I didn't read the article as I'm too busy at the moment, but I keep seeing these types of posts pop up on HN and thought it might be worth throwing in my 0.02.

I've long quietly suffered from depression. I didn't bother to make this known to friends or family. I didn't want people to think of or treat me differently. I didn't want to go on medication and knew if I revealed my suicidal thoughts that people would look at me differently and probably force me to go on medication.

Several years ago I went through some really rough experiences -- divorce, loss of religion, family shunning, all at the same time. This hit me incredibly hard, but I buried my depression in constant recreation, work and alcohol. That's not to say I became or am an alcoholic - I'm not. I go for months without touching the stuff sometimes... but I began frequenting bars for a while on a near nightly basis.

Several years prior to that I also caved and started using social networks - twitter, facebook and instagram. Eventually my depression won out and started to show through. I couldn't stop complaining about everything in real life, but more so on social networks.

When I hit peak depression I felt like I was also losing my mind... and it showed in my facebook / twitter posts. As I feared my friends started viewing me differently. I got dumped by my GF because of my depression and inability to seek help (this was made known to me on her exit). That caused me to go on medication and then things got really bad.

The shit the doctor put me on had me thinking really crazy and I made plans to kill myself, which I obviously backed out of (not a ghost lol).

Eventually I went off the pills and got my head strait and I recently got a fulltime job and have been living with a new wonderful GF who understands depression for a couple of years now.

One of the biggest things that helped was near complete seclusion -- I noticed that the pressure (and worse - feedback) on facebook was crushing me. Often I would get mocked or would draw the ire of some of my "friends" for some of my crazy / emphatic posts. Rather than trying to understand me or help, these people turned on me. Interestingly these were people I know in real life (I had a rule that I would only friend people who I considered real life friends).
When I deleted my facebook account for the first time, I gave warning and got at least one "good riddance". These were from adults in their 30s by the way.

Instagram was no better. I kept it around for way too long. I would get almost no likes on my photos or the same mocking comments (from different people than the FB posts). Then my "friends" started following my girlfriend and would like her photos, but would skip mine over, or they would like photos I posted of her art but would ignore my work. That could have been completely innocent and coincidental of course, but in my depressed state it felt like a judgment of myself.

I ended up deleting everything -- fb, twitter, instagram, gmail, yahoo, my phone number... i left it all behind and after a couple of months have felt like my old self.

I know this is all anecdotal, and its possibly a coincidence that my depression became more manageable after dumping all my accounts. I also know that social networks didn't CAUSE the depression, but they absolutely kept me locked in my head and in a moment in time that I need to move past. Deleting them seems to have helped and I have no intention of going back.