“The research that we’ve seen is that using social apps to connect with other people can have positive mental-health benefits,” CEO Mark Zuckerberg said at a congressional hearing...
“We make body image issues worse for one in three teen girls,” said one slide from 2019, summarizing research about teen girls who experience the issues.
“Teens blame Instagram for increases in the rate of anxiety and depression,” said another slide. “This reaction was unprompted and consistent across all groups.”
From what researchers said in a March 2020 slide presentation posted to Facebook’s internal message board.
"Using social apps to connect with other people can have positive mental-health benefits"
That statement cannot be false because it is devoid of any content, being a mere hypothetical. The fact that it is surrounded by "research" is meaningless as well, as the aforementioned sentence is like saying "the elements of the empty set fulfil all properties"...
So no, they are not contradicting themselves. They are simply and wantonly misleading people.
Most corporate PR statements are crafted this way. They often give the illusion of saying something because all the key words of saying something are there, but they're often crafted in a way that if read carefully, say almost nothing at all or have a giant disclaimer in small font that essentially says *none of this maybe true and is subject to change.
A lot of pharmaceutical advertisements do this to: this might help you, it might also kill you, you choose(!) but please ask your doctor about us anyways and throw us some money.
I love looking at pharmaceutical advertising in this way - what they do say is the absolute legally maximum they could say about the product. If there were stronger claims, they could make them.
Therefore, if they say "may help against X", then it doesn't really, because if they had substantial evidence of that, they would state that.
But in the case of pharmaceuticals there is at least rigorous scientific evidence behind the statements. Even so, science does not have all the answers, and to pretend so would be making a mockery of the scientific method.
The research the GP's quote is referencing said Instagram made 41% feel better, 31% worse, and no impact for the other 28%. It's not clear why that can be used as evidence that it makes some girls feel worse about themselves but that it makes some girls feel better about themselves.
I've come up with a new sports drink. X% of people say it makes them feel good! WOOO! Y% don't feel anything. About one in Z people will absolutely feel worse. If you have suicidal thoughts, about one in ten of those will be able to attribute their suicidal thinking to my drink. When interviewed about my drink, teenagers will unprompted blame the drink on increasing rates of anxiety and and depression. If you feel unattractive, odds are about even you started feeling that way when you started drinking my drink. Teens regularly report wanting to drink less of my drink but lack the self control to do so. In part this is because they report feeling like they have to be seen drinking my drink. I know all this because I employ researchers who say they can't get people in my sports drink company to take their findings seriously because those researchers are "standing directly between people and their bonuses". So my execs don't use our internal research, but cite instead other studies (by orgs that I donate to) that highlight the positives.
I make $BILLIONS from this drink.
(fill in whatever value of X, Y and Z makes this all ok)
Your note that the world is sexist and many things make women, teens and girls continously negatively evaluate themselves is something I agree.
The rest I would truly contest.
Prom is not an every single morning, universe commenting event no matter how the teenage brain may attempt to blow it up.
Cosmo and Vogue do not have the same continuous feedback loop and clearly have 100x (1000x? 1mnx?) less content being created, repeated, refreshed, etc. Its a magazine. If you want to invoke their IG handles honestly I could find 100s of influencers with more reach and engagement
I think in contemporary culture and media in western nations sexism is vastly exaggerated. At least if you use the classical definition. Someone who is sexist rarely burdens people with expectations since those are by definition quite low.
I believe other social phenomena are responsible for this, mainly forms of peer pressur. The stories influencers use to lure their audiences often invokes the threat of sexism and that naturally increases fears that might lead to a feedback loop.
wow this is fascinating, taking the veneer of something in the tautological space and using it as sheep's clothing over something known to be a wolf. There's something curious about this form of misleading that deserves to be identified and named to be called out in future instances.
"Foods containing sugar have been found to save lives in a number of studies."
"Regular smoking use is associated with lower BMI, which is shown to correlate with improved heart health and lower mortality rates."
"Use of fossil fuels powers a number of ecology-preserving tasks, allowing us to care for the environment in a way we could not without this amazing source of Earth-loving fuel."
It's fairly easy if you understand the meaning of "can be true". There can be countless instances where it's not true but if you find just _one_ instance where it's true, then your "can be true" statement must be true.
Disproportionate benefit insinuation error: Implying (without explicitly stating that it has more benefits than disadvantages because that would be a disprovable lie) that because something has some benefit, it is overall helpful.
Or just "plausible deniability"- factually stating the existence of a beneficial tree, but omitting mention of the harmful forest
Or just "cherry-picking"
Or to cover cases where a harm is insinuated/emphasized in the same way in order to discredit something (see: literally all the antivax data, antiscience, antimedicine... "trust doctors, you mean like the ones who prescribed thalidomide?")... "Misrepresenting the forest"
Gorgias was perhaps the most well-known ancient Sophist, and is also the namesake of one of Plato's Dialogues, which happens to be one of my favourites. Highly recommend reading the above, and into sophistry and rhetoric more generally, if you're the sort that gets annoyed by modern bullshit, and wants a set of names and tactics to defend the sanctity (and sanity) of your opinions.
This is called creating a narrative by cherry picking facts. This is what the media does, and is why so many people (most Americans per Pew) distrust them.
Yes. When he goes to those hearings, Zuckerberg fixes a spot and begins all of his answers with "[pause] Senator... [pause] [Generic reassuring statement] <very clever and deceptive answer>. (https://youtu.be/XXuk-WSDDRw?t=111)
It's a true statement. Surely connecting via social apps has had positive mental health benefits on at least one person. That alone would make it true.
I think the problem is most people probably read the statement and don't realize just how weak the evidence required to make it true is.
Then I think we're in agreement? "Connecting via social apps has a non-0 probability of giving (to whom? at least one person?) positive mental health benefits".
Exactly. If one person in the world benefits from using Instagram and the other 7 billion people get depressed, then the statement FB made is still true.
I'm not defending Facebook and I just had some thoughts reading the quotes and am curious what you think of them.
1. I remember that while growing up fashion magazines, actors/actresses and I want to say peer pressure (but am fearful its incorrect) were a big source of body image issues.
2. Maybe it's a side effect of our society or "normal" to have security issues while growing up. We've been having good childhoods for how long - 100 years? Maybe there are some feelings that we never had the option of expressing or feeling.
The less I want is to defend Facebook but I think lately people don't want to acknowledge their own responsibilities. It's like every time there is a problem, the cause is someone/something else. I don't think Instagram is impossed to anyone. Young people can feel the pressure to use it because their friends use it but they aren't forced to do so.
From the article it seems that young girls know about the toxicity in the application, why they keep using it? if their parents are aware too, why do they let their daughters use it?
I have a personal grudge against anyone saying "Why don't the parents take some responsibility to combat a multi-billion dollar company who puts the resources of small countries in to making their children behave in detrimental ways."
But I'll not get in to that. :)
Facebook and Instagram are drug dealers. Sure, they're not physically distributing a substance, but the social interactions they provide are every bit as addictive. In time, society will abolish or tightly constrain them in the same way society has banned other highly addictive substances.
I will say emphatically that parents of teens are the most influential people in their lives, whether acknowledged or no. It is likely the case that parents will forever be the most influential people in someone's life and the positions you take, the behaviors you engage in, and what you teach will stick with them for their whole lives. Take a stance and teach them. They may rebel, they may not, but years down the road your opinion will likely inform their reflections and help guide their future actions.
>I will say emphatically that parents of teens are the most influential people in their lives
I don't work in behavioral science, but this isn't my understanding. I was under the impression that research indicates peers are the larger influence, which can be tempered somewhat by parents. For an easy example, whether or not peers smoke is a better predictor than whether parents smoke.
Well to elaborate on that… kids under 16 go to the schools their parents decide on, live in the neighborhoods their parents decide on, and associated with the kids of their parents friends when they were younger.
Those are their peers.
They aren’t their friends. Kids make their own friends, but it’s unusual for them to be able to make lifestyle choices like where they live before adulthood.
To note, your peers aren’t people on Instagram per se. I’d guess a study on the issue would say that a peer group they associate with on daily basis like in school would have more of an effect on their choices than Instagram influencers.
>kids under 16 go to the schools their parents decide on, live in the neighborhoods their parents decide on, and associated with the kids of their parents friends when they were younger.
True, but for most people this is only available within a subset of constrained choices. Parents in rural Appalachia or the rust belt probably aren’t going to have a lot of Phillips Academies to choose from
As a person who grew up in rural Appalachia certainly Phillips was not an option. But, choosing a municipality with an emphasis on the value of education certainly was something my parents actively did. And, we had families across the economic spectrum in my school.
Thanks for weighing in with your experience. I grew up in a dying industrial town in the rust belt and choices were very limited. It might be possible for a slightly better school by moving but it would incur penalties most families couldn’t afford (higher home prices, 2-3 hr round trip commutes etc)
I will say emphatically that parents of teens are the most influential people in their lives
You might say that, but you would be wrong. Parents of teens have been the most influential people in their lives up to them becoming teens. Part of the process into adulthood is to break away from that pattern, to explore and build connections outside the family sphere. That's why teens are the most vulnerable demographic for a lot of things -- their brains are in the process of rewiring themselves for more personal responsibility and less parental oversight. So they're actively seeking to avoid parental control, but haven't yet learned to correctly weigh and assess long-term effects of their decisions.
Agreed, and the parent comment hasn't done that. Its identified a shift and a period of time that indicates the (usually) first shift of its kind in a person's social life.
While parents may or may not be the “most” influential people in a child’s life, I think it is certainly possible that the influence of parents/family/tribe can decrease in relation to the influence of the broader world due to changes outside of the parents’ control.
I certainly think the internet gave me access to many more humans, ideas, and tribes than my parents' generation had access to, and it would be hard for me to see how it would have been possible for my parents to have as much influence on me as their parents had on them.
I would even say it is indisputable there are forces beyond parents’ control unless the parents opt to live an Amish lifestyle, such as using devices connected to the internet and various social networks. If you do not give it to your kid, someone at school will, and even more, you probably need to teach your kid how to play the game rather than have them start it blind while the other players have experience.
There are different levels of influence, though. Yes, parents can assert a lot of control over their children, but at a certain age they start looking at their peers and being influenced by them to a tremendous degree.
And not all parents realize, or can realize, everything that goes on in their childrens' lives.
Parental control cannot and can never be used as a singular or even more influential factor to societal level problems. Parents can have all the best intentions in the world but if the society they’re trying to raise children in is broken, they can’t protect those children forever.
It isn't about protection. It is about values and moral principles. Parents can teach children tools about self control and mindfulness about evaluating if things are good for them or not. Teens and young adults have to explore and figure out their place in the world apart from their parents, but the skills and values taught are often transcendent of the shifting values in culture.
Let's face it, powerful forces in our society discourage self-control and critical reflection, and culture encourages people to have children regardless of whether they have learned those skills
This is true, and people with highly involved parents, on the average, destroy their lives with drugs less frequently than those with absentee or abusive parents. We still throw heroin dealers in jail.
> If you teach your kids not to consume drugs, why Instagram should be any different?
Imagine if all the other kids at school used drugs on a daily basis, that there was advertising plastered everywhere telling you that drugs are cool, that successful people use drugs and that your worth in this world can be directly tied to successful use of drugs.
I don't mean to sound mean here, but are you a parent? If not I suspect you're not really aware of the realities of parenting, particularly once a child becomes teenage. You can only do so much. And you certainly can't win against a multi-billion dollar enterprise determined to make your rebellion-inclined teenager do something.
This is quite an interesting thought experiment. As noted by @aspaviento, they were able to resist smoking, regardless of surrounding influences.
Do you have any comments on the tactics used by cigarette companies -- specifically in the United States -- before the 1998 "Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement"? When I was a kid, the amount of advertising by tobacco was incredible. It was unavoidable and everywhere... and any cool or famous seemed associated with cigarette companies.
Even if you ignore smoking cigarettes, the topic of smoking marijuana will surely be a major issue for current and next gen parents. How would you parent around this issue? It is so complex.
> Do you have any comments on the tactics used by cigarette companies -- specifically in the United States -- before the 1998 "Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement"?
The tactics worked? Rates of smoking used to be way higher in the past.
I don't want to use myself as an example because it's just my experience but when I was young people around me smoked, many of my teachers smoked and in TV and movies smoking was still accepted as something approved by society. But I was taught not to do it and never did it.
With this I just want to say that I know it's a difficult task but presenting it as a lost battle/impossible seems to me wrong.
I know you probably intuit this based on your pre-emptive caveat about anecdotal evidence, but a quick online search seems to indicate that your experience may not be the norm.
"Peers’ smoking is the strongest predictor of adolescent
smoking."[1]
[1] Gecková, A.M., Stewart, R., van Dijk, J.P., Orosová, O.G., Groothoff, J.W. and Post, D., 2005. Influence of socio-economic status, parents and peers on smoking behaviour of adolescents. European addiction research, 11(4), pp.204-209.
> With this I just want to say that I know it's a difficult task but presenting it as a lost battle/impossible seems to me wrong.
The thing is, we made headway in the battle against smoking by disallowing people from doing all those things. You're not allowed to market to kids, you're not allowed to depict smoking in most TV that kids are likely to watch, you're not allowed to smoke in or near schools and teachers who do are frowned upon. Cigarettes themselves are taxed heavily specifically to price young people out of getting into the habit, vendors are required to card, and the cigarette makers are even required to pay into a fund that promotes anti-smoking messaging.
So yes it is definitely not an impossible task. But the things that make it possible require taking it seriously as a danger and addressing it collectively.
So not all young people in your time were taught similarly. Or if they were, those teachings didn't stick.
Ideally the number of minors smoking would be zero. I don't think that's a radical idea, and I hope it's something that everyone can agree on. "Teachings from parents" obviously didn't achieve that goal, from your own experience.
In some respects, "Say No to Drugs" seems out of date when some very advanced democracies have already legalised some drugs or are close to it. That said, I understand your sentiment. No parent should be encouraging their children to become habitual cocaine users!
One thing that does some "obvious" for this generation of parents: Work hard to educate your children on the dangers of traditional cigarette smoking. That is a seriously terrible habit for your health and well-being. I feel much less so about vaping (e-cigarettes), as the health effects of nicotine addiction are still far lower than traditional cigarette smoke inhaled into the lungs.
> In some respects, "Say No to Drugs" seems out of date when some very advanced democracies have already legalised some drugs or are close to it.
I think there's a certain nuance there. Drugs (which ones?) can (should?) be legal - or at least their consumption decriminalized. We've made good progress already and yet much more is to be made.
But all this is not saying that drugs should be pushed hand over fist down people's throat and that billions should be spent on studying the ways people can be more encouraged to become drug users.
And this is what Facebook et al are doing. They are spending untold resources on devising the most efficient ways of making people addicted and ensuring that no other way exist of satisfying the cravings. They create echo chambers and push specifically topics that get the most response out of people.
And this is completely legal (currently). Facebook, Instagram, Tiktok etc... are allowed to be cool, hip, desirable and consumed in ways that the tobacco industry couldn't imagine in their wildest dreams during their heydays.
These companies can tap into the deepest secrets and desires of vast swathes of people in ways that is unprecedented.
I feel that the vices of the old world, like drugs, are chickenshit compared to the power that the new vices can wield over their captives.
You've now got me picturing a guy holding tablets in a trench coat in a dark alley with asking some teenagers passing buy if they wanna buy some time on social media.
"I got it all, buddy. Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook...I can hook you up."
What will be the crack and cocaine in this situation? What other untold horrors will unfold while privileged or naive citizens and politicians all around stay cozy whilst the war on drugs caused havoc and destroyed so many lives and communities.
“We” certainly blamed the users of addictive substances and vilified or at least looked down on them. That is until it was heavily white and middle class or above people with opoids. Even then it was slow, but some things were done. Far more than what was done with other highly addictive substances. It’s a disgrace.
I shutter to think any drug banning history happen in any other context.
Ditto for online pornography. And unlike chemical drugs that have to be transported and administered, these images and videos fly through the wires into childrens' bedrooms.
I know, because like most children, I was exposed to online porn at a young age and was addicted to it well into my adult life. These companies need regulation, because they are bad actors.
Nah. That's been studied heavily. Here's an overview from the National Institutes of Health.[1] Wikipedia has an overview.[2] The overall conclusion is that most of the research is of terrible quality and there's no big measurable effect.
Here is strong evidence to the contrary from the NIH:
>The proposed DSM-5, slated to publish in May of 2014, contains in this new addition the diagnosis of Hypersexual Disorder, which includes problematic, compulsive pornography use. Bostwick and Bucci, in their report out of the Mayo Clinic on treating Internet pornography addiction with naltrexone, wrote “…cellular adaptations in the (pornography) addict’s PFC result in increased salience of drug-associated stimuli, decreased salience of non-drug stimuli, and decreased interest in pursuing goal-directed activities central to survival.”
No, nothing needs regulation. Stop making the internet fucking worse. Can we go back to 2000 now (not that it was good then either since the internet was fundamentally broken already)? This is like the bat shit insane morons who think having a popup about cookies on every page is solving the """privacy""" issue.
Literally every single political issue on HN is bogus. Take the ad blocking issue for instance, nothing that has ads actually matters. Your "solutions" like Brave are pure garbage.
The "privacy" issue doesn't exist because if we were using sane tech instead of webshit, there wouldn't be any tracking since it wouldn't be conceptually possible. Why the hell can tech even track you in the first place for reading static documents? This is a poor analog that cannot even compete with paper newspapers (which are also much more legible because they are not on LCDs).
Net neutrality doesn't matter because nobody can ELI5 why I should care about it. Since the internet is all garbage, it shouldn't be an issue that it's expensive. Just don't use it. Make a free replacement. Cuban citizens have already done it.
Now let me try and list CURRENT_YEAR.addictions:
- Games
- Working out
- Porn
- Social media
- TV (youtube or whatever you use now)
- HN (muh dunning kruger syndrome, imposter, et al)
- Eating
- Lotto tickets
- Stock market
- Programming
- Working
- Drugs
- Things that are sort of drugs but not
- Any substance what so ever
- Benchmarking
- Politics
- Literally any hobby
Oh look guys, HN needs to be regulated because I can come up with a person who has problems because of it.
Guys we need to regulate fat and high calorie food. Oh wait it grows on trees.
People who see a problem and immediately go "we need regulation to solve this" (and even proceed to come up with some ad-hoc hypothesis of how it solves the problem after it's proven that it doesn't solve it in a substantial way) are morons. There is actually something wrong with their brain. They hold back progress. Every new law is a potential stumbling block for progress and thus why new legislation should be avoided at all costs. See MECHANISM NOT POLICY article on wikipedia to see how people already knew about this 70 years ago in tech.
This is a hyperbolic statement. Even if you are just talking about internet regulation.
