
Instagram ranked worst social network for young people's mental health - startupflix
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/05/19/instagram-ranked-worst-social-network-young-peoples-mental-health/
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TallGuyShort
I'm curious to know what this looks like for slightly older people. I can see
the down side to Instagram: the way it can amplify an obsession with the way
things appear from curated snapshots of someone else's seemingly perfect life.
And it definitely has less nuanced communication of certain types of ideas -
it's not a place to discuss the merits of social policy. But as someone who is
slightly older than this 14-24 generation, who finds enriching food-for-
thought elsewhere and who isn't obsessed with how other people's lives look, I
find Instagram to be the most uplifting of the major networks. It's often more
light-hearted than Facebook, and most accounts I follow are purely posting
pictures of new products in fields that interest me, pictures of friends doing
fun things with their kids, etc. There's much less political flaming, dumb
memes, etc. than I unavoidably see elsewhere. I deleted Facebook and LinkedIn
from my phone because Facebook just made me feel angry and LinkedIn is just
spam and self-congratulation. Instagram is the only major social network still
on my phone.

For people who are mature enough to self-regulate and not get addicted to
scrolling up and updating their feed, and for people who can avoid an
unhealthy level of envying how other's lives appear to be, it seems like a
pretty good way to stay up to date with people and hobbies.

~~~
kelnos
Couldn't agree more. I tend to only follow my friends on Instagram (and not
celebrities and other special-interest accounts), and it makes me happy to see
them doing things that make them happy. Posts that have to do with politically
charged or other negative issues are few and far between. Facebook is nearly
the opposite of this for me.

It really baffles me how so many people don't realize that Instagram generally
will only show the "ups" in a person's life, and often not the "downs", and
actually allow that to make them feel bad about their own lives.

I guess at the end of the day I communicate via other channels with a lot of
the people I follow, so I know that their life isn't as rosy as their
Instagram feed alone might make it seem (though even if I didn't, that
"insight" seems like a no-brainer). Perhaps a lot of people in the younger
generation use things like Instagram as a primary means of catching up on
what's going on in their friends' lives? And growing up with screens in their
faces has changed how they react to things in some really bad ways?

~~~
TallGuyShort
Yeah it's ironic that a few years ago people made fun of the narcissistic side
of social media: selfies, pictures of inane events throughout your day. That's
actually what I DO want to see from old friends. I don't actually care to see
most politics, memes, or order-of-operations problems that actual public
school graduates can't seem to get.

> And growing up with screens in their faces

I hadn't thought about that. I definitely grew up with a screen in my face,
but I also didn't have regular Internet access until I was an adult and
already very sure of who I was and what I valued.

~~~
kelnos
Yeah, I guess I more meant "grow up with the internet". Or, really, "grow up
with services that goad you into oversharing a curated look into your life". I
grew up with computers (well, first one around age 8), and hung out on local
BBSes until the web came around, but even by then the worst social problems
seemed to come from spending too much time chatting online and not enough time
interacting with real people or playing outside.

I think really the point is when people started growing up with Facebook.
Given that FB has been around for 14 years now, there's a good chunk of people
who are even in their 20s now who were introduced to FB as soon as they were
old enough for their parents to let them have an account. Instagram came 6
years later, when some of these people were in their teens. A lot of social
behavior gets hammered out in those years and growing up with
FB/Instagram/etc. rather than being introduced to them post-adolescence might
make difference.

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martin_bech
Anecdotal, but there is a documentary right now on danish television, on 4
young girls stressing about, having to be perfect, and bad mental health/self
esteem.. and it looks a lot like most of them have an instagram addiction. One
chooses places to eat etc. on what would look best on instagram. One aimmessly
browsers pretty girls, to see how should look herself.

~~~
rainieri
How's this any different from mindlessly listening to generic pop music and
reading teen magazines?

~~~
chongli
Teen magazines don't let you send in pictures of yourself and collect likes
from everybody in your social group.

This is where all the stress comes from. Young girls are under enormous
pressure to be attractive and gather tons of likes from their peers. The
feedback loop has tightened so much that it reinforces the repetitive
behaviour of posting and checking for likes. It's addictive!

~~~
morpheuskafka
By contrast, however, they offer no positive feedback whatsoever. At my school
social media contributes positively to most people's self esteem because it is
a constant source of positive feedback from friends on personal activities and
memories. IDK why we are blaming Instagram for bullying and issues that have
been around for years.

~~~
bspn
> _At my school social media contributes positively to most people 's self
> esteem because it is a constant source of positive feedback from friends on
> personal activities and memories_

But that's the problem. People get a "like" or equivalent on a photo or post
and they conflate that with self-worth. They then see their friend (or worse,
enemy) get more likes and either feel unworthy or a need to compete. I get the
short-term self-esteem boost from a popular post, but the long-terms effects
of chasing such positive affirmation are not healthy and will likely to lead
to deeper issues later in life particularly once you enter the workforce.

Disclaimer: I went to school pre-social media so insert appropriate dinosaur
reference.

