Are Hackers Less Able To Hack It?

In the wake of several high-profile suicides, mostly notably Aaron Swartz, the hacker community has become much more attuned to depression within its ranks. But are they any more vulnerable than the average American?

The typical hacker lifestyle doesn’t exactly sound like a breeding ground for good mental health. Erratic sleep patterns and prolonged isolation in front of a computer monitor are common. Prosecution by law enforcement is a constant threat, if not a reality. (Swartz spent the two years before his death under prosecution for downloading more than a million journal articles en masse from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His family believes that the threat of imprisonment contributed to his death.) It’s tempting to infer that the hacker world attracts introverted outcasts, subjects them to pressure from law enforcement or the soul-sucking technology industry, and finally sequesters them behind a screen until they give up hope.

That scenario is pretty far from the truth, however, based on the few studies that have been done on the elusive cohort. …

“I kept looking for everything that would support these myths,” [Bernadette Schell, vice-provost at Laurentian University, who studied hackers for more than a decade] said. “What I found was that the hacker community was a very well-adjusted group of individuals.”

At the time, the perception was that hackers were computer addicted, high-strung type A personalities. But the hackers in Schell’s study turned out to be emotionally balanced, “self-healing” type B personalities. They were a bit more introverted than the average population, but still socially connected. Most were employed and made more than the median income level. Incidence of depression was not higher than in the general population. (In fact, some studies have shown that engineers, a group that has a lot of overlap with hackers, have one of the lowest depression rates compared to other occupations.) The hackers were so resilient that even being sent to jail or charged for hacking crimes did not affect their reported stress levels long term.