
App Makers Reach Out to the Teenager on Mobile - randycupertino
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/03/business/app-makers-reach-out-to-the-teenager-on-mobile.html?_r=0
======
randycupertino
As the uncle of three teenage nieces, this article hit home for me. It's a
look at some of the elaborate rules teenagers have created on how to use apps
like Snapchat and Instagram to maintain their self-image and what it means to
get insufficient likes.

It's amazing how mean I see girls being to my 15 year old niece on Instagram.
Their little meangirl phrase is "tbh" \- short for "to be honest." So they're
write something nice, then "tbh" and then something mean. It goes like this,
"you're a sweet girl but tbh your new backpack is kinda ratchet" or "your hair
is beautiful but tbh u r slutty." Or whatever... I told my sister about this
and she locked down her insta but she still gets random comments like this all
the time. They all do.

Getting likes weighs on my neices 24/7\. They were complaining when I took
them to Star Wars that their insta photograph of them kissing yoda "only" got
15 likes.... and were considering deleting it! Because only 15 likes is about
30 too few likes.

~~~
hellofunk
I don't know why you deleted your other comment just now, but I agree with it.
When I get just one like, I'm thinking to myself how awesome I must be because
I touched another person's experience this moment with some photo or comment I
made to the world electronically. If I got 15 likes, I'd be wondering if I'm
some kind of gifted social icon without knowing it!

~~~
drakenot
Likes are extremely cheap in the world of young people, so I can see how
"only" 15 likes is a signal that the post wasn't greatly received. I watched
my nephew (12 year old) use Instagram over the holidays and it was interesting
to see how he used the app. He rapidly scrolled through his feed, barely
giving each post enough time to register what it was, and he double-tapped
(liked) around 80-90% of all posts as they went by.

If people are liking 90% of the posts on their feed, the "like" doesn't become
that useful of a signal to determine what people truly like. It is being used
for something else at this point. Some way of extending and re-inforcing a
persons graph of friends? I'm not entirely sure.

~~~
hellofunk
Wow that's crazy. I'm sure that usage is not the expectation from the app
makers. It almost makes me wonder if there is a strange counter-psychology
going on there, as if your acceptance was in part measured by your
participation, and that if someone did _not_ see a like from you, it had
consequences.

~~~
Swizec
> that if someone did not see a like from you, it had consequences.

I'm 28 and people definitely notice when you don't notice one of their posts.
A like is often just an aknowledgement of "Yes, I saw this, I still follow
what you're up to, we're still friends"

------
hmahncke
Today I learned that very smart people are working very hard to make my
teenager's life demonstrably worse (organizing push notifications at lunch
time for high schoolers? Thanks, folks). I probably should have known that
already.

------
hellbanTHIS
This is the first I've heard of Wishbone, which seems pretty harmless but
Instagram is one of the most toxic internet substances out there at the moment
poisoning our collective psyche. I think it should be fucking destroyed.

~~~
HillRat
"...Instagram is one of the most toxic internet substances out there are the
moment..."

 _Social_ is the weapons-grade plutonium of online design; you can use it as
part of a stable fuel source, or as the components of a weapon, but it's most
likely to end up carelessly scattered around your community poisoning it for
generations to come.

In Instagram's case, its social enablement is relatively anodyne, but it
illustrates some common problems: comments are higher-bandwidth than content,
and comments are easier to create than content. Thus, low-value information is
added to the system at a much higher rate than high-value content. Solving
this is, to put it mildly, not easy.

~~~
wtbob
> Social is the weapons-grade plutonium of online design; you can use it as
> part of a stable fuel source, or as the components of a weapon, but it's
> most likely to end up carelessly scattered around your community poisoning
> it for generations to come.

That right there is sheer genius, ladies & gentlemen!

It's interesting to compare sites with healthy social components (e.g. HN &
reddit), to those whose social component has died off (e.g. /.), to those
which use it unhealthily, if profitably (Instagram?).

~~~
pekk
I would not identify Reddit as having a healthy social component. Everything
that has been said here about Instagram is also largely true of Reddit, and
then you can add in the Neo-nazis, fatpeoplehaters and so on on top of that.

~~~
existencebox
So let me ask a provacative question.

What makes a social component healthy/unhealthy? I generally found myself
nodding to posts until I read yours, which made me think quite a bit harder.
Can a community with questionable moral value (neo nazis) have a healthy
social community? I certainly think those two are not mutually exclusive, and
to tie them together may detract from a complete understanding of what
"unhealthy" means.

(To answer the question myself, "healthy" vs "unhealthy" in my eyes is whether
the community is a self perpetuating echo chamber, (for which many parts of
instagram this certainly holds true, content regurgitation and mindless
browsing, but I'm apt to believe not ALL of it) and similarly an ISIS forum
may have more of a tendancy towards "unhealthy" social content, I don't
believe it necessarily dictates it; I've read some fascinating discussions
even on HN (linked to other sites) between extremist Muslim/European religious
experts that would be a fit for the most cultured discussion boards, even if
context of one sides subject matter is far darker.)

------
revelation
This article seems to equate teenagers with teenager girls.

------
dhla
"'You want to create an environment where it doesn’t feel like only 1 percent
of the people win,' said Eric Kuhn, Science’s head of product. 'And we’ve
heard that with other platforms, like as soon as you’re clearly not in that
top 1 percent, you don’t want to use the app anymore.'"

Important point about the evolution of social networks - unpacking it:

1) focus more on small groups rather than a large whole - most teenagers now
know they won't become social celebrities, but still need validation within
reach.

2) validation should be lasting, and "social failures" should be short - teens
are aware enough of the algorithms promoting & demoting their content that
they consistently manually remove content. As such, these algorithms either
adapt to being played, or become useless.

Any smart community architects out there should be encouraging small, close
groups over a large whole.

------
q-base
If I were Wishbone I would not be furiously angry at that article - oh wait -
I might even struggle to pay my way to a better advertising. Of course their
target audience might not be the average reader of NYT, but a bit more
objectivity, research and depth would have been nice.

Important issue - but unimportant article in my opinion.

------
randycupertino
I deleted it because it had about -5 points. :) If anyone's curious I just
said that sometimes the only "likes" I get on facebook are from my mom. Ever
since I accepted her friend request, my mom likes every single damn thing I
post. I am experiencing Facebook Like Inflation from my mother.

~~~
mei0Iesh
> "only" got 15 likes.... and were considering deleting it!

> I deleted it because it had about -5 points.

I wonder if you're the one more concerned with the feedback and likes than
your niece, and you're what caused her to delete it. Why are you worrying
about the negative comments they receive and bothering them about your
worries, which they then respond to by deleting what worries you? I can see an
alternative view where from their perspective it was more like, "Gah, my uncle
is stalking my IG and freaking out on me; deleting to make this drama go
away!"

~~~
hellofunk
That a pretty funny irony you pointed out.