~~~
morpheuskafka
Having friends and others that care about what you do is inherently part of
social species' self worth--that doesn't imply "chasing positive affirmation",
which is a problem. Nor does it necessitate a quantitative approach to
counting likes. "Likes" are just the modern day version of getting a verbal
"that's cool" from a friend. If someone goes around and counts how many
positive things are said to them and compares it to others, that is an issues
but it's not an issues of technology

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wlesieutre
Interesting. Most of the people I know on it post less than on Facebook and
there's a much higher ratio of other photos to selfies/screenshots compared to
other social networks. I only post a couple times a month when I feel like I
have a photo worth posting.

As more people move over from mainline Facebook and Facebook adds more
Facebooky features to Instagram, I expect it will get less useful for this.
There's also not a lot of timeline control, so you do end up with situations
where someone goes on a trip and suddenly you have 20 posts in a row from a
single person at Disneyland.

I suppose if you're using it as an all-purpose social network and trying to
maintain a persona, the inability to post anything other than pictures applies
a lot of pressure to always have exciting new pictures to post.

~~~
startupflix
I guess they might be working on a post-status-as-a-picture feature.

~~~
RandallBrown
That's what Instagram Stories are.

~~~
wlesieutre
Not nearly intrusive enough! Give it a year and stories will also show up in
your timeline.

~~~
mi100hael
They already do show you a static preview overlayed with the user's round
profile photo after you scroll down past 4 or 5 photos on your timeline

~~~
NDT
And they have a feature called Highlights I believe which allow you to pin
stories to your profile, so they're viewable forever

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jatins
I remember when Insta was "newer", people used to comment on how much nicer it
made them feel compared to Facebook. I also felt that same. But I guess beyond
a point, all social networks turn into bit of a rat-race, which also reminds
me of college.

~~~
startupflix
Engineering :p

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amirmc
> _" Respondents were asked to score how each of the social media platforms
> they use impact upon issues such as anxiety, loneliness and community
> building. The site with the most positive rating was YouTube, followed by
> Twitter. Facebook and Snapchat came third and fourth respectively."_

YouTube had the most positive rating!? I'm honestly not sure what to make of
this. The experience of 14-24 year olds must be vastly different to the
comments etc I've seen there.

~~~
addicted
Most people probably don’t interact with the comments. Most probably just
watch the videos, ignore the comments, or glance at the comments and never
venture back due to the toxicity of it all.

Twitter is like taking YouTube comments and making them the content.
Instagram/Snapchat is the same, except now the comments are pictures with a
whole lot of body shaming thrown in.

~~~
DanielleMolloy
> Twitter is like taking YouTube comments and making them the content.

Much of it, yes. But 1) tailor your Twitter stream to your (professional)
interests, 2) ignore any trending news, 3) unfollow people who tweet random
stuff or have too much Trump (or any current politics) in their mix and it
will provide useful. I follow mostly computational neuroscience / machine
learning scientists, and have heard much about recent research, summary
articles or conferences first on Twitter. On an evening just two weeks ago I
glanced at my list and saw a poster about one of the most intriguing research
findings I've yet seen. Without Twitter I would have had to attend the
conference or waited for the paper. Science Twitter is active and growing, and
as scientists are busy people for many it has become a popular and low-effort
announcement platform for new work (much better than university blogs or press
releases and such).

I see much more toxicity glancing on any video's YouTube comments than on my
Twitter stream.

~~~
Asdfbla
I find it pretty hard to curate even interesting lists of researchers on
Twitter without running into too much fluff or political tweets. I don't blame
them for using the medium as it might be intended and of course they are free
to share their personal opinions, but in my experience even just a handful of
people who tweet a bit too often can pollute your stream enough to make it
annoying to follow along.

Maybe Twitter should just let you filter posts based on content. (Maybe it's
already possible, I'm not a big Twitter user.)

~~~
psyc
Same here. I only follow graphics programmers and game developers. The
graphics people are ok, but a few of them tweet a lot of politics in addition
to content I wouldn’t want to miss. And game development is thoroughly
saturated in The Culture War, so there’s no practical way to avoid that except
to ignore it.

------
Bucephalus355
FYI suicide rates for 10-14 years old have increased 250%+ since 2007.

I know of no other way to more accurately measure the decline and sickness of
an age than the number of children that want to willingly kill themselves.

Source is the CDC Mortality Statistics and also Dr. Jean Twenge out of San
Diego.