Let's imagine for a moment that someone invented a hypnosis algorithm and hosted it on a website. Anyone going to this website went into spasms and died in front of their screen. Would we seek protection for our children and for the general public from such a website from internet browser companies, ISPs and the government? Yes we would. This is an extreme example but it illustrates a point. You can say the same thing about websites that prey on children, or the elderly.
I'm not advocating for the banning of pornography altogether. I am making the simple proposition that it be better regulated. People who distribute porn know full well that their content is seen by minors. Having a child check a box that says that they are over 18 is not good enough. If I hadn't seen porn as a minor, I might have had a better chance of avoiding the extremely negative impacts that it can carry with it. Don't believe me? Visit a support page like r/NoFap and read the hundreds of thousands of stories there.
I'm not going to touch any of the other subjects you raised because I'm not arguing for any of the things you listed.
>people are killing themselves because of instagram
Literally every social issue on the web for the last 20 years follows this one simple formula:
> X causes Y. Yes it sounds stupid, but read this long winded reasoning or spend the next 70 hours of your life going down my trail of studies to back this up
And nobody actually invests their lives in rebuking them, and they get bored and stop talking about it 5 years later.
Pornography does not cause you to go into spasms and die though. You being unable to control yourself does not justify undue restrictions on other people. The internet should not be ceded to nanny staters and morality police.
> Pornography does not cause you to go into spasms and die though.
I didn't say it did.
> You being unable to control yourself does not justify undue restrictions on other people.
I'm not talking about myself, I'm talking about minors. Protecting children from products that require an adult brain to ascertain harm is a positive function of government.
> The internet should not be ceded to nanny staters and morality police.
This is not about morality. Please don't read intentions where there are none.
I don't know why you keep insisting that this is a moral appeal. This is public health.
1 - mandate disclaimers in front of all videos describing the possible negative effects of porn (there are concrete, well-studied effects). cigarettes and tobacco have the same mandates and they do have an overall positive effect on educating the public
2 - hold video hosting sites liable if content is shown to minors. there is a reason why a bar can get closed down or a gas station attendee can lose his or her job if alcohol and tobacco is served to minors. the same rules need to apply for sexually explicit material that is turbocharged to reach children
> 1 - mandate disclaimers in front of all videos describing the possible negative effects of porn
Why would you think this will work? My parents, school, etc already gave you a million false warnings about porn and yet I looked at it. Did that even work for smoking? I think smoking only stopped once vape replaced it. Now I have to skip the intro logo as well as some stupid disclaimer, and producers have to waste more of their time on legal checkboxes, great.
> 2 - hold video hosting sites liable if content is shown to minors.
That's not a concrete plan. Do we need photo ID here? Some experimental crypto to disclose your government certified age to the website so it can decide not to kick you off? What about a forum where anyone can post any image? Does the forum have to be legally liable to block minors if it has no rule against porn?
The internet worked perfect in 2000. I got my porn when I was 13 and had no problem. There was not a single complaint aside from corporate scum trying to enforce DMCA crap (the multi billion dollar company was complaining, nobody else). Only when all you American idiots came in 2010 from faceberg all these pretend social problems started existing. The internet is literally just data transmission and this act could not be more harmless if you wanted it to be. Quite literally, the internet is the most harmless technology in existence. It cannot give you any disease, etc. It costs nothing, etc. What we are seeing here is the American art of being a professional victim. One should start by observing that almost every single complaint about the internet starts with "I read some text and now I am offended".
I envision the internet as community run, and free. The current internet is all obsolete garbage. The problem is, on this new internet we wont actually be able to make it because everything will be illegal by then. It will be illegal to run point to point to your neighbour because of some stupid porno law that has absolutely nothing to do with your application.
> the social interactions they provide are every bit as addictive.
I'm not familiar with actual research in this space, but i would imagine that its similarly addictive to being with friends IRL?
(To me) social media is a great tool to connect with friends and stay present even after we move away and work and pandemic quarantine. Its a suppliment for IRL relationships. I used to live with friends in college, and i used to go out and get food or drinks or whatever almost daily to get my "fix" of socialization.
Are social networks really that different? I recognize that some (teen girl?) people might wish they looked like a supermodel on social media or get jealousy of the lives of influences, but is that different from old magazine and movie stars? Is the mixture of "social" and "influences" to one news feed detrimental? Is there more exposure? What makes social networking more "addictive" (and therefore dangerous) than actual socialization?
Its true that social media is addictive, and also that companies intentionally design it to be so, but everyone bears some responsibility on that - from the companies, to the users, to the engineers working on it, to online authors referencing it/promoting it, etc, etc. So even if we argue about who gets what percentage of blame, it doesn't really change anything. We may convince 10-20 people in the comments section, but thats not really a solution. We need to contribute on a social media de-addiction guide or something.. :)
Right, no one is forcing anyone to use their services. It is only that they create an environment, which is actively damaging other "players" in the environment:
If you are not using it, uninformed people will laugh about you (peer pressure, network effect). Furthermore, because so many people use FB, many people will use FB to organize events, which one does not even know about, because of not being on FB. In the end, they will spin it, because they do not know better themselves, that it is you, who isolated yourself from the rest of "society".
I have experienced it many times. I have missed out on probably many things over time. Yet I refuse to be a part of FB and stuff like that. However, I am only one person. The peer pressure probably works on most people, because most are not as informed about FB (and Instagram and whatever else they own) and what it does, as the crowd on HN is for example. That means, that the argument of "no one is forcing anyone" is a bad one, because you would need to add "but they will make your life worse, if you do not join!". It is kind of an extortion, which an uninformed society unknowingly is excerting on the individual, put in motion by dark patterns, privacy-hostility and bad practices on the side of FB.
Their business model is poisoning the well of society, and strip-mining its value by breaking the bonds that hold it together.
The very best that can be concluded about it's entire leadership is that they entirely lack any hint of moral compass or sense of responsibility to the society from which they extract their wealth.
The more I observe their behavior, the more it looks like worse conclusions are supported by the data.
Just stop justifying things on technical bases. It is what FB is doing the the top post above
I don't get how you can end up in this line of thought? Can you ask these same questions about the abusers of opioids? Or Tobacco? Don't you have any bad habits you have difficulty shaking off?
Genuinely surprised.
I'm only speculating, but if "everyone's on instagram", maybe people don't want to be left out?
They may know that it's bad for you, just as I expect most smokers to know smoking is bad for you.
But the "badness" isn't direct, it grows, and they could think "maybe I'll be able to control it / I can quit whenever I want", whereas if you don't follow current trends (or whatever it is people follow on instagram), you're left out immediately.
Of course, by the time you realize you can't quit, it's already too late.
There's an old joke:
When you owe the bank a million dollars, it's your problem.
When you owe them a billion dollars, it's their problem.
(these numbers likely need adjustment for inflation...)
If FB/Instagram use is damaging a substantial percentage of your population, it's your problem, regardless of whatever moral frame you decide to put around it.
The difference is scope. On a personal level, yes, individuals should stop using Instagram if it's harming them. When we're discussing systems thinking and trying to understand trends that affect entire states, entire nations, or the whole world, we look at the impact of systemic interventions.
Unless telling people to take responsibility for themselves is an effective systemic intervention (it might be!) then it's not very useful, except as a PR strategy to deflect blame from Facebook.
Normal means that there is a bell-curve distribution of how insecure individuals would be; you'll see both more and less self-confident individuals. However, if you barrage the populace with photoshopped, top 1% in beauty, frankly unhealthy bodies, that distribution is going to move to the "right" towards more insecurity. I'd wager anyone susceptible to insecurity would experience a much greater level, than in a poor farming town where young people see almost no sexualized supermodels or celebrities to compare themselves to.
For example, take some 13 year old girl, probably a poor farmer, from Ireland in 1800. She will have seen almost no examples of the female body except her own, her peers rarely, and her familial elders. Then plop her down into today's world, and she'll definitely be barraged by all the most ridiculous images of flat stomachs, huge anatomical parts and tiny anatomical parts, immaculately photoshopped forms: she'll be made to feel less than them.
I think these social media platforms give teenagers the feeling, that everyone is pretty and successful.
Back in the days, only famous people where in fashion magazines. They where an elite group of people one could easily distinguish from.
But nowadays, there are so many "noname" persons out there, having a successful instagram feed. This could create the impression that all people out there are good looking and successful, except yourself.
Yeah, that's exactly true. It's cargo culting. Super models are beautiful and popular, so if I pay for a photo shoot I am also beautiful and popular seems to be the logic of many "influencers".
> 1. I remember that while growing up fashion magazines, actors/actresses and I want to say peer pressure (but am fearful its incorrect) were a big source of body image issues.
I remember reading somewhere, can't remember where, something that addressed this point.
Broadly speaking, the idea was that "people in magazines" weren't perceived as "peers", so you wouldn't compare yourself to them in the same way as you'd compare with a classmate, or some other "regular person", "just like yourself".
To me this sounds like post hoc reasoning to justify the conclusion you already want to make. There doesn't appear to be any real correlation between the introduction of Instagram and suicide rates for girls. Suicide rates are up, but it's for both boys and girls and the beginning of the increase predated Instagram.
Instagram is an easy target like Video games, TV, Cell Phones, and Internet were before it. But like those things I don't think there's much causation going on.
Johnathan Haight discusses noticable differences in college students (measurable by mental health services) precisely in the years when students who all had cell phones early [in middle school?] started to enter.
Wow, this is such a thoughtful post. I really drummed my fingers thinking of something witty to reply.
About #1: From my childhood experience, this is accurate. Youth fashion magazines and network TV from 7PM to 10PM played and outsized role to influence our (small) world view. However, I find it interesting that as social media has exploded, there is parellel movement to reduce digital post processing on models photographs. It is still a moving target, but the trend is less and less processing of photographs in fashion magazines and adverts. (Note: This "commitment" varies wildly by region!)
About #2: This comment is so deep. I remember reading the novel "Orphan Train" a few years ago, and the author spent considerable time pulling you into the world within which these young people lived. Granted, the events occur about 100 years ago, but they help us the understand the pressures of youth from four generations ago. By the end, you felt like a movie director, peering into their fractured lives. Generally speaking, I think about a "generation" as being 25 years. If we look back 100 years, someone born in 1921, then each 25 years is a new generation. Assuming these people lived in relatively free and prosperous places... I dunno, pick Belgium or Argentina or Australia... each 25 years, children's lives would be hugely different than their parents due to major social advances, improved education, and new media outlets. In my generation, one of the biggest concerns was "peer pressure" and "too much TV or video games". Some of that still exists, but it has morphed more towards bullying (including early-age homophobia and transphobia) and too much Internet / social media. An exciting question: What comes after this generation? Too much AR / VR!?
On an individual level, it makes sense to talk about personal responsibility.
However, if you are looking at a large percentage of people experiencing something, it isn't helpful to just say all those people need personal responsibility. You can point to individual failings when you talk about an individual, but if 75% of people are having individual failings it is symptomatic of something structural.
We're apes that compete for status to attract mates.
There's always going to be some of this kind of thing in everything. I'd accept the concentration of it in social media (TikTok is probably the worst of them) is not healthy, but the issues themselves are independent of the medium of the time imo.
Yes, a nuclear bomb explosion can be bad, but there is a case where someone had a tree knocked down that they were going to have to pay to get cut down, so nuclear bombs can have positive effects!
Just read that 1946 New Yorker article on the first bombing that made HNs front page a week back. This passage is probably the one Zuckerberg would use:
> Over everything—up through the wreckage of the city, in gutters, along the riverbanks, tangled among tiles and tin roofing, climbing on charred tree trunks—was a blanket of fresh, vivid, lush, optimistic green; the verdancy rose even from the foundations of ruined houses. Weeds already hid the ashes, and wild flowers were in bloom among the city’s bones. The bomb had not only left the underground organs of plants intact; it had stimulated them. Everywhere were bluets and Spanish bayonets, goosefoot, morning glories and day lilies, the hairy-fruited bean, purslane and clotbur and sesame and panic grass and feverfew. Especially in a circle at the center, sickle senna grew in extraordinary regeneration, not only standing among the charred remnants of the same plant but pushing up in new places, among bricks and through cracks in the asphalt. It actually seemed as if a load of sickle-senna seed had been dropped along with the bomb.
Never mind that the rest of the article will probably elicit a few spontaneous sobs from an empathetic reader.
This is also disingenuous, since they could've gotten the tree cut down without the nuke and so the nuke has no "exclusive" positive value. Social networks have some positive value that is exclusive to them, like the ability for people to connect with friends as well as diverse groups of strangers - both things that would otherwise be much harder if not impossible for many.
Exclusive to social networks... And restaurants, bars, parks, meetup groups, local events, email lists, chat servers (eg Discord), and generally taking the time to meet your friends and family in person rather than on the web.
It's only "much harder if not impossible" for lack of trying. And while yes, there are some out there that simply don't have such options, we also have people that need to cut down a tree but can't afford the work, and so simply hope it won't fall on their house the next time it gets windy.
Because in reality, all friends and family totally live withing reasonable travel distance of each other and interesting people will always pop into your local bar at the exact time you're there and wear a shirt outlining why you should spend your time trying to meet them as opposed to literally anyone else in the bar.
Email lists and chat servers are just Facebook with extra steps. The only difference ends up being the fact that Facebook-like social networks suggest you people and content you might like from a giant pool, whereas the alternatives have rather limited pools and the signal to noise ratio is pathetic because you get literally everything that is posted and have to filter through it manually.
Don't get me wrong, I hate Facebook and only use it on maybe a handful of occasions per year, but you can't tell me that it didn't enable things that weren't possible for many before it was invented.
Usenet, IRC, Forums all connected friends and diverse groups over the internet before "social media", and IMO they did not have the same negative effects because they did not "gamify" the system with a reward feedback loop like the current social media systems do
None of them had nearly the same reach and discoverability as Facebook does. Good luck finding your childhood friend whose name you barely remember through thousands of web forums with primarily pseudonymous users. Meanwhile, Facebook's recommendation engine will just throw their name at you out of nowhere.
People would have a better chance of finding me via one of my various pseudonym's online than they would by my IRL name.
I do not have any accounts in my real name, and I had no problems finding others via our pseudonym's when I wanted to share them with people in the physical world.
You state that these qualities are exclusive to social networks in the same sentence where you say that other means could be used but are much harder. So… not exclusive?
"Travel to Australia is possible exclusively by plane or boat" is a sentence very few people would have a problem with, although you could also technically and with great effort get there by swimming, blimp or hanging from a million helium baloons and hoping the wind blows the right way.
In all discussions I've heard that mention "exclusive value" or a similar concept, the agreed-upon definition was always something like "where all others are orders of magnitude worse".
It sounds like this is part of the point you're making, but this sort of statement should only be considered a lie. Some philosophers might correctly call this "bullshit," however colloquially it's the same as a lie: it intends to deceive.
Honestly, though, when did 'technically correct' become the baseline for messaging? If you say what's 'technically correct' even if you ignore the entire mountain of steaming horse shit right behind it, you get a pass anymore.
Why? Why is this socially acceptable? Is this different from the past, or are we just more aware of it?
First, it's possible to do worse and be factually incorrect. This was, and still is, common.
Second, it's possible to objective demonstrate whether a factual statement is correct or not. But whether a statement is disingenuous or misleading cannot be proven with the same level of certainty (absent evidence of intent). So bad-faith actors can always guarantee that disputing that contention will end in an "agree to disagree" draw at worst.
They are "bending the truth" which is per definition "to say something that is not true or that misleads people but that is usually not regarded as a serious or harmful lie"...
Sorry for hijacking this thread, but whoever posted this information in an internal message board was keen on finding a method to force the company to act on this. Was it the right thing to do? Yes. Was it meant to be leaked? 100%.
Running a company in today's environment feels very different than 20 years ago, and to make it clear - it's better for the world this way. Any employee - no matter how low or high ranking - has the ability to erase a significant amount of enterprise value from any business, no matter how large or small. This is driven by improved moral standards, but also extreme connectivity that we have in terms of obtaining information internally (slack, notion, google drive and thousands of other software solutions that have increased everyone's access to documents) and sharing it with the outside world (social media, easy access to journalists, readers' interest in holding companies accountable).
I would be surprised if we don't experience some type of a push back from the companies. At the very least, I imagine access to info will be reduced (already happened at Google), and also that we'll increasingly start seeing new ways of how employees are connected with each other (both in terms of policy as well as actual barriers that will prohibit anyone from reaching too many people). I imagine that companies will also start researching new candidates' propensity for activism by analyzing their social media content. For example, if you post "tax the rich!" on Facebook, I imagine that in the not so distant future that will have a negative impact on your market value.
If there's one thing that I've learned, it's that every action triggers a reaction (which is time-delayed in the sense that it arrives late and also overshoots the original target), and the constant yo-yoing between those two forces is what explains much of the irrational behavior in the world.
>I would be surprised if we don't experience some type of a push back from the companies.
One thing could be to hire fewer people. Oddly large software companies is an evergreen topic on HN. Every middle manager wants to empire-build, but if each new hire is a potential leak, then that could be a brake on Google's relentless goal of hitting 1M employees by 2030: https://image.cnbcfm.com/api/v1/image/106318886-157800431271...
I often think of Facebook/Zuckerberg as the perfect example of why having a mission statement (something something connecting all the people) that seems perfectly non-controversial in a vacuum, often leads to a willing delusion that this must mean it's always a good thing and justifies any means.
They reach a point where they're fundamentally unable to honestly ask themselves whether their "good thing" is actually good. I have a fairly respectable social graph on Facebook and Twitter, but far fewer actual friends than I did in the pre-social network days. A row in a database isn't connection, and it isn't good.
It's the investor-profit-driven corporation which is dangerous. There isn't a powerful mission statement that will change the fact that corporations serve their investors above all else and the mission statement is almost entirely meaningless.
That is not entirely true. Amazon was founded on a mission of serving its customers, and the belief that serving customers well is the best way to maximize long-term shareholder value (among other values).
> We believe that a fundamental measure of our success will be the shareholder value we create over the long term. This value will be a direct result of our ability to extend and solidify our current market leadership position.
> The stronger our market leadership, the more powerful our economic model. Market leadership can translate directly to higher revenue, higher profitability, greater capital velocity, and correspondingly stronger returns on invested capital.
> Our decisions have consistently reflected this focus. We first measure ourselves in terms of the metrics most indicative of our market leadership: customer and revenue growth, the degree to which our customers continue to purchase from us on a repeat basis, and the strength of our brand. We have invested and will continue to invest
aggressively to expand and leverage our customer base, brand, and infrastructure as we move to establish an enduring franchise.
> Because of our emphasis on the long term, we may make decisions and weigh tradeoffs differently than some companies. Accordingly, we want to share with you our fundamental management and decision-making
approach so that you, our shareholders, may confirm that it is consistent with your investment philosophy: (...)
