help identify women with PPD. Welcome to the 21st century!!
This is great news. I’ve been gently hinting to researchers for years that they need to be paying more attention to blogs, Twitter and Facebook, and now it’s starting to happen. There was this study, for one, finding that blogging provides relief to new moms.
And now Microsoft (yes, that Microsoft) is conducting research to see if computers can identify, based on what a mom tweets or posts to Facebook or her blog, whether she may be suffering from postpartum depression. From Microsoft Research:
The primary purpose of this study is to help us determine whether we can use what people say in social media (e.g., in their Facebook status updates or Twitter feeds) as indicators of postpartum depression. For instance, someone might be talking about feeling even more tired than normal for having just had a baby. If this study is successful, we may be able to build unobtrusive diagnostic tools that can help new moms recognize the signs of possible postpartum depression in order to enable them to seek appropriate medical care or counseling.
Here are the eligibility requirements for the research, which I believe many of you will meet:
- be a female over the age of 18;
- be a legal U.S. resident;
- have given birth between 1 month and 3 years ago, and
- post to your Facebook or Twitter account at least once per week.
To sweeten the pot, four participants in Microsoft’s research survey will be chosen at random to receive $500 Amazon gift cards. Not bad!
Please click this link to learn more about the research and to participate, if you would like. Note that any information you provide will be completely confidential and never shared. Also, please share this post with others who you think might be a good fit.
