NET DEPRESSION REVISITED - Remember the Carnegie Mellon University Net Depression Study released last month? A number of researchers, including Vanderbilt University's Donna L. Hoffman, are criticizing the study that suggested that the Net may be a lonely place, causing depression in many people who used it extensively for e-mail, chat and similar purposes. Noting that the subjects of the study were not randomly selected (and not matched with a scientific "control" group of people who didn't use the Net but were otherwise like the people in the study), Hoffman says the CMU research is "not ready for prime time. This is not saying that Internet does not cause depression. Maybe it does - but this research does not prove that." She adds that the CMU finding is hard to believe because it runs "counter to experience, anecdotal evidence, practice and scholarly research." (Washington Post 7 Sep 98)