You don't have to operate your company in a way that makes your shareholders maximum profit from quarter to quarter. You do have a responsibility to them, but that responsibility can be met by following your mission statement. If you believe your company should only (e.g.) use sustainable energy sources because it's important for the planet, or that you're going to invest for long term growth, not short term profit, you can disclose that to your shareholders and meet your obligations. Company directors have considerable leeway in the way in which they meet their fiduciary responsibilities, and the idea people have that companies "must maximize profit at all cost" is incorrect.
Now, if your company is failing, the stock is falling, products failing in the market, then your shareholders may pressure for a variety of things: a change in mission, direction, the resignation of leaders; or they may buy enough of the company to own enough board seats to take control and out and replace current leadership. But if you're successful at executing on your mission and have investors who are onboard with it, and you're also making money (or growing, which is just as good or better), then you don't need to worry about that.
If your goal does not include making money for shareholders at any point, then you probably shouldn't organize as a for-profit corporation, though.
IMHO, there's nothing inherently wrong with having a mission statement.
The fix here is that you must balance that mission statement with a well-defined set of Values as well. The mission is what you want to accomplish in the world, and the Values are the principles you plan to adhere to while doing so. The values can't just be some afterthought "check the box" exercise - they have to have significant decision-making weight in practice.
A set of (imperfect, I'm sure!) examples from the Wikimedia Foundation:
A mission statement doesn't encode all of human ethics in it, it's just a single sentence. Any mission statement could be bad if taken to the extreme. A super-Facebook that told you the thoughts of every person in real time, a super-Google that could fetch any knowledge, including credit card numbers, etc etc. https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/4ARaTpNX62uaL86j6/the-hidden...
Have a mission statement, just don't go crazy with it.
Michael Hyatt in his "Vision driven leader" book makes a good distinction between vision an mission, which I think is helpful to you. I recommend you read the book, it is right on your avenue.
It's also why he looked like he was taking a shower the whole time. He knew he was lying through his teeth but he had to ensure he used wording that would make his statements technically accurate. I'm guessing he spent a month with his lawyers preparing what words he could and couldn't use in his responses.
there was this absolutely devastating graphic about rising suicide rates of teen girls which coincided with mobiles and especially instagram. Sorry can't find it right now.
thanks for picking up my slack. Another CDC study/poll is shows even worse data than I imagined[1]: e.g. ~8% of high schoolers try to kill themselves every year (I know, sounds unbelievable. Please, everyone, check yourself and correct me if possible). The numbers for girls are higher than for boys but the rises over the years (and the influence through instagram) not necessarily, see the diagrams.
> students who reported having sex with persons of the same sex or with both sexes (30.3%); and students who identified as lesbian, gay, or bisexual (23.4%)
Assuming that most people who have sex with others of the same sex do so because they are gay (rather than e.g. because they are experimenting), this indicates that people who are in denial about being gay are more prone to suicide.
I wonder, though, if body image issues tend to manifest differently in boys and girls. I suspect that we're somewhat better at spotting girls' issues than we are at boys'.
If we're going to correlate, we can do it with with obesity as well.
In 2018 "obesity prevalence was [...] 21.2% among 12- to 19-year-olds." [0] according to the CDC. That's one out of 5 being obese, not overweight. And it has more than tripled since the 70's [1].
And then we start blaming the "evil screens" for people not finding themselves attractive.
this clearly meets the threshold, though. i don't know a single person who has used social media that considers it not-harmful overall, mostly it's a justified use of "i need it for x so i have to put up with the downsides"
it just seems really silly to me to walk into this thread about how Facebook internally believes they're doing harm, and reply to a statement about how the harmed demographic feels they're being harmed, in the context of well-documented ways that harm occurs and what kind of effects it has, with a statement doubting the harm actually exists and questioning the self-reported experience of harm
The long term, creeping effects of medium (not very heavy) air pollution are incredible. They sneak up on you so slowly, few rational people can understand when it begins to affect your health in measurable ways.
People can identify things hurting them, but not always correctly. But people also can blame personal failings on external sources easily as well.
It’s like asking why studies using self-reported survey numbers on penis sizes cannot be treated as the ultimate truth, despite adults surely being able to use a measurement tape or a ruler. There is a reason for why the average numbers on all those studies using self-reported numbers are always at least one standard deviation larger than the average numbers obtained from a study that wasn’t just a self-reported survey.
I find it interesting that Instagram promoting celebrity culture has provoked such a backlash but the Chinese governments attempts to tackle the same on their streaming platforms is seen as misguided.
This is pretty much how something like a JD Power survey works, they find the one thing that you might be number 1 at and promote it - while ignoring anything that could detract. That one thing might be true but it does not change or eliminate other things.
Is it Facebook / Instagram's fault or us as a culture? As a culture we adore beauty, wealth, power...Facebook seems to be just a platform where our natural desires can have a play. Facebook hasn't created this impossible beauty ideal, it was created long long ago by Hollywood and the fashion industry. Facebook just makes it super easy for people to become obsessed with something by "connecting" with it.
It used to be that 40 years ago you watched some supermodel in a commercial for 20 seconds and she was gone. The novelty with the internet is that now you can follow this supermodel and get dozens of alerts a week about her.
If it's not Facebook it's gonna be TikTok or something other platform.
It's their fault. An individual girl in 1995 who was concerned with her looks had at most a couple dozen people in her life to judge her. In 2021 it's hundreds of millions, and a large portion are more than happy to spout things they would NEVER say in real life.
Does society value beauty? Sure. Do models set "unrealistic expectations"? Sure. Are some high school girls assholes to other girls? Absolutely. But once upon a time kids would go home and those people would be gone. Now it's a 24/7 feedback loop and it's completely unhealthy.
> and a large portion are more than happy to spout things they would NEVER say in real life
This is pretty much an internet problem, not a Facebook problem. The things people say to each other on forums or Twitter or Facebook, especially when anonymous (but not always), are quite often horrendous.
Doesn't facebook & co design their service to be addictive, or, erm, "maximize engagement"? The internet is fine, as I see it, it's ad-revenue based social media that's the problem.
It's absurd to absolve a company as wealthy as facebook who optimizes for "engagement" from their externalities on children.
> Doesn't facebook & co design their service to be addictive, or, erm, "maximize engagement"?
Is there something on the internet that isn't designed as such?
Maybe weather apps... Everything else, from wikipedia to github to stackoverflow to the site you're on now is yet another automated massively multiplayer kudo ranking system. The only meaningful difference appears to be demographic; Facebook is one of the places 'teen girls' spend their time. All I see here is evidence that clicks can still be had by ascribing some concern to the fate of young women[1].
Wikipedia, Github and Stackoverflow don't really have a "feed" much less a opaque, hidden algorithm to induce addictive behavior behind the feed. They don't press you into the app and then send you frequent push notifications.
Gamification is benign compared to an interactive news feed developed to drive ad sales. I find pointing at especially wikipedia, but also github as being designed to maximize engagement comparable to social networks as silly. Neither has much to gain from having addicted users, the same can't be said for facebook, IG, or Reddit.
> Wikipedia, Github and Stackoverflow don't really have a "feed"
All three have various feed mechanisms. They all have various ranking systems. Every one of them have people employed (even if mere 'volunteers') to 'maximize engagement.' And every one of these systems have people obsessed with their profile. Every. Single. One.
They're just mostly not 'teen girls' and so the 'problem' makes for poor headline material.
"especially wikipedia"
Wikipedia is rife with obsessed 'editors' climbing the rungs of the interweb status ladder. They're easy to find. Look at their profile pages; filled with achievement badges (gamification) and vast profiles of their lives. Does Facebook have 'campaigns' for 'elections' that grant power on the platform? I honestly don't know because I spend no time there, but I know Wikipedia does, and we can only imagine the anxiety involved for these 'candidates.' Thankfully though, they're mostly not 'teen girls' so we're not going to worry about them.
I think this is just a red herring for the main discussion here. Of course that example is also terrible! Just because this discussion is about Instagram doesn’t mean we don’t care about anything else.
Speaking to your point more directly, the massive, massive difference is the primary user of Instagram and typical social media vs the primary user of these other platforms. The primary user of Instagram is shown addictive feeds non-stop. It’s really not possible or enjoyable to use Instagram without interacting with designs deliberately and literally trying to get you addicted to the platform. This isn’t true for something like Wikipedia or Stack Overflow. The primary user is going to come across a few articles now and then or search something. But they are rarely going to be interacting with an algorithm or design trying to get you addicted for hours a day.
Think about it like gambling. The only way to use Instagram or Tiktok or Facebook or anything like that is by pulling the lever on a slot machine, trying to get a dopamine hit.
The inherent design and purpose of social media platforms is to addict people so they spend as much time on the platform as possible, and then show them ads. That’s not true for Wikipedia or stack overflow. Those examples are more about policies that encourage toxic behavior or just crappy people on the internet, not a critique of the inherent platform design.
I agree with the points made here but if addiction or useless products is the problem we will have to disallow Netflix to teenagers and gaming as well. It's not clear to me we as a society are capable of doing that. Not only that, probably the whole pop culture and increased individualism is contributing to increased unhappiness. Facebook is just a symptom of a disease in our culture. Dismantling Facebook will do very little to help kids I think.
I actually think the Chinese got it right (banning gaming to teenagers above 3 hours per week or something like that), but we don't operate like that.
We've had subscription media for a while now and it's shown that that business model has it's glaring weaknesses as well, especially when it comes to ideological pandering
True, and the cat can't be put back in the bag, so it's up to the collective "us", who build the Internet, to rediscover our moral imperative to fix what's broken... and Facebook is a huge chunk of this brokenness.
I personally deleted my account but what is it about Facebook that is worse than say Twitter (also deleted) ? Twitter was a big bag of toxicity. Not saying it wasn't interested, tons of interesting people to follow; but the discussions were often rude, racist and hateful. And it poses the same problem of teens following supermodels and what not.
What I'm saying is this is about social media in general, not about Facebook which just happens to be the (currently) number 1 platform.
That is not what the data researchers currently employed by Facebook said, if you read the article.
"They came to the conclusion that some of the problems were specific to Instagram, and not social media more broadly. That is especially true concerning so-called social comparison, which is when people assess their own value in relation to the attractiveness, wealth and success of others."
"'Social comparison is worse on Instagram,' states Facebook's deep dive into teen girl body-image issues in 2020, noting that TikTok, a short-video app, is grounded in performance, while users on Snapchat, a rival photo and video-sharing app, are sheltered by jokey filters that 'keep the focus on the face.' In contrast, Instagram focuses heavily on the body and lifestyle."
So I suspect that their understanding of the problem is better than yours, and that there is something about Instagram that makes it worse than generic social media.
The more basic issue seems to be that (many) people are toxic. If not always, to everyone, at least some of the time, towards some other people.
The problem with social media, then, is that it allows -- indeed encourages, because "engagement" -- all that toxicity to spread so much more widely and rapidly than ever before.
You're assuming people have morals to appeal to - most don't. When everyone is connected to everyone else the asshole always prevail. The solution is to sever the connections.
As individuals, maybe, but as a society I have a hard time seeing proof when there is normalized wage slavery, the animal industrial complex, and any industry with money or power is deeply corrupted.
Right now we have a large percentage of people that refuse to get a vaccine to protect their neighbors.
I don't know many such morally-absent folks. Perhaps the perverse incentives in our system mean a bunch of CEOs are quite sociopathic, but on the whole, people seem rather good intentioned to me. The internet certainly serves as a platform for many that would be otherwise shunned IRL, but I don't think they're the general majority...just the majority that decide to voice their opinions. The rest aren't even paying attention - only a small fraction of people have a Twitter account, for example.
Even reddit, which can be anonymous, is filled with good discourse, assuming you avoid certain subreddits, and sort by top. Moderation goes a long way to mimicking our more natural IRL tendencies to turn down the assholes. Twitter and Instagram generally lack those tools, so the assholes can be louder and _seem_ more prominent than they are.
This is true but the companies choose how to build and operate these spaces, which includes things like moderation and what they promote. Part of what makes Facebook important here is that they’ve put so much effort into taking over people’s socialization everywhere with an emphasis on being where your friends and family are. The more toxic parts of the Internet used to be different places you had to seek out.
Given how profitable that’s been it seems reasonable to expect them to be involved in fixing it.
Facebook is the business that enables this problem on their platform. This problem could disappear overnight if Facebook decided to moderate their platform. Facebook chooses profitability over a safe platform for their users. This is where regulatory bodies should step in.
And yes we need regulatory help. Tens of millions in this country are experiencing mental health issues as a result of these platforms. When we understood that other industries were causing a health crisis we regulated them, the same needs to occur here.
Note. I don't know what the regulatory solution should be, but we should be having that discussion.
> It's their fault. An individual girl in 1995 who was concerned with her looks had at most a couple dozen people in her life to judge her. In 2021 it's hundreds of millions, and a large portion are more than happy to spout things they would NEVER say in real life.
I agree with the 2nd part of your comment. But this part is just dishonest, and sounds like a startup pitch about addressable market. Do you honestly believe that each teen girl is being followed by hundreds of millions, who comment on every single photo of her? Almost everyone still lives in their social bubbles, and yes, it's easier to to communicate and say mean things to each other (totally 24/7 feedback loop), but they almost exclusively come from people you know, not hundreds of millions of internet randos.
While that is true, many people (especially teenagers) curate their Instagram page as if they had tons of followers.
That doesn't come with the downsides that actually having many followers does (hateful comments, etc.), but it certainly fosters a stressful mindset where every posts success is closely monitored and the content is carefully chosen to achieve as much growth as possible.
Good point, it got me thinking about what a young person (or someone who has yet to make an impact in society) might obsess over on Instagram. Changed my mind about why this matters to people in my demographic.
Yeah, but people have a certain level of disconnect with the models, athletes, actors, and superstars you see on TV and in magazines. Facebook brings that to the next level by encouraging that sort of content from people who you can actually relate to and feeds it to you around the clock. IG is especially bad about this.
And that's just some of the content. The algorithm is also just as happy to feed you a continuous stream of outraging, extremist "punditry", manufactured drama, fake "crafting" videos, conspiracies, and paranoid, depressing "news" - anything to keep you engaged.
> Yeah, but people have a certain level of disconnect with the models, athletes, actors, and superstars you see on TV and in magazines.
I'm not really sure about it. When highschool girls wore the same clothes the Spice Girls wore, had the same haircut they had and replicated their dances, for me that's a lot of connection.
I'm sure Facebook/Instagram have a lot to be blamed for but we (not just young girls; parents, teachers, etc) need to be responsible of our actions to some degree.
The judging of other people towards these girls isn't nearly as toxic as them having a poor body image because of all the beautiful people they see online.
Those girls in 1995 got their media fix through magazines geared at women and teenaged girls, where they'd find an impossibly thin model on every other page. The Kardashians wouldn't have been well-received in the 90s, because all of them would have been considered fat by those standards.
>Yes, but on flipside said girl now can and fully expects to be courted by best boys well outside of 1995 logistic reach.
I honestly can't tell if you're joking or not, but study after study has shown that dating was far more mentally healthy in 1995 than it is today. Online dating falls into almost the exact same category of causing anxiety and making it more difficult for younger generations to form meaningful relationships - just like instagram and facebook.
I think GP is conflating an issue with online dating and the psychology of beauty. Basically, men in online dating on average get very low numbers of matches while women on average get a ton. It's a numbers game, the apps know it, and that's why they have upgrades to buy visibility etc...
It's a genuine problem, in that it is fully exploitative of men, but not related to this imo.
Please reflect on the circumstances in your life that lead you to this belief. In my experience this is a very toxic viewpoint and couldn't be further from the truth.
If anything I'd argue that more than ever both women and men are searching for authenticity in a partner. Something increasingly difficult to come by in our social media fueled world.
Sure, there is a subset on both sides that has been completely sucked in by this culture and measures each others worth by the number of followers on their instagram, but I'd actually view this as a positive. It's really convenient to be able to identify and filter out these vain individuals early on in the dating process.
Keep your head up nodejs_rulez_1, there are still plenty of good women and men out there.
You say this like it's some kind of benefit to the girl in question... IMO seems far more likely to lead to increased harassment and negative outcomes, rather than being a positive.
Also for all of the women I've seen flown out from Alabama, Mississippi, etc to NY, LA & Miami by the more affluent men in my social circles, I haven't seen a single long term relationship develop out of it. The wider net isn't leading to better outcomes.
The evolutionary explanations for such are not hard to come up with just with a bit of thought, and not hard to confirm in the literature either. Which also means the species isn't about to stop admiring those things any time soon.
Which means, rather than the "boil the ocean, then boil it a few more times again" plan of trying to somehow "fix" the species not to admire those things, one needs to pursue a plan of figuring out how to live within the existing constraints.
Which takes you right back to old idea of one's rationality being a small human trying to corral the crazy elephant that it is riding to go where we want it to go. The trick is to learn how to prevent the crazy elephant from even seeing the undesirable stimuli, rather than trying to deal with what happens if it does after the fact.
Unfortunately, explaining that to teenagers is a tough sell, especially when the alternative is tuning you out and going back to the highly-addictive social media.... even explaining it to adults can be a tough sell.
Extremist conduct keeps people engaged longer, so they see more ads.
Facebook/YouTube/Twitter all exploit the dark side of human nature. They've been doing it for so many years, that it's difficult to imagine that it's unintentional.
>in Google’s effort to keep people on its video platform as long as possible, “its algorithm seems to have concluded that people are drawn to content that is more extreme than what they started with—or to incendiary content in general,” and adds, “It is also possible that YouTube’s recommender algorithm has a bias toward inflammatory content.”
These companies are always going to want to hold our attention but it's us at the end of the day who decide to give them our attention. I think as a society we need to prove that we are smarter than these companies and are capable of discipline and self-control.
In corporate america, it's hard for me to see any private owned corporation doing what's in best interest for the public versus their own pockets.
> I think as a society we need to prove that we are smarter than these companies and are capable of discipline and self-control.
Kind of like how we said that the answer to alcohol & tobacco was to show self-control, not restrict sales and advertising? Expecting people to go one on one against enormous companies’ profit motives is a recipe for failures.
Or walk into a casino and look at the people pouring their savings into addictive slot machines. It's kind of eerie how modern slot machines actually appear to be converging with mobile games in many ways.
Expecting draconian regulations on social media to work is a recipe for failure. How many billions wasted on the war on drugs? People are always going to want to view extremist content, see beautiful people that cause body image issues, etc.
If people didn't want to see it, they wouldn't click on it. Banning it or regulating it is not going to change that, it's just going to cause it to shift elsewhere. It's human nature.
> Expecting draconian regulations on social media to work is a recipe for failure.
Regulations come in flavors other than draconian. Do you have a specific policy proposal which you're referring to? Otherwise it seems somewhat disingenuous to predict the failure of something which we don't even have enough detail to discuss.
War on drugs is not an appropriate analogy here. A better analogy would be a known addictive, but legal, product being subject to tighter regulation to reduce its overall appeal and social harm--e.g. tobacco.
