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Generative AI use and depressive symptoms among US adults

44 points by pseudolus

by Sol-

4 subcomments

Maybe I'm nitpicking here, but in their abstract
> "Greater levels of AI use were associated with modest increases in depressive symptoms"
to me ever so slightly implies causality via "increases ...", even though, as they are also very transparent about, this paper isn't about any causal mechanism. I feel like "associated with higher rates of depressive symptoms" might have read more neutrally and would have been in line with the results of their paper.
Not suggesting something intentional by the authors, of course, I just found it interesting how verbs subtly influence the meaning of things, at least for me.
But perhaps I'm also biased because I kind of intuitively believe that the causation is that depressive people enjoy talking to the AI, rather than AI being the cause of anything. I worry that any reverse interpretations will lead to an over-regulation of AI in such contexts.

by erikgahner

3 subcomments

A lot of people might read this and infer that AI use causes depressive symptoms, but the study cannot say anything about causation at all. The study is also transparent about this fact: "Further work is needed to understand whether these associations are causal"

by throwawayk7h

1 subcomments

I think the causality is reversed. I have depression+ADD which has made life very difficult for me, but Claude allows me to be productive by helping me get organised and started on tasks, something normally very difficult for me.

by LatencyKills

4 subcomments

I realize my situation isn’t typical, but I’m retired and have dealt with depression most of my life.
The thing I miss most about work (yes, you really can miss work) is collaborative problem-solving. At Microsoft, we called it “teddy bear debugging”—basically, self-explaining a problem out loud to clarify your thinking. [1]
These days, when I’m stuck, I open Claude Code and “talk it through.” That back-and-forth helps me reason through technical issues and scratches a bit of that collaborative itch that helped keep my depression in check.
[1]: https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/us/w...

by Aurornis

0 subcomment

This is a study where reading the details is important. I’m already seeing comments guessing that the results are due to AI changing the nature of work, but the paper shows that the non-work daily users are driving the result.
> The highest estimates were observed among individuals using AI for personal use
and
> Incorporating individual terms for school, work, and personal use, only personal use was significantly associated with PHQ-9 (β = 0.31 [95% CI, 0.10-0.52]), while the other 2 were not

by minifridge

0 subcomment

While the causative effects are not straightforward to prove, LLMs definitely have addictive qualities... This will definitely have some negative effects to people with certain predespositons.. Also, LLMs tend to isolate more people - many health professionals will confirm that isolation is going to be detrimental for people for mental health.
So the skeptiscism in the comments about the findings is a bit puzzling.

by theknarf

1 subcomments

I would make sense that depressed people use AI as an assistive tool in their daily lives.

by hackitup7

0 subcomment

I don't know if I'm a crazy weirdo here but I find that talking to LLMs / using them for certain tasks that I find stressful improves my mental health.

by giantg2

2 subcomments

Makes sense to me. It's the old the work you put in determines what satisfaction you get out of it. If everything is done for you, then what satisfaction is there?

by lehmacdj

0 subcomment

I'm pretty ambivalent about generative AI's effect on my happiness/motivation.
Often talking to Claude/using AI agents to build software is really enjoyable/motivating, and it also makes it easier to get the satisfaction from completing projects.
But it also tends to make me think about how quickly the technology is developing. This makes me anxious about x-risks from AI, which makes it harder to get work done.

by citrin_ru

0 subcomment

People who use AI at work are likely more worried about loosing job (after being replaced by AI) than people whose professions are less exposed to AI.

by testfrequency

0 subcomment

Anecdotally: The most depressed friends I have are all tech workers who are using AI daily for their personal life, and of course at their respective work places.
I know that’s not a fair correlation to make, but I have friends who use AI casually and not in tech, they seem outwardly fine and don’t make depressive comments about the future.

0 subcomment

by incomingpain

0 subcomment

USA depression has been on the rise for a long time. ~20% in 2015. To 29% most recently. Blame on covid is appropriate im sure. The original causes sourcing from the 80s and 90s, that are still ongoing.
Whereas generative AI is a recent thing. ~27% in 2021.
The correlation therefore is very very low and certainly not causal.
The question 'can AI make it worse' and this study didnt really do that.
Then consider confounders and this study is even weaker. Depression leads into AI usage, not the other way around.

by adrian-vega

0 subcomment

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by techpulse_x

0 subcomment

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