74 - Johannes Eichstaedt: Is Social Media to Blame for Mental Illness?

Anjie chats with Dr. Johannes Eichstaedt,  an Assistant Professor in Psychology, and the Shriram Faculty Fellow at the Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence at Stanford University. Johannes directs the Computational Psychology and Well-Being lab. His research focuses on using social media (Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, …) to measure the psychological states of large populations and individuals to determine the thoughts, emotions, and behaviors that drive physical illness (like heart disease), depression, or support psychological well-being.  In this episode, Anjie and Johannes chat about how social media could be a lens to understand mental illnesses such as depression. Johannes also shares his thoughts on the emerging trends in social media, and how some powerful technocrats in Silicon Valley might have some huge blind spots in understanding human nature. 

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Links: 

 Johannes’s paper: Eichstaedt, J. C., Smith, R. J., Merchant, R. M., Ungar, L. H., Crutchley, P., Preoţiuc-Pietro, D., ... & Schwartz, H. A. (2018). Facebook language predicts depression in medical records. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 115(44), 11203-11208.

Johannes’s Twitter: @JEichstaedt

Johannes’s lab website: https://cpwb.stanford.edu/

Anjie’s: website: anjiecao.github.io

Anjie’s Twitter @anjie_cao

Podcast Twitter @StanfordPsyPod

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