Except that this is not alcohol or tobacco, this is a digitized version of a free attention grabbing tabloid customized to the person's "interests" is always available to view at their desire. To me this makes it difficult to regulate as it's not purely based on the amount of consumption, it's based on the content you consume.
No, it's not the same as a physical product but there's a growing body of research, supported by some of Facebook's internal commentary, suggesting that it has similarly addictive characteristics, which is why I made that comparison. The point, again, is simple: most people recognize that it will not be optimal to tell everyone that it's their job to ignore a billion-dollar promotional system run by a company which makes more money if they get addicted.
There are some things which you could try regulating: for example, a lot of what drives the dubious aspects comes back to algorithmic promotion maximizing time on site and advertising views. Legislators could ban algorithmic promotion for children, require companies to identify and curb addictive levels of consumption, or require companies to put more effort into moderation on the posts & comments which they promote.
Similarly, I believe at least some countries are exploring requirements to clearly indicate photos which have been modified or retouched.
There are quite a few things to think about here:
1) When do we agree science has actually reached a conclusion about something? Facebook is quite a new phenomenon. Social studies research is notoriously difficult to replicate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis
While it's pretty clear social media has drawbacks, I am not convinced they are materially worse for kids than Netflix or pop culture.
2) Why do we only think about the kids? If we say that social media is more harmful than good - why not ban it altogether? There's this sense that after 18 years old we are all responsible autonomous creatures worthy of maximum freedom but I think that's not based on anything.
3) What happens if we decide to hold everything in our lives to the same yardstick of how good it is to our mental health? I mean social media shouldn't be the exception right? Is watching a violent sadistic show like Games of Thrones good for our mental health? Or watching T.V in general for more than 1 hour a day? How about using Twitter? Or the internet in general? Owning a smartphone? Looking at your smartphone for more than 30 minutes a day? The list of things in our modern lives that have a questionable effect on our mental well-being is enormous.
Cigarettes aren't highly regulated because they are addictive, they are regulated because they literally rot and kill your internal organs.
"Some people feel bad about their bodies after viewing social media" doesn't nearly meet the threshold of measurable harm that tobacco does. And algorithmic promotion can be positive, unlike the universally health-corrosive effects of cigarettes.
That's not the relevant part of the comparison: the point we were talking about is that there are plenty of examples of things where society uses regulation rather than expecting most individuals to make good choices all of the time.
Where the impact of cigarettes is relevant is in the discussion of how _strong_ a particular regulation should be. A deadly threat certainly warrants stricter rules than something minor, just as we do not enforce zoning violations with the death penalty.
If there's a specific policy proposal you could talk about whether you think it'd be effective or overkill but instead you appear to be arguing that there's no need to even consider the range of policy options.
I agree that content consumed by facebook/instagram can be addictive. But I don't think this is unique to them, I think youtube (my personal weakness), netflix, television, video-games and movies all fall into this category. The particular problem with instagram is that it encourages people to post the "highlights" of their life. Therefore people end up consuming a super un-real version of what life is and end up depressed when they compare it to their own. This issue is not a problem of an algorithm or moderation but of one's personal expectations.
There are tons of great examples where algorithmic feed is useful, particularly when your feed is related to activities such as cooking, music and exercise.
In theory I think the concept of forcing the companies to behave a certain way is ideal but I'm still unsure of what type of legislation could be put in place to address the problem in the article.
Yes, I don't think anyone is saying that this is unique to Facebook — they just get the most attention by virtue of popularity and profitability, and having lied about what they knew and when in various related areas. Ignoring the question of the exact effects of all of the political use of social media in the previous decade, that simply happening to the degree it did guaranteed that they'd get a lot more scrutiny.
I definitely agree that there isn't a proven solution for this problem — that's normal for major technological changes. We saw the same thing with printed books, magazines, and newspapers; radio; TV; the internet; etc. — not to mention things like cars which weren't communications technologies but definitely had major impacts on society. I think the best thing we can get right now is more of the data companies like Facebook and Google tend to avoid sharing, especially after various governments experiment with rules and it becomes possible to see what does and doesn't work.
> as a society we need to prove that we are smarter than these companies ...
I agree that this is a test of our society.
> ... and are capable of discipline and self-control
These organizations have enormous resources dedicated to exploiting our frailties and overcoming an individual's discipline and self-control. One option is to continue to expect every man, woman, and child to fight this battle alone in their own head every day.
But we'd probably achieve better results more efficiently by organizing ourselves as well. Then we can combat it collectively as a community and a society like we have done for other human frailties. This would mean things like education, societal pressure, and regulation.
Yes I agree that it's difficult for us to fight individually. I believe we should start informing children about the dangers of the internet once they begin to consume customized feed-based content. I believe parents also have the right to (and should to a certain extent) regulate consumption of their kid's digital media.
>These companies are always going to want to hold our attention but it's us at the end of the day who decide to give them our attention.
These companies are already amplifying content they think will hold our attention, by leaning into people's worst instincts.
>In the fall of 2018, Jonah Peretti, chief executive of online publisher BuzzFeed, emailed a top official at Facebook Inc. The most divisive content that publishers produced was going viral on the platform, he said, creating an incentive to produce more of it.
Mr. Peretti blamed a major overhaul Facebook had given to its News Feed algorithm earlier that year to boost “meaningful social interactions,” or MSI, between friends and family, according to internal Facebook documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal that quote the email.
> I think as a society we need to prove that we are smarter than these companies and are capable of discipline and self-control.
I think it's a losing game.
For as long as big social is allowed to be “free” with its paying customers being advertisers, it will keep benefitting from trolling and other unhealthy behaviours (narcissism?) that happen to drive up engagement and ad revenue. With user lock-in, full control over UI and algorithms at its disposal, big social has way too many tricks up its sleeve for your average tired-after-work-or-school, running-out-of-willpower, vulnerable user to consciously compensate for.
Normalising paid social (forcing interoperability, downgrading platforms to pipes) is probably the most straightforward way for us to finally gain the ability to vote with our wallet and to choose client software crafted with our needs in mind. (I’m not a proponent of regulation bloat or special rules for select big companies; I think a small but strategically focused general requirement could be enough for such a change to happen.)
If you read the original article, Facebook employees felt, based on their research, that Instagram was worse for teenage girls than Snapchat or Tik-Tok.
"They came to the conclusion that some of the problems were specific to Instagram, and not social media more broadly. That is especially true concerning so-called social comparison, which is when people assess their own value in relation to the attractiveness, wealth and success of others."
"'Social comparison is worse on Instagram,' states Facebook's deep dive into teen girl body-image issues in 2020, noting that TikTok, a short-video app, is grounded in performance, while users on Snapchat, a rival photo and video-sharing app, are sheltered by jokey filters that 'keep the focus on the face.' In contrast, Instagram focuses heavily on the body and lifestyle."
So maybe they understand the dangers of Instagram better than you do?
Where are they? Making salaries beyond most people’s imaginations. And many honestly believe that “just” enabling communication and engagement can’t be a bad thing.
I think it's equivalent to the tobacco industry. They didn't invent smoking tobacco but they built it into an industry. Once they were aware of the health effects of smoking was it their fault that they suppressed this information and continued to market their products to more people, including children?
I think this is exactly what should and will happen to social media. We, as a culture, did very well without social media for millenia. The internet was fine without it too.
I think it’s obviously a mix, however, an algorithm that maximizes purely for attention or time on site causes a lot of issues.
Sometimes people are seeking something that is beneficial, and maximizing that is fine. Lots more times, people are mostly responding to angry posts, or falling down a conspiracy rabbit hole that they cannot critically think their way out of. Maximizing the attention of those people is clearly negative.
So does society share some blame? Sure. Does an algorithm that maximizes some people into very bad places share some blame? Absolutely.
I've never really believed it was Hollywood or the fashion industry that created it. People know who's attractive in their circle. You compete with them. The magazines and ads have upped the ante, and facebook turned it into an addiction, but the mechanism was there all along, I think.
The mechanism are also there to prefer sugar and fat to healthier food, to become addicted to nicotine and opiates, and to do many other self-harming things.
That doesn't mean giant corporations should allowed to exploit these mechanisms for profit.
Do we take the approach we take with opiates, and ban companies from allowing users to upload images?
Or do we take the approach we take with nicotine, and force companies to disclose the possible harms that can come from social interactions online?
Or is there another approach you'd propose?
Hopefully this doesn't come across too confrontational - I genuinely am curious as to what solutions are viable, and I do recognize the harm social media can cause. But it seems to me that as long as there exists any platform where we can freely post photos, we'll have toxic comparisons, and I don't see more education changing this - I don't think it's a rational choice that we make, to choose to compare ourselves to others.
> it was created long long ago by Hollywood and the fashion industry.
It was created much longer ago than that. We've had beauty standards for as long as humans have created art, and probably for as long as humans have existed. It's probably biological to a large degree, although the manifestation has changed over time. As with many of social media's deleterious effects, they hijack, amplify, and distort our natural inclinations for their own purposes.
> they hijack, amplify, and distort our natural inclinations for their own purposes
Ironically it seems a totalitarian country like China is better equipped to deal with these things (see how they simply banned teens from gaming lately).
The liberal democracies number one value is individual freedom; well it works out great most of the time but other times we are not that great ourselves in handling our lives and using our time constructively. Some of us get bored, addicted and obsessed under certain circumstances and I don't actually see an easy solution for that.
Maybe social media should be age restricted like porn?
Yes I think the "social platforms in general" part is key. It's hard to imagine what a social platform would look like that wasn't harmful in this way. Maybe chat apps I suppose, since 1-on-1 interaction is less of a popularity contest.
But anyway, I think the reason that facebook is aware of the problem but doing nothing is not that they are cynically exploiting people, and it's rather that they don't know how to solve it.
Is it as good at amplifying goodwill towards friends and neighbors as it is at amplifying negative sentiments?
I don't think the former scales, whereas the latter lends itself to amplification. Authenticity and community require much more complexity to uphold than anger, anxiety, and resentment.
I do take your point, and think that un-nuanced conversations about the evils of Social Media are unhelpful, but I think the scaling problem is the real danger. Negativity scales globally, positive sentiment and experience is limited to the individual or local level.
> Is it as good at amplifying goodwill towards friends and neighbors as it is at amplifying negative sentiments?
Probably, but because of salience asymmetry, we don't realise it. Like the good stuff is often more local as you say, and more distributed, while the bad stuff makes the news.
Yes with that I agree. But we are already toxic, let's not blame Facebook for all our problems. And I just don't see how Twitter, TikTok or anything similar is better; maybe we should just say teens can't be on social media ? Unlikely to pass.
Not all algorithms are created equal. TikTok's for instance seems to be biased to make weirdos find their niche, as opposed to the more binary steamrollers coming from Silicon Valley's monoculture.
> If it's not Facebook it's gonna be TikTok or something other platform.
You are right that there will always be a different “drug” that exposes the same underlying societal issues. But given that FB+Insta are /algorithmically/ pushing these posts to users to increase engagement, it is their problem too.
Every company will push whatever it needs to maximize user attention.They are all out there selling ads to make money, I don't think the other players are different than Facebook.
You’re probably confused because you’re speaking quite generally, while most of us here are commenting after reading the article:
> “They came to the conclusion that some of the problems were specific to Instagram, and not social media more broadly. That is especially true concerning so-called social comparison, which is when people assess their own value in relation to the attractiveness, wealth and success of others."
"'Social comparison is worse on Instagram,' states Facebook's deep dive into teen girl body-image issues in 2020, noting that TikTok, a short-video app, is grounded in performance, while users on Snapchat, a rival photo and video-sharing app, are sheltered by jokey filters that 'keep the focus on the face.' In contrast, Instagram focuses heavily on the body and lifestyle."
You can often get past a paywall by plugging the URL to the paywalled article into the wayback machine. In fact, the top comment (at least in my HN reader) is just an archive link to the article.
I kinda agree maybe this can be better regulated but if someone decides to follow Beyonce or Lady Gaga (sorry I'm not really up to date with pop stars) or some supermodel, how are you gonna prevent that?
As for algorithm ranking, I suppose 40 years ago it was a "human algorithm" reaching the conclusion that you better have hot chicks drinking coke on commercials, how is that different?
I'm just going to assume you are not a teen girl. And I'm certainly not one so we can just pull things out of our asses. But I don't think that the issue is the pop star or super model any more. It's the influencers and the idea that "anyone" can be top dog now. This means that you have young regular girls following other young "regular" girls. And if you do what they do, use the same products, be as charismatic then you too can be an influencer. Maybe not a global one but at your school. So suddenly you have young girls that "expose" themselves publically for their 62 followers and pretending to be a influencer. Which makes you a very large target for bullying and "harsh truths" that will end your "influencer career" and at the same time that sliver of self esteem that a teenager normally has. And this is 100% caused by having a platform that is "democratic" and allows everyone to "compete for likes on equal terms".
The difference is that Instagram/etc inundate you with nonstop algorithmically “related” posts from every supermodel, not just the ones you chose to follow.
Following a or b is not the problem. Ranking is. As you mentioned, it was already a problem in the times of simple broadcasting, it became an even bigger problem now. Our massive servers will go brrrrr serving algorithms all over the world much faster than we can dream about interveening. The Rohingya crisis stands as a terrifying example.
In the 80's people insisted that fashion magazines and beauty pageants were "toxic" for teen girls, for the exact same reasons. Apparently acknowledging that beauty exists is harmful to some people's mental health. Since it's unlikely that we're ever going to convince everybody that there's no such thing as physical beauty, maybe we'd be better off working out ways to help people come to terms with not being at the pinnacle of it while still accepting that there can be and is such a pinnacle.
To me, it's obvious that "social" media is extreamly bad for people, and specially extra bad for young people who compare themselves with others a lot.
If we figured too much TV was bad for people, "social" media is 100 times worse. How is it even possible to still feel good about yourself after spending time there? I don't use any of these services because I see them as obviously bad for our mental health.
It might indeed be harmful for teens, or lets say overall unhelpful to them.but there are many examples where Facebook provides useful information, helps people stay in touch with family and friends or even date.
I agree that we need to hold ourselves responsible for our actions. If it's not going to be facebook capitalizing on our behavior, it will be some other company. From the article it seems that most teens are aware that they have an unhealthy relationship with instagram. Tackling this issue in a sustainable way is something I believe most teens are capable of this with the right guidance.
Morally I agree with you but the pessimist in me thinks that is unrealistic. I believe facebook is primarily motivated by their earnings. If an unhealthy behavior with instagram leads to more engagement, which means more ad sales, why would facebook interfere dramatically with that recipe? I won't be surprsied if they already A/B tested more "healthy" types of content with their feed and recognized it lead to a dip in engagement.
> If we should hold ourselves responsible, so should companies.
Why "should" FB do so? It is doing the "right thing" for its stake holders. Of course, Ideally they should, but realistically not going to happen.
It is us who need to protect our families because we are incentivized to do so. We have failed in protecting our own interests.
It is no different from the drug dealers in our town, we warn our children of the dangers, take steps within our means to reduce our children's interactions, etc.
Social media is neither good nor bad. It is a tool for communication.
Most users benefit from social media and you can't condemn them for not questioning other aspects.
Nevertheless, it is essential to question the intentions and procedures of the company behind it. I believe that external observers and institutions are required for this to happen and to spread awareness of things running afoul.
However, like so many things, software can be used for good, as well as for evil purposes. The difficult task is to define that boundary without compromising the utility for most users.
Related topics: Games, app stores, default browsers, etc.... How far does the state have to intervene? How much responsible behaviour can be expected from the user themselves?
What evidence supports this? The story is about evidence that this is in fact not true.
The software we are talking about is not dropped from the heavens. It is created by extremely large, powerful companies in pursuit of profit. If this software harms people, these companies are not neutral actors merely swept along with the tide of technology.
> How far does the state have to intervene? How much responsible behaviour can be expected from the user themselves?
Surely the most relevant question is how much responsible behavior can be expected from the companies themselves? They are the ones armed with research departments actually studying the effects of how their software affects people.
There are quotes from internal research in the article that Instagram is worse than the alternatives like tiktok. And internal researchers are quoted as saying that this research gets internal pushback because it’s standing between people and their bonuses. Those bonuses aren’t for letting culture play out; they’re for things that wouldn’t have happened otherwise. It seems super clear that it’s an Instagram problem.
A great example is the girl who searched for exercise tips once and then her feed was algorithmically focused on weight loss tips and the like afterwards, which is not a cultural issue.
It would be VERY different if Facebook was not a free, ad-driven service where their sole optimization is engagement. If Facebook was a subscription service where users had 'timelines' (remember that Facebook era?), we would not be seeing the psychological phenomenon we see to this magnitude. Same for Twitter, Insta, TikTok, etc.
Most issues are human issues. Just because it is a human issue does not make it alright to exploit it at scale with such invasiveness. Especially since they know that is it harmful. Sounds like cigarettes marketed to children. It's not a cigarette company issue it's a human issue after all! We are not liable.
>Is it Facebook / Instagram's fault or us as a culture? As a culture we adore beauty, wealth, power...Facebook seems to be just a platform where our natural desires can have a play
Yes it is Facebook's or Instagram's fault. We are endowed with our natural desires (which are even more fundamentally biological than cultural in this case), that we have no choice over, but we have the choice to remove bad technologies from our societies.
This is in fact the only choice we have. You can't cure people of their desire for power or beauty, but you can destroy the tools that amplify the worst instincts we have.
Going back to the similarity between Facebook and the tobacco industry that the article points out, you could make the case that Phillip Morris is not to blame because people are naturally prone to nicotine addiction. I hope that at some point we as a society figure out that unregulated social media has the same damaging potential as tobacco, alcohol or gambling, especially for kids.
> As a culture we adore beauty, wealth, power
To be fair, humanity has adored these three traits throughout history. This adoration is somewhat built into us naturally. Our current culture certainly amplifies and capitalizes on it. Facebook is a big player within the current culture.
Humans are easily addicted. It seems tantamount to selling drugs that are harmful to the minds of children. It is debatable about whether or not selling those drugs to adults is ok, but I'm not sure many people would be OK with selling them to children.
It used to be that if you were queer - in any sense of the word - and lived in one of the countless small, conservative, traditional communities in this country, you were shit out of luck.
Now, thanks to the internet, there exists inclusive and positive communities for people of every type of background and experience. This simply did not exist for most people just a few decades ago, but now it's accessible to almost every young person in the country.
I don't mind bashing the bad about social media and the internet, but I am kind of sick of people overlooking the good.
This seems to be a common misdirection seen with defending Facebook. (Not to mention other Big Tech companies.)
Facebook == "the internet"
Facebook proponents, including public statements from the company, attribute the benefits we enjoy from the internet to Facebook.
Criticism of Facebook == criticism of "the internet"
It follows that any threat to Facebook is a threat to the internet.
Threat to Facebook == threat to "the internet"
Its quite sneaky.
