From the Editor
When you post a cute picture of your baby cousin on social media, you receive many likes and feel encouraged to post more. To speak technically, drawing on reinforcement learning, social rewards reinforce posting. But how do people with depression respond to social media? Would they be less motivated by reinforcement learning (consistent with past work)? Could platforms like Twitter (now X) actually worsen depression?
In a new JAMA Psychiatry study, Dan-Mircea Mirea (of Princeton University) and his colleagues attempt to answer these questions. They analyzed 17 million posts from almost 8 000 Twitter users to test the association between depression and the tendency to be reinforced by likes. “In this cross-sectional study, we found that individuals with depressive psychopathology showed a greater tendency to be reinforced by likes on Twitter.” We consider the paper and its implications; we also look at the accompanying Editorial.
And in this week’s other selection, from JAMA, Dr. Jenna Taglienti (of Hofstra University) writes about a resident who misses a call shift. As the residency program director, she thinks on their conversation – and on being noticed. She recalls the loss of her mother. “I think about my mother labeling photographs and childhood keepsakes long before any of us were ready to imagine needing them.”
DG
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