------
ryanmarsh
_survey found the photo-sharing app negatively impacted on people 's body
image, sleep and fear of missing out_

That’s funny because I (not young) get a bit of joy from Instagram. The FOMO
makes me travel and do things I wouldn’t otherwise. My wife encouraged me to
start capturing the beautiful things I see and now I go back to my profile[0]
and relive some amazing and beautiful moments. The ripped guys (and gals) on
there remind me to hit the gym.

Instead I think it’s all about perspective. My wife says “comparison is the
thief of joy”. I don’t compare myself to what I find on IG. I use to to
inspire me as to what’s possible.

Facebook and Twitter, by contrast, are full of mean people saying mean things.
That makes me feel yuck inside. So I try to avoid both.

0:
[https://www.instagram.com/ryan_marsh/](https://www.instagram.com/ryan_marsh/)

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NDT
I really wonder what the user experience would be like if only the creator of
the post could see the "likes" on Instagram and Facebook. Similar to Snapchat,
I think it would alleviate some of this anxiety and need for validation if we
didn't see how much attention our friends get on social media.

~~~
mLuby
Good idea! Sounds easy enough to test with a browser extension. :)

~~~
NDT
It's what I'm planning on doing!

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misterbowfinger
Link to report cited in the article:

[https://www.rsph.org.uk/uploads/assets/uploaded/62be270a-a55...](https://www.rsph.org.uk/uploads/assets/uploaded/62be270a-a55f-4719-ad668c2ec7a74c2a.pdf)

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Arqu
I think this goes for all the mainstream social networks. They are just echo
chambers where people feed their ego on the ego of others. In the past 4 years
I've been cutting down on all this crap, not because I couldn't handle it, but
because it provides 0 value to me and only consumes time. Still got all the
accounts but dont use them. Cut out snapchat, twitter, facebook, instagram and
like 20 news portals. Currently only look at HN to keep up to date and
sometimes open Reddit. No games no nothing on the phone. Entertainment is at
home or out with friends.

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olliej
I can believe this - even though as other people mention the study seems
poorly designed.

That said I literally just use Instagram for dogs and nothing else. So it’s
just a source of joy :)

~~~
justboxing
> I literally just use Instagram for dogs

What do you mean? Can you elaborate? ( Not Trolling) Do you use it to see Dog
pics & Videos? or Dog owner stuff?

I use IG exclusively for watching cat videos, and boxing news.

~~~
NDT
S/he probably means seeing dog pictures/videos. Or if he owns a dog, operating
a dog account (god, that sounds weird typing it out).

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danielblazevski
Whatever is the current most popular form of social media will always be the
worst for people's mental health.

Like fb ranks lower on how much stress it induces since "kids these days"
simply don't use it much.

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jklinger410
Or: Instagram ranked social network most likely to be frequented by people
with poor mental health.

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s3r3nity
After reviewing the report and the associated studies, there are no indicators
that this is a causal relationship - just correlations. My immediate reaction
is "why are we ruling out the possibility that they are on Instagram / Fb /
(insert network of choice) because they do not have healthy EQ (emotional
intelligence as a proxy for "mental health" here?)"

I don't have skin in this fight, but I am extremely skeptical of "correlation
over causation" with specious conclusions that justify certain opinions that
are popular here on HN.

~~~
learnstats2
Statistics rarely gives causal indicators (and arguably it would always be
impossible to distinguish cause and effect in this case).

So, this is an unhelpful criticism.

Is there a correlation? Yes. Is there a causation? We can't know for sure, but
we also can't rule it out and it is certainly worth considering and reporting
on in lay terms.

~~~
jm_l
Couldn't you settle this by controlling for initial mental health in two
groups, having one group start using Instagram, and tracking any changes? If
your point is that it would take work to separate correlation and causation
then yes, agreed, but I don't see why you would think we can't know for sure.

~~~
extra88
That would probably be considered unethical because the expected change would
cause harm.

Instead, perhaps you could have group A stop using Instagram and group B
continue using Instagram then compare. It would be important to look deeper to
see if there are differences within group A between those who and did not
replace using Instagram with another social platform.

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thephyber
Timestamped "19 MAY 2017"

Please change the title to reflect this.

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ChicagoDave
I deleted it a month ago. Complete useless waste of time. It's filled with
purely narcissistic photos. It can't possibly be healthy for anyone.

~~~
TuringNYC
I'm assuming this is _heavily biased by your curation_. I follow graffiti
artists, calligraphy artists, and landscape photographers. My Instagram feed
is filled with new artwork that inspires me daily, it is almost like visiting
a museum everyday.

~~~
justinzollars
you are selling this pretty hard.