EDIT: One insidious implication is to create or reinforce a false belief that we cant derive any benefits from the internet unless we support Big Tech and their mass-scale, popularity-driven, advertising-based "business model". This helps Big Tech to stifle competition and new and/or different ideas not under their control.
The internet isnt the web, nor is the web a small collection of popular websites, or a small collection of popular web browsers.
I think you are reading too much into the exact wording of the OP's comment. You can replace "the internet" with "social media" or even "Facebook" and it still makes sense. Internet platforms for communicating with others (the use case that is being described in the OP) is literally the definition of social media.
For many people though, Facebook IS the Internet. Especially for those who don't own a computer and most of their online usage is done through the mobile version of FB.
It used to be that if you were queer - in any sense of
the word - and lived in one of the countless small,
conservative, traditional communities in this country,
you were shit out of luck.
As bad as that was, in the past you could move to another of the 380,000 towns on this planet.
Today, if your social media trail renders you unemployable (or the target of persecution) there's no longer any corner of the planet to which you can escape.
Edit: People seem to be misinterpreting my meaning entirely. By 'unemployable' I was thinking of, for example, racy photos. By 'persecution' I mean actual IRL stalking/assault etc. The kind of example I had in mind was, say, a racy photo from Pride Parade following someone around for the rest of their living days, preventing them from working at certain lawfirms, or attracting the attention of some violent psycho.
> As bad as that was, in the past you could move to another of the 380,000 towns on this planet.
1. That assumes you have the money to move, can land in a new city and find housing, and then find a job. Pre-internet this was absolutely nontrivial.
2. It's not 380,000 towns on this planet, in the 80's/90's it was just a handful of cities that were more evolved, like San Francisco or P Town. There's a reason those cities are so LGBTQ heavy.
I just want to point out that people moved without any money back in the day.
Now we play it safe. We save money. We find an apartment, a job and then we move. We live comfortably now and we don't want to lose that when moving. You can even see it today with people from certain parts of the world. They leave with nothing else than maybe a 20 dollar phone hoping they'll be able to call their family once they get somewhere.
I gave an example of how some people move to another country with only a 20 dollar phone. I could've said with 20 dollars in their pockets or with a couple t-shirts in a bag.
You're supposed to be smart people and...nevermind, I deleted what I wrote because it's not worth it. It's increasingly difficult to talk to leftists on the internet, they take the most meaningless comment as an attack or a literal fact and they they try to downvote you or argue stupid things. Not worth my time.
(1) is true, but I was thinking more about the persecution aspect than the community aspect. If being gay made life unbearable in a particular town, it was at least physically possible, if expensive, for a person to cross state-lines and start life fresh. Today people leave a trail that follows them globally and for a lifetime.
In terms of community, (2) is a little more bleak than the reality. I'm guessing in the 1980s, most college towns had at least a gay bar (or cafe, bookshop, whatever), and community formed around it.
I don't know about your (2) argument. There's a lot of college towns even today that don't have gay bars. I've lived in Boulder, CO (CU Boulder) and Athens, GA (UGA) and neither really have a gay bar.
I don't have any statistics, but there may well be fewer brick-and-mortar gay hang-outs today, precisely because the internet has given people other ways to meet.
I'll settle at more than your 'major metros' and fewer than my 'most college towns' — although now that I think those two numbers over, it's probably not that large a delta to begin with ;)
To be totally fair I never said "handful of cities", but instead "major metros". My point is that the presence of a college is not a good predictor for the presence of a gay bar. It's very much a large metro thing.
AND queer people have always struggled to gain access to workplaces. Even today income lags & opportunities are hindered by bias
The history of drag balls and specially the category of business executive is a great example of how the only access to so many professions was performative art and impersonation (& still is especially for POC, non normative gender, trans etc)
Humiliation, bullying, shame, abuse.... these things have been inflicted upon millions of young people generation after generation just because they didn't fit a very narrow mold.
But you want me to shed a tear for who exactly? People who wrote hateful things and chose to share them with the public? Those are the very people dishing out the humiliation and shame and abuse. I for one am very happy that those behaviors are no longer tolerated like they were for so many generations.
I'll be honest: on first read, I did feel like there was some submarine equivalency going on in that post. (I don't think that having read your follow-ups.)
People you care about will regularly experience this, if it hasn't happened already. You'll be shocked and depressed when you discover who is doling out the shame and abuse, you will not recognize who you thought they were, and you will discover that if you stand up for them, you will also become a target.
I find it bewildering and worrisome, the way people think that this little monster won't grow and will stay on their leash.
I find it confusing that people fail to to see the obvious switcharoo. It used to be unacceptable to be queer, non-white, non-Christian, non-male and it was OK to mock people for those traits. Now, it's all backwards, and it's OK to be queer, non-white, non-Christian etc. What is no longer OK is mocking people for these traits.
So, now the people who are getting the pointy end of the stick are the people who used to do the poking. I for one prefer the new paradigm to the old.
The anti-cancel-culture people make it sound like they are being horribly oppressed. But for what? The color of their skin? Their gender or sexuality? No, simply for the dumb words they insist on uttering. Say what you what, when you want, to whomever you want, but don't tell me you realistically expect there to be no consequences.
People do mock other people for being Christian or for a political belief. Nothing has changed but the bullies are now using the power of social media and the press to amply that bullying. The bullying continues to employers or schools, groups, friends.
It's certainly not the same as it ever was. I think you're missing the distinction between "punching up" and "punching down". Punching up - taking aim at dominant power structures - is a necessary part of social advancement. Punching down is just cruel. Punching down used to be encouraged and celebrated, now it isn't, and some people are mad that they can't get away with it any longer.
> The anti-cancel-culture people make it sound like they are being horribly oppressed. But for what? The color of their skin?
At work last week, our "diversity and equity" team announced that our company is "obviously" not diverse enough.
This is a company in the US with employees across North America and Europe, with some employees in South America, Australia, India, and even Africa, and not just South Africa, either.
The company does have more employees in Europe and North America than elsewhere, and those employees share one thing in common: skin color. They do not share a nationality, a language, a cuisine, or a mindset.
The only possible interpretation of the D&I&E officer is that there is too much white skin at our company.
Is that horrible oppression? No, but it is racist and prejudiced AF and I would 100% lose my job of I said a single word.
Skin color is one of the characteristics that influences our lived experience, and a lot of companies are seeking a diversity of experiences in their staff and leadership. They may look around and feel like they have a significant diversity of backgrounds and experiences, but not in one particular and very important way. So they want to correct this.
I'll readily concede that many companies do this for image reasons alone, though I'm sure some do it out of a genuine belief that diversity can lead to better business outcomes, or create a more desirable workplace for attracting new talent. But in the end, this is the decision of a private company and they are not being coerced to make these decisions by any authority, nor does it sound like they are breaking any laws.
> .. if your social media trail renders you unemployable...
>
> Edit: People seem to be misinterpreting my meaning entirely ...
I had a nice chuckle of that edit; In some instances your social media profile/trail may be "fine" in your eyes, but this edit demonstrates that a lot is left up to the interpretation of readers, further demonstrating the plausible risk one faces.
Is this a defense of cancel culture, or saying that ruining someone's career is in all cases appropriate since they must have view X which they wouldn't share with an employer? It's actually rather hard to know the views of people who've been mobbed on social media, since millions of other voices drown them out and make assumptions without them having a proper chance to defend themselves. Moreover, an employer may believe such a person to not hold noxious views, and still find them unemployable because of the social media backlash. Are you seriously arguing in favor of mob justice on the basis that the victims of internet mobs should be happy to not be employed by someone they disagree with politically?
Wait, what? Why should intellectual homogeneity be a requirement (or expectation) for coworkers? That seems like the opposite of encouraging diversity.
The key word is "tolerate". If you're gay, you're going to want to be hired by someone who will tolerate you being gay, otherwise you'll have to hide part of yourself and/or be fearful at work.
Just the fact that we're arguing and using terms like 'tolerate' just shows how wildly off base parent comment is to the reality of queerness and discrimination.
what about workplaces or spaces that simply 'tolerate' people of color? it puts that word in that context into a different light that more here might understand.
that language & context is so tinged it reveals real problems that still exist despite the mainstreaming of queer culture and appropriation that exists now - good or bad.
but...in a perfect world this isn't a question, "Will my employer tolerate my sexuality at work".
Do you have to hide being straight at work? If so, I don't think we have the same idea of what work is. (the royal you, not you specifically. I think a lot of people think this way.)
They used to call keeping your personal life separate from work "being professional". Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong here... don't most companies hire people to do a job, not to flaunt who they are in their private lives in a distracting manner?
wow. do you think people of color should somehow separate their skin & culture as to maintain 'professionalism' in the office? you can not 'separate' race just as you can't separate ones gender or sexual orientation. it is simply a fact and truth of that persons existence.
the mere existence of us queer people is not flaunting anything. the expression of our true selfs does not 'flaunt' and thinking it's some kind of attack on 'professionalism' is just backwards.
my life is not distracting, just as your life is not.
Wait, I think you’re misunderstanding a bit. The culture of professionalism ALREADY inherently represses non-straight people (and allows straight people privilege to be who they want). For example, men suits women dresses. There is no culture of professionalism that I know of that gives the privilege to all people. Like a dress code would be fine if it wasn’t obviously biased towards certain culture standards (in this case, western/white, straight).
Edit: to put it another way, professionalism in the case of clothing for example would be more fair if there could be a professional qipao, or professional burka, rather than only a professional western option aka the suit.
Yes. I am so sick of hearing straight people talking about their spouses and children in a professional context.
Political correctness has reached such extremes that we were expected to make contributions to a gift for one of my straight colleagues after he announced to the whole team that his opposite sex partner was pregnant. I really wish people would keep their sexual predilections to themselves.
I’m not irritated by my straight colleagues talking about their families.
You, however, seem to have a problem with your gay colleagues talking about theirs.
As a side note, quite a lot of straight people are irritated by the fact that straight sex can mean more than just erotic pleasure (hence the popularity of contraception).
That depends on the salary and the caché of the position. Plenty of people will put up with an asshole boss if the price is right, or to fast-track a career.
As a queer in several senses of the word, Instagram is not a place to find a supportive queer community. Instagram is the most one-way of all social networks — i.e. it's almost all plebs following celebrities.
Indeed. I find there's a lot of inclusive and positive communities on the Fediverse with Mastodon as twitter alternative and Pixelfed as instagram alternative (and increasing integration between the two).
I think though that this 1:many culture e.g. the mainstreaming and appropriating of queer culture has had a positive affect of allowing kids to have way more freedom of expression to be themselves. Like looking back growing up only 15 years ago in a liberal area the progress is insane. Gay marriage was illegal & Obama was against it! that's crazy to think about.
Time has flown by (not fast enough especially for gender) and my point is I don't think we can ignore the role of social media & traditional media in those positive changes. Which is a 1:many broadcast like you mention.
It's an interesting balance though I think OP makes a good point in looking both the bad and the good.
That is not how I experience it. Obviously, it is 100% about who you follow, and two people can have two entirely different experiences depending on those choices.
It's discouraging that the top comment is in effect sticking up for the billionaire caught red handed in a lie (think of the good things FB has done for us!).
I'm sure people smoking cigarettes throughout the years have had very nice conversations and maybe even made friends. That doesn't absolve the manufacturers from responsibility for knowingly selling poison.
> It used to be that if you were queer - in any sense of the word - and lived in one of the countless small, conservative, traditional communities in this country, you were shit out of luck.
Doesn't stop at the country's border: Social Media has been a gift to the whole world.
And it's not just queers either: just look at the 2011 Arab Spring. Suddenly, people could just get news from their peers, see live videos of what was really happening and not just the curated content allowed by the local warlord. They could see how westerners lived and wonder: "Why do I have to bribe everyone around me?" "Why can they just go to school and not me?" "Why are woman able to have jobs and walk down the streets without a man?" and "Why are they allowed multiple sources of information?"
There's a wonder some countries are trying hard to restrict internet access, and western social media. The great Firewall, Cuban Intranet, Egypt cutting out the countries network during protests...
Facebook is also specifically used in countries to rally violence against ethnic minorities. As in literally assisting genocide. Looking at it with rose colored glasses is missing a lot of the point.
In addition, Arab spring isn’t even a positive example. What have the aftermaths of that been?
> Facebook is also specifically used in countries to rally violence against ethnic minorities.
If you banned all accounts from these countries you know what they would do? Switch to something else and keep doing the same thing. It's a cultural problem.
> In addition, Arab spring isn’t even a positive example. What have the aftermaths of that been?
Before the people had dictatorships and a rotten culture. Now they only have a rotten culture. Social networking can't fix every issues...
What Arab countries that were dictatorships at the start of the Arab Spring are now democracies?
In Syria, 494,438–606,000 died a violent death, 6.6 million became refugees and 6.7 million became internally displaced -- and Syria still has the same dictator.
Are you sure you don't want to concede that the Arab Spring's negative effects outweigh its positive effects?
Those communities existed before social media on bbses, then forums, websites. Social media has drawn in more people but connected your real life identity and that will still cause you problems at a local level. If you are a young teen not out two profiles are required. But these services want your real name...
We’re bad as a society at talking about the mixed effects of social change. Undoubtedly, social changes, including the Internet, have made things better for some minorities. But progress in the treatment of minorities shouldn’t overshadow discussion of the majority of people. Are the majority of teen girls better or worse off as a result of social media? That’s a really important discussion to be having.
In the worse case, companies like Facebook and Instagram can point to improvements in the treatment of a small number of people to provide cover for activities that hurt the majority. After being excoriated in the 2000s for destroying people’s livelihoods, Wall Street refocused the narrative by publicly backing various social justice issues. Without detracting from the value of those issues themselves—the finesse with which these companies changed the conversation should give everyone pause.
Could minorities who need connection still find that connection via forum-based communities (i.e. pre social media)?
Social media was helpful for me to connect with lost acquaintances (which was novel at first, but now I barely continue to converse with them if at all).
According to another commenter here, the research that spawned the WSJ article said Instagram made 41% feel better, 31% worse, and no impact for the other 28%.
I haven't found the original material to verify, but if this is accurate, seems like the net outcome argument works in Instagram's favor.
It doesn't necessarily work in Instagram's favor. If the 41% and 31% had a baseline of both feeling "ok" then you took 72% who had a baseline that is acceptable and polarized them into groups who felt better or worse. Is it more favorable to have more people who have a stable baseline or to have one group have a good baseline and another similar sized group with a bad baseline?
Is that really so? Has this been researched over longer periods?
I'm honestly curious, because I'm probably biased when I think about medieval inquisitions or 1930 Race theories. Was, say, a black person in Rome treated bad because of racism? Were Jews hated in ancient early Muslim cities? Were there no same sex couples in, say, a 1500 village at the swedish coast? I can imagine many 'queer' were just accepted as such in many communities throughout the world, throughout the ages. But I can just as well imagine it being literally deadly to be even a little out of line, just as well.
You are correct that racism as we know it is a product of, roughly speaking, the post-1550 world. The response to homoerotic acts has varied extremely widely across time and space. "Same sex couples" were pretty uncommon in most times and places (largely because almost no one thought of marriage/cohabitation as something constituted primarily by romantic love or even sexual desire). But plenty of examples of people having same-sex sex and even long-lasting relationships.
there are definitely cultures that were more accepting that the US in the previous say 100 years. I know an example is 3rd gender in India as an example.
It does seem like the US took a step backwards. But from like a tiny percent. If queerness was say at 5%, it goes to 1%. and now we're at like 70% type of analogy.
The focus of the article is how Instagram knows that their product is harmful. It's not saying that all products, or even all similar products, are harmful for everyone.
I think this thread is at the very least offtopic; at the most, it's intentional whataboutism. This could well be your honest reaction, but maybe consider carefully before shifting focus like this.
Large tech companies would like the conversation to shift in exactly this way. They want us to choose between "the internet" and no internet, but the real choice is between their internet and other possible internets.
"Now, thanks to the internet, there exists ... communities for people of every type of background and experience." -- this is good for the individuals, but what if there is a biological/societal/ecosystem negative eg organised crime, gene mutations? ie harmless singletons scaling into destructive masses. Is isolation nature's fire-break, broken by bridging technology? The negative connotations are hypothetical questions about unknowns, not a claim or suggestion.
> there exists inclusive and positive communities for people of every type of background and experience
I mean, sure, but this also goes for flat earthers, incels, fatphobia activists, dreamsexuals, etc. In other words, it normalized selfish individualism over collective conformism. Looking at it in aggregate, I'm not sure I can agree on whether that was a good thing or not. Personally, it strikes me as the pendulum shifting too far to the other side.
I don't blame Facebook (or Twitter, or any particular company) for this.
We can only blame scale. Some things are much more scalable than others, and "beauty" scales. And the "occurrence of beauty" does, too.
Before the advent of scale on almost every aspect of our lives, a local musician or theatre group found easy income.
Now, since after the invention of gramophones, more people can listen to less and less musicians, i.e. numerically.
One movie is seen across the world and then millions of times on streaming services, while your local theatre group starves.
Just like that, before, some people were considered more beautiful than others as it is done now. But one beautiful girl could only make, say, 20 girls jealous and anxious.
Now, with the advent of Instagram, and internet-driven scale in general, one beautiful girl makes 20,000 girls jealous. So the anxiety and jealousy is numeracally widespread. This is where beauty scales.
Also, before, one average looking girl felt threatened by the beauty of one beautiful girl in her area. Now, there is the "feed", where she sees hundred girls more beautiful than her. This would not have been statistically possible in earlier times. This is where "occurrence of beauty" scales. Where, hundred years ago, a girl would see maybe 3-4 girls better looking than her, now she sees 300.
____
- I don't believe in a set standard of beauty. I don't believe that beauty is objective either. In this comment, I use "beauty", "beautiful", etc. as a short and logistically convenient way to represent "perceived beauty", "seemingly beautiful", etc. I hope this won't be an issue.
- I am also aware of other sources of anxiety, one simply being money- money buys new clothes more frequently, and people in new clothes and/or makeup look more pretty. Cosmetic surgery is in similar line. Here what scales is display of wealth.
- Filters, editing, etc. also might play a big part. People know this. Hence the popularity of the "Instagram vs. Real Life" meme format.
> I don't blame Facebook (or Twitter, or any particular company) for this.
Perhaps I would agree with you that I don't blame Facebook for the root problem here. After all, it's been around a lot longer than Facebook.
However, Facebook is actively providing the scale you're talking about. They are an accelerant. Not only that, they're making absolutely wild amounts of money while they do so. So, they have an opportunity and the resources to offset the damage done by the scale they profit from. But they have zero interest in doing so. I most definitely blame them for that.
Everyone makes money by pulling a magic lever that hurts other people. Apple pulls their slave labor lever to make a new iPhone, Facebook holds down their 'moderate content' key until their employees start falling apart, and Microsoft occasionally pulls the 'fuck it, ship it' lever to the chagrin of millions of Windows users. There's always a bigger fish, and sometimes that fish is more shareholders, not more consumers.
I despise Facebook, and they're almost certainly the most evil FAANG member. But at this point, it's nothing more than par for the course. Facebook is in glib obedience of every 3-letter-agency in every country, everywhere. Blaming Facebook for the behavior that everyone practices in the Fortune 500 is a little misguided.
> We can only blame scale. Some things are much more scalable than others, and "beauty" scales. And the "occurrence of beauty" does, too.
I think over the next few generations we're going to see humankind adapting to what it means to live with near-infinite scale on all things digital. I don't know what that will look like, but I do hope it works out for the better.
For many people it has - defining yourself by your quirks, or disabilities, or unique sexuality, or whatever else has become celebrated in many circles. Things that at one time might have been considered private or taboo are now used to differentiate yourself from the crowd and gain attention from people who may otherwise have ignored you.
Yes, Nassim Taleb comments on those extensively in his books. He calls the world we live in today "Extremistan" and the world from before the age of connectivity "Mediocristan". In essence, things are more and more inclined to be distributed with a power law in today's world as people and things are more and more connected and distributed.
Hard disagree. Facebook does not need to optimize profit and growth in every product decision. They make choices about what to amplify, knowing the consequences of those choices.
I think that Facebook knows that Instagram is doing exceptional- worse than other social media services popular with teens- damage to teenage girls minds, and doesn't care enough to fix it[1]. Just saying "the algorithm did it," as if humans didn't create that algorithm, constrain it, and are now carefully monitoring its destruction of people's lives, is to absolve the people who work for Facebook of their agency. They built those algorithms and are responsible for their actions. They made a choice to build the algorithm and to give it power.
Much like tobacco companies knew that their product was doing exceptional damage to their users lungs, and clearly didn't care either.
[1]: They know that because they are quoted in the original article saying that- that Instagram seems to be worse than Snapchat and Tik-Tok for the psyche's of their users. They seem to be taking steps to try and rectify that, but they seem very small, in proportion to the damage that they are inflicting.
I fully agree to this. I do also beleive that beauty outside of instagram has become much more common. More people than ever knows about how to work out and eat correct than before. Cosmetic and knowledge about them is also much more widespread.
I mean...who else but Facebook (or Twitter, or any particular company) enabled this scale?
I am not advocating for any stance here, but your argument reads a bit like "I don't blame gun manufacturers for gun deaths, I blame sharp solid metal objects travelling through brains at 3000 km/h"
We can see geography invariance, viz. WeChat, TikTok existing in China where facebook, twitter are not allowed to exist. If these didn't exist, something else would.
Scale might have begun with printed books. One author writes something, that is printed as many times as the market demands it. She does not have to lift her pen again. And with her grand success, other authors have to find jobs being private tutors of children of barons and dukes and such or finding adjuct roles in community colleges in modern times. Hell, there is even competition with dead people in this trade.
But accountants, devs, barbers don't have to face this.
And, I am not supporting this. I know that these girls should not have to face this. But eliminating social media is not the answer, but having better interests is. (This reeks of snobbery and privilege, I know.)
Almost all teenager girls I know or knew, did not feel this way for social media. Because they have/had better things to do in life. They were busy with ballet, prep school, volunteering, math clubs, music class, etc. So, there is also a socio-economic aspect to it.
As a heterosexual male, I never conformed with the mainstream beauty standards. I, and hence my potential and past partners did not have to face the bad side of scale.
I also actively, regularly listen to young pianists on Twitch and donate to them, rather than some decades old recordings (better, too) I could find for free on YouTube or Spotify.
I see it this way- scale is inevitable, and even desirable (one girl makes 3000 girls jealous instead of 30; one Physics teacher teaches 300 girls instead of 30- who otherwise would not have access to one- scale is not evil in itself), but you can bypass its effects if you properly want.
scale began when the first RNA doubled itself, when the first cell doubled, when the first animal doubled, when the first rat learned from another, etc
I think a more charitable interpretation is that no specific gun company is responsible for gun deaths, as long as it remains legal to manufacture and sell guns, there's going to be somebody out there selling them because the technology/profitability is there.
> I mean...who else but Facebook (or Twitter, or any particular company) enabled this scale?
Unrealistic and manipulated portraits of models in media (as well as treatment of said models) leading to body imaging issues already was a problem in my teens, way before FB/Instagram.
If there is one company and product to blame, it's Adobe Photoshop.
I see a much more diverse display of beauty these days than I ever did in the 80's and 90's. There is a conscious effort by a lot of people to broaden beauty standards in recent years, and a larger appetite from people to see different standards in media. I think a lot of this is due to more women in positions of influence and power across fashion and media, including a lot of women who grew up on the hyper-narrow standards of the late 20th century.
I think that's an interesting approach although I'm not convinced that's sufficient. Is addictive content less addictive without a visible metric? It removes one potentially harmful aspect but teen girls will still see feeds full of beautiful models living in LA mega mansions.
I don't think that's sufficient at all. Before likes and shares, we had TV, and before TV, we had newspapers and tabloids.
The newspapers regularly printed pictures of women considered beautiful according to the beauty standards of that time.
That propagated that standard even more widely.
And people could easily compare those traits with the traits they saw in the women they knew, and women did feel bad about not looking like the woman in the newspaper.
This is old.
So, even if we make non-algorithmic, time-based feeds, this problem cannot be fully gotten rid of.
Facebook is an accelerant. The movie "Mean Girls" largely predated social media and highlighted many of the same issues. This seems to be a pretty ingrained issue, although I think most people agree that Facebook makes it worse.
Here's a theory that's nearly guaranteed to land me in hot water:
Why are young girls so awful to each other? I don't think it's unreasonable to suspect that is has to do with "hormones," new emotions, and new social awareness, etc. But, it's also the case that from a strictly evolutionary perspective, young girls are are the most fertile and therefore the most desirable. This will decline over time, and sharply as women enter their 30s, 40s, and 50s. Perhaps there's an evolutionary reason why young girls work so hard to identity and sideline any competition? If this is the period of their life where they are the most desirable, there might be an evolutionary benefit to be the most cut-throat when it comes to vying for the best mating opportunities.
A few caveats:
- Hopefully I don't have to explain that evolutionary impulses are not the same as desirable or positive social values.
- Nor are evolutionary impulses immutable, or always expressed in the same way. (for example, sports are often observed as a peaceful replacement for warring city states.)
- Further, I'm definitely aware that evolutionary psychology can sound very reasonable while being perfectly rubbish and unscientific. There are plenty of people who say things like "because hunter-gathers experienced X," that explains "dubious trend which I have anecdotally observed." Even in the case where an evolutionary psychology explanation may happen to be correct, it remains difficult to prove or test.
Can we please not react to this article by immediately blaming teenage girls? You have an article that shows one of the most powerful corporations in the world exploiting teenagers to boost revenues and lying about it in testimony before congress. That's the story.
I don't understand how you could read the parent comment and decide that it's "blaming" teen girls, unless you are deliberately arguing in bad faith.
Teenage girls are predisposed to behave in the way described, and Facebook/Instagram is profiting by exploiting that. Nothing about the explanation above is blaming them. If anything the comment makes a stronger case for Facebook's actions being immoral.
> Why are young girls so awful to each other? I don't think it's unreasonable to suspect that is has to do with "hormones," new emotions, and new social awareness, etc. But, it's also the case that from a strictly evolutionary perspective, young girls are are the most fertile and therefore the most desirable.
How could the words "I don't think it's unreasonable to suspect..." not be considered blaming them? There is definitely some nuance here (I don't think the parent comment is hard-lining to say that the victims here are 100% to blame), but they are most certainly associating some level of blame to teens and their inherent "predisposed" behavior as you say.
It’s kind of amazing to me that an observation that anyone could make based on their experience as a human living on planet earth gets discounted because there isn’t some peer reviewed study from Harvard or whatever that confirms the observation. Young girls are mean to each other, that’s a fact. We don’t need an army of data scientists to “look into it”.
It’s helpful because it’s pointing out how absurd it is to constantly demand “data” to verify rudimentary observations of human nature. For whatever reason, and maybe it’s because of tech being so data obsessed, you can make a claim on this website as benign as “look both ways before crossing the street” and inevitably someone will want to see a “peer reviewed” study that says looking both ways before crossing the street “affects the outcome variable” of not getting hit by a car.
> If you don’t think universities are the right people to help with this question, who would you recommend to answer it?
Your mother, or your sister if you have one.
>How do you know this fact?
My name is remarkEon and I went to middle and high school in the United States on a planet I call Earth.
Is your claim that only in the United States is it that girls are mean to each other when they are in primary and secondary school? This seems like a much more extreme claim than mine. You have to argue that there’s something unique about the not_the_United_States schools such that there’s something nullifying intrafemale competition.
It’s a claim so extreme that … I’d like to see some data to back it up.
> You have to argue that there’s something unique about the not_the_United_States schools such that there’s something nullifying intrafemale competition.
Why do you think this? You only have your school experience to go on. You have nothing to base this claim on.
I think it’s entirely possible that the conditions of school create much of the competition you are observing, and that US schools are more extreme than others.
School intentionally creates behaviors. There is no reason not to believe that it has side effects.
And yes, to get any insight into which of is right, we’d need someone to have studied it.
I honestly think you must be trolling at this point. You’re taking this pedantic, academic view about the behavior of children and taking it to such an extreme (US school structure and its problems explain all malevolent minor female behavior) that I can’t believe you’re arguing in good faith.
No - I’m arguing that culture and social structures influence behavior, and that you can’t generalize from what you have observed at school to other cultures and times.
There is nothing pedantic or academic or anything I have said.
> US school structure and its problems explain all malevolent minor female behavior
This is simply a lie. I never said anything that implies this extreme view.
You are arguing that malevolent minor female behavior is universal and doesn’t need to be studied.
You might turn out to be right about the former, but without studying it, it’s just your baseless prejudice.
Experience and observation are a great place to begin an investigation. Of course if you're not careful, they can incorrectly color your results. As you say, anecdotal beliefs are not necessarily facts.
That said, the error I see more commonly is that the observation is perfectly valid, (or at least roughly valid) but the explanation is poor. People believe in the explanation because they feel so strongly about the observation. This is a fallacy I see over and over again. (and is often something I've seen leveraged in scams: "You've all experienced X. Here are some emotional stories about X. Now let me tell you how I have all the answers to X.")
I've tried to make it clear that my idea is not proven, but is something that I think is reasonable, and will hopefully lead to an interesting discussion. I'm definitely not suggesting that I have access to the truth, or that my idea is fact simply because I've explained something using scientific terms.
It's a weird phenomenon that's unique to HN. I understand that the idea is to elevate online discussion here, but many do it to such an absurd degree that anything anyone says always has someone asking for a source.
I sometimes wonder how these people would have survived at parties or social gatherings before the Internet when you couldn't just whip out your phone, spend 2 minutes not talking to anyone, click on the first Google search result, and then proclaiming "um acksually..."
Agreed. SOME may behave this way, but without more info who are we to say that they "are predisposed" in general. Teenage years are very hard for tons of reasons mentioned above and the way people handle those stresses comes down to tons of factors, support systems, upbringing, context, culture, etc.
The comment doesn't sound to me like blaming the girls, but just taking the core of the blame off of Facebook.
And it's really pretty clear that Facebook didn't create any of these problems and that removing it won't solve them. Facebook makes it easier for girls to bully each other in the same way that relaxed gun laws make it easier for criminals to shoot people. Or, as Londoners will tell you: "you can't solve knife crime by taking away people's knives".
The fact that Facebook profits from the issue doesn't make it their fault unless you can prove that they actively seek to make it worse. And even then, they can only carry the blame proportional to how much they made it worse.
> relaxed gun laws make it easier for criminals to shoot people
A little O/T, but this trope needs to please stop.
The places with the highest gun crimes are also the places with the toughest gun laws. It should go without saying that criminals without definition would not care about laws.
> The places with the highest gun crimes are also the places with the toughest gun laws
Only in America. Other western nations have tough gun laws and also low gun crime, because you can't hop in your car and pick up a gun in a neighbouring state.
And actually the correlation is only seen in parts of America. New York City has tough gun laws, comparatively low gun crime and a lower homicide rate per capita than the rest of the country.
Time and time again people say "tough gun laws lead to more gun crime" but really they mean "in a country where it's really really easy to buy guns, we mostly see the negative impact of gun ownership in high-density poor neighbourhoods".
Yes, I agree with everything your are saying. On a practical level, guns are available to anyone who wants one. Regional and city level restrictions only create a mild level of friction.
> On a practical level, guns are available to anyone who wants one.
For the law abiding, that’s not true in places where you need a license just to buy one such as NYC, or in CA where most handguns and many rifles are not available.
While there is very little research on this (because Congress banned funding research on this after pressure from the NRA in the 90s), what research does exist does not support your assertion: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/27/states-with-strict-gun-laws-...
It's not about criminals not caring about the law. Shooting people is already illegal. It's about making it more difficult to access and acquire these weapons. If you can't access something, it is much more difficult to use.
> what research does exist does not support your assertion
the link you posted does not oppose it as the other comment pointed out.
I hope you will keep an open mind as you look into this, setting aside the agendas of the NRA or the anti-gun groups.
When there is an item (gun, in this instance) which has both good and bad uses ( what they are, we are reasonably argue) -- there needs to be a balance in how the item is procured.
Nowhere in the country does one just go and pick one up. There are (again, we can argue on what is reasonable) checks and balances - checking the person's track history etc.
All this goes out the window when it is possible to skirt the law, or in the case of London, use knives instead of guns for the crimes.
We need to solve the problem at the right level of abstraction.
We need to focus on why the society today sees more shootings in the past decades when the guns have been existing for much longer.
> The places with the highest gun crimes are also the places with the toughest gun laws.
Big claims require some big evidence. In the UK there are strict controls on gun ownership and we have virtually no crimes carried out with legal guns, and more but still very few with illegal ones. Can you give some counter examples?
I meant criminals in this context as anyone who commits a crime using a gun. If you shoot someone you're a criminal regardless of whether you used an illegally acquired gun like a "career criminal" certainly would or if you had the gun legally and then decided to commit a crime.
And I can't really agree with your assertion either. See stats in [0] and a gun law map in [1]. At best it's a correlation without causation, but the correlation certainly isn't the inverse as you suggest.
I also don't see how it's not a relevant example - it's Thing A making Thing B worse, but Thing B would still happen without Thing A and so Thing A can't be blamed for Thing B. Regardless of whether the underlying assertion is correct (less gun control leading to more gun crime), the logic is valid.
In addition to the other comments: have you considered that the causality is reversed?
That is, tough gun laws are enacted exactly because of a high rate of gun crime?
And of course those tougher laws can have at best a mild moderating effect when guns can freely enter that area with the tougher gun laws from other areas that do not have them.
Can we please not pretend that these issues are new? Instagram didn’t invent body image issues or children being monsters, they’re just participating in something which has existed forever.
Children don't have the agency/brain development to take care of themselves in the presence of societal and peer pressure. This is the basis of many, many laws, social mores, and taboos.
> If this is the period of their life where they are the most desirable, there might be an evolutionary benefit to be the most cut-throat when it comes to vying for the best mating opportunities.
I appreciate the approach, but I do think it is probably (as you yourself warned) a "just so" story.
Teenaged girls can be mean. Teenaged boys can be mean. Adults can be mean. Members of all of these groups can be nice, sometimes transcendently kind. These behaviors can be explained without reference to ancient drives to fertility and mating, I think.
Yeah i think teenage girls are sometimes mean to each other because they have pride, just like every other human being. Some people’s pride makes them work long hours, some makes them work out, some makes them debate, and some makes them dress up and try to be the most popular.
Also i don’t think most teenage girls act like “Mean Girls” in real life. I was once in school and I have a teenage sister. Many girls like to post instagrams and tiktoks to get likes and follows, but they’re not cutthroat about it and the girls are sympathetic to each other.
The places where girls are backstabbing each other, are probably the same places where guys are fighting each other.
I really appreciate your comment. I still think my theory seems reasonable, but we should all be clear that a theory which "seems reasonable to some people" is very far something which is scientifically proven or even likely.
Agreed. Evolution drives our behavior; that fact horrifies some people; and for every observation there is an explanation that is clear, simple and wrong.
We humans are apes and, so, teenaged girls are apes. Apes are obsessed with hierarchy, status and sex. That doesn't change because we communicate using abstract symbols over a ridiculously innovative invention.
You seem to be both treading into naturalistic fallacy and brushing up against ad hominem. The latter because you don't know the motives of those who disagree with you (they could just find your explanation unconvincing) and the former because just because human beings have been phylogenetically classified as apes does not mean you can deploy your syllogism so easily.
Note: I am not arguing one way or the other here. Obviously there is competition for mates among human beings. What I'm suggesting is that we be careful when drawing on evolutionary explanations flippantly and simplistically. Lord knows that e.g. "evolutionary psychology" (which this would fall under) is packed with just-so stories.
>Lord knows that e.g. "evolutionary psychology" (which this would fall under) is packed with just-so stories.
I think this has to be admitted, and that any explanation based on evolutionary psychology should be viewed more skeptically than other arguments. However, I think it's absolutely true that genetics do influence our psychology to some degree. And so, there must be some evolutionary psychology claims which can be said to be true. At a very high, and very basic level, some are so self-evident that no one bothers to make them: ie, that sexual attraction exists, is a strong motivator for most people, and must have a basis in evolutionary fitness. Obviously things can get more murky when you want to discuss behaviors with more nuance or complexity. Further, even when a claim is probably true it's quite hard to actually test in a scientific manner. You can isolate the behavior, but not the explanation. How can you truly prove that a behavior is caused by evolution rather than social pressure?
That said, I don't think the whole field can be thrown out, despite your accurate claim that the field can be a bit of a mess.
Agreed, hardware drives computer behavior; this fact horrifies some "people";
Raspberry pis are computers and, so, raspberry pi picos are computers. Raspberry pis, and picos especially, are obsessed with computation related to hobby projects. This doesn't change because computers can technically compute anything.
Is what people are "horrified" by the dangerous facts you spill, or the fact that your analysis here completely misses the point when we talk about social media and interventions aimed at curbing their tremendously negative impact.
One recent realization: I suspect many (read: more than just teen girls) see social media as a real-time status market. There is a constant stream of information, and the subtext of that is often status-oriented. Thus, for the status-hungry, keeping up with updates feels necessary even if it makes them feel terrible.
There are elements of addiction at work here, too, but if social media was a net negative it wouldn't be as sticky as it is now. People are obviously getting something they want from it.
Tobacco was a net negative and, without regulation, would have remained super sticky. Exercise is a net positive and, for many, is horribly unstick you. How sticky something is correlated better with how well it hits up those short term dopamine surges (or how well its absence causes short term dopamine deficits) than it does with the net value it provides a person.
> Why are young girls so awful to each other?. I don't think it's unreasonable to suspect that it has to do with "hormones"
I don't see why this is relevant (if it's even true). The article barely talks about bullying or girls being awful to each other. It more broadly talks about people spending hours in their feeds comparing themselves to what they see and feeling bad about it, which seems like a very different problem.
It's related because, even when the article doesn't mention bullying, this competition influences the perception girls have of their body and self image.
Mean Girls wasn't a documentary, and as a former teen girl, I'd argue that girls aren't actually uniquely awful: what they are is especially sensitive to social cues and influences. You may note that the article here isn't really about bullying, it's more about girls making themselves miserable by comparing their lives and their bodies to what they see online. I do actually think there may be an evolutionary element to the fact that females are (on average) more oriented to language and interpersonal skills, more attuned to social feedback, and on the flipside, more prone to anxiety as a result, but I think it's a mistake to view that through too simplistic a lens.
Your theory seems backwards. Cut-throat competition for mating opportunities should be a strategy for the least desirable, who have the greatest need to compete for the scarce resource. If you're top of the desirability scale, you are the scarce resource, and your job is to discern the best suitor amongst the many who put themselves forward.
Part of the reason I dislike many evo-psych explanations as an archaeologist is that they end up reflecting a lot of the author's assumptions about the nature of human societies and not the diversity of forms we actually observe. You can support virtually any argument by just narrowing or widening this scope appropriately. One example here is that young women are free to actually decide which "suitors" to accept. In some gerontocracies, young women generally don't have that choice, socially at least.
This is just speculation on my part, but maybe being cut-throat is the strategy -- it's just applied to both potential suitors and potential competition. If you're at the top of the pyramid then the easiest way to discourage both unsuitable competition and unsuitable suitors is to be mean about it.
Now that I think about it a little more, it's probably more applicable to be mean to anyone in an outgroup.
And now that I think about it even more, I really have no idea of what I'm talking about. Most of the time that I've been mean to people, when I was younger, it was basically because I was an immature and confused jackass. And, as far as relationships go, who hasn't made a complete ass of theselves at one point or another?
Teen girls are always mean, in all cultures? You always can pick any non-universal human characteristic from your culture and with creativity find biological hipothesis to justify this. But this is very dangerous because it can easily naturalize prejudices, taboos and social norms that never were biological.
If you want to ask about these things, you first should first ask to anthropology how teen girls behave in different cultures before jumping to biological explanations.
Agreed, American highschool dynamic is quite unique in many ways. I think partly due to American culture, partly due to lack of authoritative figures in school.
I think this is a really fair counterpoint, and worth looking into. (so far as anyone would look into what I have suggested.) I'd offer a few things, though:
We'd want to measure things like "stress" or "anxiety" rather than simply meanness, it's possible this trend is not always expressed through cruelty. (notably, the facebook article suggests explicitly that it's not.)
I think in general the idea of leveraging sociology and anthropology in these cases is perfectly sound. If this only happened in America, I think there'd be a good argument that there is not a genetic component. (or perhaps, that there is a genetic component which is only activated in some contexts.)
One point I'd like to push back on is something I observed when studying anthropology in college. (and to be clear and fair, I am not suggesting that you have pushed this point of view.) Evidence of a single and rare outlier would be brought forward as proof that a set of behaviors did not have an evolutionary basis. Usually this was taken even further: if an outlier could be found, then the entire trait was completely socially constructed. Evolution affects behavior for certain, but these are experienced as drives an impulses which get filtered through the mind, the contextual social, and more. So, if a behavior is very broadly expressed cross-culturally, it is reasonable to suspect there is an evolutionary component to it. (of course this alone does not prove it.) If the outlier scenarios are sufficiently rare, this is likely proof that although there is an evolutionary basis for the behavior, they are not set in stone, and can be suppressed by the right circumstances.
Why does this conversation always have to exclusively revolve around how young girls treat each other? Young boys are awful to young girls. Women and men are awful to young girls. The question you should be asking is why do we as a society tolerate people (of any age and any gender!) being so awful to girls?
The article is about Facebook, the company. Facebook isn’t run by young girls. And yet many comments in this thread are focused not on Facebook’s responsibility to (and profiteering from the exploitation of) girls mental health and are instead focused on blaming the girls themselves.
Young girls and young boys (and adults, etc) have peculiar behaviors that differ among groups. Statistically speaking. Of course this isn’t exclusive behaviors among groups, but young girls are more likely to do some things than young boys.
Since this article is talking about young girls, the interest is in behaviors and interventions that would be more impactful for young girls, as a population, than other groups.
It’s not blaming young girls to develop interventions that work to help based on the common characteristics. Nor is it blaming African Americans to study and create specific diabetes interventions to address the specific risks of that subpopulation. It’s not African Americans fault that they have higher diabetes and different characteristics of the disease and they shouldn’t be blamed for this condition. But to help, creating customized interventions will be more effective.
I would think it bad if there were only specialized interventions and no one address other parts of the population.
> Young girls and young boys (and adults, etc) have peculiar behaviors that differ among groups.
But what I’m saying is this behavior isn’t “peculiar“ among these groups at all. It’s the same. Yet we only seem to talk about how it happens amongst young girls and ignore how the behavior is frequently directed towards them as well.
Sorry about that, I assume everyone is familiar with difference in bullying rates and types by gender. There’s quite a bit of difference on how girls bully and are bullied [0] and there’s lots of statistics and it all seems to echo the same thing.
This was referenced in the article for how Facebook knew it’s stuff affected girls differently than boys.
I’ve read a lot [1] on how social media, in particular, disproportionately negatively impacts girls.
I don’t think we only talk about this, but because it is more significant it comes up more, I think.
Again, I don’t think this is a reason to blame girls or individual girls, since much of the bullying is not caused or targeted to girls. But it affects girls differently.
Teenage boys' bullying tends to be physical and a lot less socially adept, stereotypically speaking. Social media is less of an accelerant for that sort of thing.
The primary objection I'd have would be that you haven't defined "young girls" here and the age group cohort (~14-18) that we're really talking about is actually probably NOT the most fertile cohort. There's overlap of course, but that'd probably be more like 18-25. Which, in my anecdotal experience is definitely a time where young women seem to treat each other a lot better.
In college, I suppose I must have looked especially naive, because this gal-pal of mine sat me down and explained in a rather grave tone: "at_a_remove, there are two things you should understand about women. First, everything we do is about men. Second, women hate other women."
I scoffed. I scoffed for a long time. But there is an uncomfortable kernel to her statement that I have seen again and again, long before social media, in young women and their constant status hierarchy struggles, and Mean Girls wasn't even the first time it was made too evident. I would point to Heathers and Carrie as even earlier examples. Teenage girls are vicious with one another's emotions and friendships, trusts and secrets, in a way that boys and men rarely get a glimpse of.
Heathers was a movie also about an abusive sociopathic male engineering the deaths of his classmates in an act of petty rebellion against his abusive sociopathic father who killed his mother.
Anyone that tells you that
'All {men,women} do is about {power,sex,men,women}'.
is just telling on themselves and their social group specifically.
On the first and second statement, lesbians the world over would like a word.
You seem to be aware that you are just navel gazing here.
You've based your analysis on a comedy you saw in the 2000s that in turn based itself on the experiences of white affluent American teenagers.
The second leg of your analysis is not grounded in an understanding of actual female biology.
The one 'fact' you cite is wrong, 'young girls' are not the most fertile, the range for peak fertility for women is from their very late teens (18-19) to late 20s.
The majority peaks in their early to mid 20s (~24 years old).
If you want to comment about how women and men function 'evolutionarily', please at least understand a bit about how human biology works right now.
>You seem to be aware that you are just navel gazing here.
I like to think of it more as "presenting the details of my argument clearly so that they can be discredited if I've made an error.," rather than "navel gazing." Of course, there is nothing wrong with criticizing ideas, and so thank you for your response.
I don't know that I have a direct counterpoint to your claim, and it might be that my argument is irreparably harmed. I might still wonder that this is still wrapped up in evolutionary psychology, as it seems to be related to the onset of puberty. So, perhaps my idea still plays a role in what's going on here, even if it is not the primary role. (ie, perhaps it's one of many factors at play. Women could still be quite invested their sexual prospects shortly before they hit their peak fertility.)
I suppose my question for you would be, what do you think about all this? Do you believe that young girls are affected differently than young boys by social media? If so, do you believe this relies on a psychological tendency which existed prior to social media? If so, do you believe there's any evolutionary component to it, or do you believe there's some other explanation?
I wrote and thought better of a too long response to this.
Instead of trying to stay under the TL;DR word limit, I think instead you should focus on answering why you believe this:
"I might still wonder that this is still wrapped up in evolutionary psychology"
Do we gain any explanatory power by adding untestable hypotheses to the existing body of work about how society constructs /impossible to realize/ standards for both boys and girls.
To your question, yes, girls and boys are socialized differently in our culture, and thus they will be exposed to different social media, pressures, and expectations from the moment they are born. However, I don't think you need to immediately reach for evolutionary psychology to explain this.
The underlying pressure, in my view, is the pressure to sell objects that relieve the dissonance that 'influencers' and ad writers amplify.
Evolution certainly made us (regardless of gender) susceptible to this kind of influence, but culture determines which of our insecurities weaponized and how.
See also: brain pills, protein, and cars for predominantly male audiences.
Would these same kinds of pressures have existed in the tribal circumstances under which we evolved?
Sure, but they'd have been way way way less potent.
I also don't think evo psych tells us that our current societal structures are pre-determined or inevitable. If anything, we've been taught again that human brains are remarkably flexible and even relatively light social pressure from social media can cut against the grain of other fundamental biological tendencies, like self-preservation.
> Do you believe that young girls are affected differently than young boys by social media?
Yes.
Women are taught from a young age how they must act, dress, etc. What they should look like, that they should fit into a size 0, be <100 lbs, start counting calories when they hit puberty, etc.
Keep in mind that every attempt at a teenage boy's magazine has flopped, while teenage girl's magazines (at least until the decline of magazines and print media more generally) were quite popular. And this is in large part because there are a lot of expectations placed on girls that were never placed on guys, so these magazines helped guide a lot of young women through puberty (whether they guided them well is a matter for another discussion entirely, but they certainly did hold a lot of influence).
While there certainly are images of the ideal man that societies have held up over time, they don't have the same weight as expectations for women. If you have a dad bod, nobody is going to be glaring at you at the beach for showing it off, whispering about how "un-masculine" you look, that you need to show a little modesty, but a woman who goes to the beach with hairy legs will absolutely be subject to comments about how un-ladylike you are and that you look "masculine," even though body hair is entirely natural.
But it's not just when you're at the beach, and it's not just leg hair - it's everywhere, about everything, and it starts very early on. It's your parents telling you, advertisements and Hollywood reinforcing it, being told by your teachers you should be more feminine, your pastor saying that your outfit isn't "appropriate" for Sunday school (because it's not a dress), random men saying you should lose some weight... it never ends.
So while men are definitely having more body issues these days, it's nowhere near the same extent. Social media helps to reinforce societal beauty standards that have been taught to us all our lives.
> If so, do you believe this relies on a psychological tendency which existed prior to social media? If so, do you believe there's any evolutionary component to it, or do you believe there's some other explanation?
Not any innate tendency but just being beaten down until you conform. The advent of social media didn't magically erase the expectations we place on women, instead it became another place for reinforcing them.
> Women could still be quite invested their sexual prospects shortly before they hit their peak fertility.
I am single and have no desire to have kids despite being in "peak fertility." I am also not actively seeking out a partner. I'm not opposed to dating, it's just more convenient for me not to at the moment.
This is entirely anecdotal, but of my friends who do want kids, they don't really think about "oh god gotta find a mate and have kids I'm about to turn 26." They're more interested in finding the right person first, especially since we have so many fertility treatment options today (and having kids has gotten more expensive than ever). Having kids when you're not ready is generally a bad idea, and I hope I don't have to explain why.
As a society we do a poor job helping children mature. We put them in environments where their models for behavior are peers instead of well-adjusted and behaved adults. So we end up with Lord of the Flys writ large. Many of the children-peer-models come from broken families, with significantly reduced ability to learn from stable well-adjusted adults. Worse, often their basic needs aren't being fully met, and they act out (bully, etc).
We need fewer systems that put children (especially younger children) in situations where they are primarily interacting with and modeling the behavior of other children. This includes both our education and digital social systems.
Some children have active and involved home and family lives. This helps. Some get more favorable interactions and time with teachers, this can help. Some find positive models in media (books and movies) and can help, but media is often negative.
I understand Evo-psych is not a hard science. But boys are supposed to be much more competitive because they had a more 'winner takes all' situation in our evolutionary past. Thus I don't think this has much to do with evolutionary impulses instead of easy availability of photo editing tools, and just a large scale (being surrounded by photos of celebrities and models, who have PEDs + dedicated diet + make up + professional photography, but media perpetuating it as normal body image).
Now there's similar issue with male body image, but somehow that's even more extreme (visible six pack abs with single digit body fat), thus boys will think its not achivable without 8 hour workout a day and not bother, whereas for girls it seems like contemporary female body image is perfectly achivable to them or their peers and they lose sleep over it.
What is the shape of evolution? Many believe the shape of evolution to be a line of deterministic "progress" with a forward and a backward movement that may be accelerated.
Maybe evolution is a process which we are unconsciously subject to and consciously participate in forming. It seems directors, managers, and other employees working for Facebook may be more conscious of the role the Facebook systems play in social, psychological, and evolutionary processes, and the outcomes the systems grow.
>Many believe the shape of evolution to be a line of deterministic "progress" with a forward and a backward movement that may be accelerated.
I don't think this is correct. At least this is not a definition of evolution that I've ever seen reproduced. If anything, biologists I've read point to views such as this a misconception which must be corrected.
Dawkins is mostly talking about evolution and creationism in "The Blind Watchmaker," (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blind_Watchmaker) but I think it applies here as well: evolution is not guided, and there is no progress in the human sense of the word. ie, people are not "more evolved" than our ancestors. We have different adaptations which might be better (or worse) suited for certain evolutionary challenges. If the evolutionary pressures lined up properly, we could easily evolve to be more similar to other mammals. (ie, some people would call that "devolve.")
Does the evolutionary answer to "why are young girls awful to each other" matter? How does it inform our product design to make tech healthier for teenagers?
We already know this is a vulnerable group, and that teen girls have tendencies to compare themselves with peers. Putting a 24/7 stream of perfect, curated, retouched posts from friends in front of all of them seems obviously not ideal.
edit: I may be giving a gut reaction to seeing up-voted amateur evolutionary psychology
Men can impregnate indefinitely many women. As long as we have communities in which an individual mother isn't totally dependent on the father during critical years, there doesn't seem much need for competition here. That's a result of monogamy and nuclear families that probably wasn't the norm when humans were evolving these behaviors hundreds of thousands of years ago.
Exactly, I hate seeing discussions about "peak fertility," especially since the people posting about it usually don't know it's more like 30. [0] And more than that, the risk of complications is much higher for teenagers. [1] A relevant quote:
> Adolescent mothers (ages 10–19 years) face higher risks of eclampsia, puerperal endometritis, and systemic infections than women aged 20 to 24 years, and babies of adolescent mothers face higher risks of low birth weight, preterm delivery and severe neonatal conditions. (4)
And just because you might be in the "peak fertility" period doesn't mean you should rush to have children. If you are not ready for kids, they will suffer for it, and none of the girls I knew who got pregnant in high school were mature enough to handle a child and finish school (much less the fathers), so their parents and grandparents had to step in and do most of the parenting.
These kinds of discussions, especially combined with the evolutionary biology pseudoscience, really remind me of the way incel forums talk about women. Especially with the interesting absence of any mention of men's fertility, which also peaks around 30. [0]
the article is mainly concerned with body image and passive social comparison rather that ‘young girls being awful to each other’ a view which is not a universal truth and says more about the holder of the opinion than anything else.
Let’s suppose you’re correct: teen girls are evolutionarily predisposed to be especially cutthroat.
Does this make it acceptable that a corporation like Facebook exploits this tendency for profit? Should we not recognize this vulnerability and protect our children against it?
I'm very opposed to Facebook and social media in general. I think social media is bad for almost everybody. (and certainly bad on the whole for any large cohort.) Even if teenage girls were not predisposed to this sort of behavior, Facebook would still be bad for them. It would simply be bad for them in the ways which it is bad for everyone else. Instead, it's bad for them in all the other ways it's bad for people, and additionally bad for them when it comes to these particular social behaviors.
I don’t think OP ever suggested this was acceptable? Can’t we discuss multiple facets of a piece of news individually, without everyone always having to condemn or support the overall premise of the article?
I think the topic of young girls being predisposed to being mean is worth discussing on its own, no matter my opinion on it.
Your theory doesn't explain why boys don't act the same. Their attractiveness also dwindles with time - you could argue it's happening less steeply, but still.
First, young boys are certainly competitive with each other. Bullying is largely about social status, and social status is the main predictor for mate choice.
Second, male attractiveness does not follow the same pattern. Yes, sperm quality does degrade with age, but that decline is nowhere near as sharp as the decline in a woman's reproductive health. Not only will their eggs run out, but their chance of surviving childbirth drops sharply with age. Remember, we're not talking about western societies with modern medicine, but evolutionary imperatives which would have developed prior to any sort of antibiotics, pain killers, C-sections, etc.
Third, male attractiveness is strongly correlated with access to status and resources. Which young men almost universally don't have. (although young men may show traits which indicate potential future access to status and resources: intelligence, drive, assertiveness, popularity, etc.) However, an older man (30s-40s) still has very healthy sperm, and may have proven access to status and resources, which is nearly universally considered attractive.
So, I don't think it's fair to claim that male attractiveness declines over time an sort of the same way as female attractiveness. (Once again, from a strictly evolutionary perspective.)
For reference, the parent asked what studies support the grandparent's claim. I believe the comment has been deleted by HN algorithm and frankly it makes no sense to me - at least in this case.
Males aren't sexually selected for attractiveness. They are selected for their ability to provide for a mother and baby. So, human male's desirability increases with time, peaking at some point where their peak wealth crosses their inability to procreate.
this can also be seen through the fact that females are four times more sensitive than males to economic status cues when rating opposite sex attractiveness [1]
[1] - Guanlin Wang, Minxuan Cao, Justina Sauciuvenaite, Ruth Bissland, Megan Hacker, Catherine Hambly, Lobke M. Vaanholt, Chaoqun Niu, Mark D. Faries, & John R. Speakman (2018). Different impacts of resources on opposite sex ratings of physical attractiveness by males and females. Evolution and Human Behavior, 39(2), 220-225. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S10905...
My old boss used to say he would just hold up a picture of his paycheck on Tinder if his wife ever dumped him. Unfortunately it would also show the child support deduction.
I think the difference is that men are more physically violent. Boys fight and throw punches. This doesn't translate well to Instagram. If teenage boys spend more time online and not in person, then they have less opportunities for physical violence and abuse towards each other. However, it's different with teenage girls. There's more emotional abuse and pressure to look a certain way. Instagram and social media are a very efficient way for this type of abuse to take place, so it prospers there with young girls.
I read that there is pressure on boys to appear nonthreatening for as long as possible. They benefit when the growth spurt from aw cute to damn hot is quick.
That's really interesting. I've always observed anecdotally that female preferences change drastically between very young women and older. Specifically, teen magazines aimed at young girls always seem to have very feminine, boyish, non-threatening males. My observation has been that this preference is dropped pretty sharply as women get a little bit older.
I never knew (and still, don't know) to what degree this trait is actually universal. (ie, perhaps it's just a weird quirk of teen magazines in the last 30 years) Do you have links to that study or anything like it? I'd like to check it out.
Much of what you say about hormones has been considered scientific fact for a long time -- but I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the facts have been banished by political correctness.
Plus, Facebook is indeed a harmful product for society at large (like cigarettes), and often has bigger negative impacts on younger users (again like cigarettes).
The combination of these is obviously bad...but Facebook knowing it and hiding the fact is very much (again) like what tobacco companies did.
The toxic culture of Instagram is not driven by teen girls, it's driven by a toxic mix of a powerful capitalist machine and social media. Sell the perfect lifesfyle and body.
For the record - I believe in capitalism generally, I just think the incarnation of capitalism on social media is particularly damaging. The free market has produced a product like big Tobacco did.
Amongst mammals, human females actual limited fertility is the odd thing.
Visual and maybe hormonal attractiveness may change over time with other mammals too, but not actual numeric quantity of eggs. (I'm not sure if there is broad enough data on egg viability across all mammals though, but the fixed quantity and therefore approximate time period of fertility is more easily seen)
Given that this variable is the different one, the differences in human populations (ie. the competition for being chosen) really should be evaluated with this aspect weighted more heavily.
100% on the money. People will gnash their teeth because they don't like the truth being told out loud. It's the same reason why online dating is completely fucked up: incentives are completely different for men and women. Women hold access to sex (which men want), men hold access to relationships (which women want). The problem is that each wants completely different demographics; women generally want older secure men, and men want younger more fertile women. There's nothing wrong with this.
This has been ingrained in us for millions of years yet people act like a few decades of social upheaval will change this.
yea this random comment on a random tech site about evolutionary biology passes the smell test why? oh is it because of preconceived notions and biases rather than rigorous argumentation (i.e. well cited and published research)? hmmm
The tone of your comment is not helpful, but the factual claim you've made is definitely correct. This is something that I think seems reasonable, yes. But I am not a biologist, and no one (as far as I'm aware) has made any attempts to scientifically test my claim. At best, we have to call this a plausible idea. At worst, of course, it's not even that.
It is disappointing to read some comments saying that "It is not FB/Insta's fault?". Those who don't see the challenges that these teens go through is clearly delusional. While there are some good things in the tech, it clearly has a negative side that impact children's mental health through unrealistic beauty standards, and trap them into dopamine loops.
I still believe that ranking/recommendation models should be open, parents/individuals should have -at least- the choice to make these algorithms less harmful.
> .. I still believe that ranking/recommendation models should be open.
Today, we don't know how social media recommend posts to us, we don't know if it is biased, or good for some sub communities. There are [1] some engineering blogs where we can see that is based on some research ideas (e.g. embeddings) are prune to bias [3] and "rich gets richer" phenomena. There should be an open marketplace where institutes/researchers submit open & explainable ranking/recommender systems. This is how you democratize access to such social platforms, but the business model opposes such idea to make it reality. There is a large body of research in the area of explainable recommendation systems/Explainable AI. There are regulations today to use Explainable AI systems in healthcare field, but few of them in areas that impact our mental health (e.g. the use of Social Media).
I fully agree these social media platforms are problems, but they're simply catalysts that amplify what was already there. Bullying in high school existed before the Internet, and was arguably worse.
> Those who don't see the challenges that these teens go through is clearly delusional.
No one is debating the challenges of coming of age in the age of the Internet. I'd disagree that its entirely FB's fault as if the rest of society, kids and parents alike, lack all agency to make sound choices - that they must passively consume and be consumed by all that FB offers... or that theses sorts of problems are best addressed by literally legislating morality.
Its convenient and easy to hate FB; expedient, really...
Young girls lack agency, that's been the general consensus of the human race for a very long time save for the extreme right wing and some relatively new corners of the left. Always good to examine the structural inequality that Instagram magnifies (guardians and the media enforcing beauty standards) but children have zero responsibility in this case.
It's safe to assume that the majority of the people on both this specific post and this website as a whole are not teenagers, thus probably can't understand how the situation is like for us.
Jonathan Haidt has done a ton of research on this and it's terrifying. His thesis seems to make a lot of sense: boys bully each other physically while girls bully each other reputationally. This is likely why mental health issues for boys and girls have diverged wildly since about 2014, because as lives moved online, this was a recipe for disaster for girls since social media is so perfect for this kind of bullying, but sort of a non-event for boys who were already online playing video games all day. Social media unlocked and turbocharged all those preexisting pathologies for girls.
I think you’re dismissing the fact that a lot of young boys also feel terrible about themselves when they go on Instagram. Besides the whole chiseled body thing, there’s a lot of influencers who flaunt money and wealth also.
Oh I certainly didn't mean to be dismissive of the negative effects on boys, it's just been far worse for girls and there's lots of data showing it (eg hospital admissions for self-harm)
I'll make a comment that tries to be different than the range of criticism here already. Instagram is toxic for everyone.
For reasons too personal to put here, I've been pretty depressed and dysfunctional lately and I've unintentionally discovered the experience of doomscrolling. The output of the instagram algorithm is absolutely terrifying. It has the perfect metrics (swipe time, profile browsing, etc etc) to prey on every impulse inside of you and to send you the perfect cocktail of content to feed those impulses. Fear, doubts, wants, etc. etc. are all inputs to the algorithm and the output is content that makes you feel those things more.
I have to wonder if this type of media is similar to magazines on steroids, or other pulp media of the bygone era. No one here makes this comparison so maybe I'm off base but I do often if I'm scrolling through the worst possible version of a home produced checkout-aisle magazine.
EDIT:
I appreciate the comments that make this personal and are trying to help, but my instagram problem will be fixed when I manage to fix my real life problems... a much bigger task. My point is to highlight that the algorithm can suck anyone in, not just teen girls. They just happen to be the most vulnerable.
I echo others here and encourage you to just delete your account and get off it. I did so with Facebook many years ago after getting sucked in to so many arguments and so much angst, and now, when I log in every year or so to check if an old friend has messaged me, I get physically sick within minutes seeing the garbage posts that get pushed by the algo.
Do it. You're not missing out on anything but happiness.
> For reasons too personal to put here, I've been pretty depressed and dysfunctional lately and I've unintentionally discovered the experience of doomscrolling.
I never check the Instagram discover tab and I don’t feel like I’m missing anything. For me, Instagram has been a good tool for keeping in touch with friends as we all move around the country. If someone starts posting memes or content I don’t want to see, I use the Instagram mute function on their stories or posts. I can catch up on everything I want to see on Instagram in about 5-10 minutes per day and then I’m done.
Obviously, not everyone has the same experience with Instagram that I do. But by the same token, not everyone has the same experience with Instagram that you do.
If someone is unable to control their compulsion to “doom scroll” and setting limits on app usage isn’t working, I think deleting the app or the account is a good solution.
I had some friends go through similar problems with Netflix: They insisted Netflix was evil because they couldn’t control their usage and were staying up until 2AM every night watching shows. Meanwhile, they couldn’t understand how I managed to watch one episode and be done.
Same story with alcohol: I can have one drink and be done or decline to drink at all. Yet I have friends who find themselves drinking to excess every time they’re around alcohol. Interestingly, the demonization of alcohol is almost taboo despite arguably causing more damage than products like social media. No one has ever died from social media withdrawal, but alcohol has massive negative effects on addicts.
> I have to wonder if this type of media is similar to magazines on steroids, or other pulp media of the bygone era
Definitely. Even if we could make Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter disappear tomorrow, the people who struggle to control their compulsions would quickly find the next thing to fill their time. The only sustainable solution I see is more education about responsible consumption and taking accountability for time management. Not an easy thing to do, but it’s the only lasting solution I can see.
I mean it helps you auto curate content, but you can tell it what you do or don't want too.
I was getting hella bikini girls for a while but a few "not interested" and they are all gone. Now my feed is just people I know and my explore page is entirely almost woodworking content with a little bit of car stuff or travel stuff.
I think of it like reddit. The front page or all of reddit is absolute hot garbage that seems intentionally made to be divisive politically at this point (even on non political subreddits), but I also have a curated part of reddit with my woodworking and programming and video game hobbies i can browse happily.
Sure. I know this, and it's true. But by analogy, this is like saying "heroin is only addictive in small doses if you choose to take less". Is it good advice? Absolutely. Will everyone follow it? Nope. Should we despise heroin addicts? No. We should create a better system.
Unfortunately, this shit is addictive and implying that the solution is _just_ for people to delete their account is effectively blaming the victim.
Some people never start smoking and never have a nicotine addiction problem. Some people smoke a few times or even occasionally but don't pick up a habit. Some people get addicted but manage to quit easily, some manage to quit after many attempts. Some can't quit ever, but we don't tell them that they just need to try harder or they shouldn't have started smoking in the first place.
Try quitting smoking or drinking in a place where it's socially expected to do one of these, and you'll be quite close to how difficult it's for someone to quit social media in a society where using social media is the social norm.
> for people to delete their account is effectively blaming the victim.
I think it's fair to describe social media as addicting, but it's not the same thing as a chemical addiction where one can experience physical dependency and withdrawals. "Just quit" really is a valid solution, the reality is that most people just prefer to complain about social media rather than accept that they are responsible for how they spend their time.
That might be a solution to you as an (i suspect) rational adult.
But the article is about teens, who might have a number of reasons why they wouldn't "just quit".. peer pressure and so on.
That in turn "starts" the addiction or problem. When they do become rational adults they are so immersed in and interconnected on that platform that losing it would still be a very difficult decision.
I've developed a healthier way to use IG for myself. I follow only a small number of artists in the particular fields of art in which I'm interested and I keep my accounts private. As a result, I'm limited in what's available for scrolling and the 10 or so people who like and comment on my art I know are actually interested and very likely not bots.
When I signed up for Instagram, I was quite careful to follow and like a bunch of accounts that feature Corgis. Now I get all sorts of dog recommendations on my Instagram and love it.
When does a vice of society get created and the creator not know of its harmful effects? Rarely, it seems.
In actuality, though, as much as I think it's obvious that Instagram was designed specifically for the mindset of teens (and incidentally the countless with Peter Pan syndrome), it's too easy for us to simply blame Facebook. We are also responsible for raising our children to a certain level of emotional maturity and ego awareness, which I believe isn't necessarily a solution but may prevent some from getting sucked into the void of social media. My parent's generation pretty much failed at achieving that with their children, and their children haven't done much better with theirs. Maybe it's an overreliance on institutions which has made us complacent and often careless; as a society we seem to only react to problems rather than be proactive, acting like a deer in the headlights long after the symptoms of the illness have manifested.
I guess the fact that every generation seems to have moral panics about new technology (radio, tv, video games, internet), and every generation seems to complain about the decline of pop culture, led many reasonable people to adopt the heuristic that this is all just the talk of old curmudgeons, and new fads are no worse than old fads.
But what if facebook, instagram, youtube etc. are actually harmful? What if modern pop culture is toxic trash compared to that of the previous decades? What if popular music has, in fact, been getting worse?
It’s because every generation is very good at teaching the platform of comparison. Take just software developers for a second, we are drowning in the Leetcode unrealistic beauty standard. Young men/woman/teens are comparing and narcissistically validating on these social networks. The extra sad thing is some don’t grow out of it and keep doing it into middle age, on the same childish platforms.
“Some Instagram researchers said it was challenging to get other colleagues to hear the gravity of their findings. Plus, “We’re standing directly between people and their bonuses,” one former researcher said.”
“Facebook executives have struggled to find ways to reduce Instagram’s harm while keeping people on the platform, according to internal presentations on the topic.”
Sums up the problem succinctly. Attack the revenue if you want results, legislation is the only tool we have to truly compel and affect change in a company that willfully ignores the societal harms they are uniquely perpetuating at scale to dizzying public health epidemic levels (population level mental health decline across demographics, Facebook echo chambers radicalizing people and affecting voting/eroding democracy, etc.)
This is the problem with all social networks, instagram is just the most popular.
Imagine working overtime for months, saving money, paying for a hotel room at some seaside vacation place, travel in a shitty plane and in a shitty buy to that location, be tired, sleep the first of the three nights there on a shitty bed, eat shitty breakfast, go to the shitty with sewer flowing into the water 100m away...
...and then you take out your camera, pull in your stomach hard, pose in a way that hides body imperfections, hold in your hand a really shitty cocktail, that you paid half your days spending budget for, be carfeul to frame in a way, that the sewer is not visible, and click...
...you now have a perfect photo of someone enjoying their perfect vacation on the beach, drinking a good looking cocktail, enjoying themselves. Maybe even more than one, so you can post them even after you've gone back home.
And what do the viewers who of course follow hundreds of people see? A bunch of happy people, enojing their lives, while they "slave away" at their shitty jobs.
According to the article Facebook’s own research found that while it is a problem for all social networks it’s a significantly more pronounced problem for Instagram in particular:
> They came to the conclusion that some of the problems were specific to Instagram, and not social media more broadly. That is especially true concerning so-called social comparison, which is when people assess their own value in relation to the attractiveness, wealth and success of others.
> “Social comparison is worse on Instagram,” states Facebook’s deep dive into teen girl body-image issues in 2020, noting that TikTok, a short-video app, is grounded in performance, while users on Snapchat, a rival photo and video-sharing app, are sheltered by jokey filters that “keep the focus on the face.” In contrast, Instagram focuses heavily on the body and lifestyle.
The features that Instagram identifies as most harmful to teens appear to be at the platform’s core.
> The tendency to share only the best moments, a pressure to look perfect and an addictive product can send teens spiraling toward eating disorders, an unhealthy sense of their own bodies and depression, March 2020 internal research states. It warns that the Explore page, which serves users photos and videos curated by an algorithm, can send users deep into content that can be harmful.
> “Aspects of Instagram exacerbate each other to create a perfect storm,” the research states.
It may be more “toxic” for teen girls but it’s more degree than binary. It negatively affects the great majority of people involved.
Keeping up with the joneses and in vs out cliques in school are bad enough things that get amplified multiple times perhaps orders of magnitude more in a setting that promotes and encourages negative social behavior.
It almost validates the attitudes of anti socials.
My parents keep seeing other people’s kids getting married constantly, and it’s driving them nuts. Also their relatives bought new houses recently. They are obsessed and pretty much make me feel like a loser (or worse, evil for not giving them those things), even though I have different life goals.
And these are grown ass adults, so god knows how the kids deal with it. One thing I’ll say is that other people have a way of smushing this info in your face regardless of what era. They managed to do it when it was just rotary phones, and they’ll manage to do it now with whatever the internet has. In fact, the real interesting one is when someone delivers food to you in jubilation. They will manage to rub it in your face, so Instagram is at the very least an asynchronous form of showing off that you can try to avoid.
Instagram filters creep me the hell out. Can you imagine posting altered pictures of yourself all day long, and then looking in a real mirror and not seeing what you have acclimated to? Talk about technologically augmented body dysphoria. Maybe getting rid of in-app face-tuning filters would be a start.
> “When I went on Instagram, all I saw were images of chiseled bodies, perfect abs and women doing 100 burpees in 10 minutes,” said Ms. Vlasova, now 18, who lives in Reston, Va.
I just logged into my Instagram. I saw a guy fixing an old "roundie" television set, someone baking food, some through-the-microscope photos of soldering surface-mount components by hand, a home-made 3D printer, and a couple of clips from musicians. What am I missing here?
You are missing that Instagram (and nearly every other online platform) targets users based on the type of content it thinks they want to see. Instagram thinks you are more interested in tinkering and that Ms. Vlasova is more interested in other things.
The "targeted" content diversifies based on what FB thinks would interest you. FB is better at predicting your interests and hobbies than you do, which eventually leads to doomscrolling.
It really blows my mind that there isn't a larger pushback against social media. I do see it here on HN occasionally, but I rarely encounter anyone in the real world that has a strong anti-social media stance. Even then, it tends to be more of an anti-facebook-as-a-company stance. There are outspoken groups for just about every real or perceived social ill, but I don't see it for social media. Maybe it is there, and I'm just not in the demographic of folks that hear about it.
I speak to a lot of folks in certain religious circles about it. A lot of the things the Church is typically against seems to be perpetuated by it--suicide, pornography, materialism. This is the same group of people that were vocally against rock music, drinking, sex, and D&D at various times in the past. The reaction seems to be "yeah, social media sucks" returns to scrolling on phone. My guess is that it's now such a foundational part of modern culture that it's impossible to avoid. It'd be like trying to live without automobiles, which requires an almost monastic dedication to the cause.
I totally agree with you. I am constantly asked by my two boys (11, 14) for a smart phone. In our mind they don't need one at this age. The issue is that everyone seems to have one in the school. When I pick them up I see it for myself.
I don't understand why the school does not just ban them and discourage usage.
If we want to change the use of social media in teenagers and younger, we as parents have a responsibility to control access to these kind of sites and the internet in general.
Which has a bit of a different angle, but my conclusion is that social media as a tool can be useful but that in the aggregate right now it is a serious problem for which we are ill prepared as society.
Because many, if not most parents are not good parents and don't give a fuck. Phones and tablets are handed to kids to get the kids to shut up for a couple hours while the parents do the exact same thing.
Isn't this really "Facebook is concerned that Instagram is toxic for teen girls" -- I don't think we can point to this conclusively and make any statement about "toxicity" because that's a subjective concept.
But that Facebook is aware of it and is investigating further I think is all that is noteworthy here; it's not like they are accused of using this data and attempting to make Instagram more toxic for teen girls, which would be a much more shocking allegation.
The idea that we (humans) can engineer engagement somehow is a misguided one; we stumble upon things and try to optimize things, but we don't have a theory of human behavior that will naturally give us concepts like this -- it's not even clear that such a thing could exist in any generality anyway, and if we had it, then it would naturally become ineffective because everyone would use it.
Crack and Coffee are both stimulants, but you can live your life on one of them.
From conspiracy theories to depression it seems like Social Media can be a deranging influence. Maybe we can make it more like Coffee, but simple algorithmic goals like 'engagement' or 'watch time' seem to engage with our worst impulses.
There is, it's called intuition. Unfortunately the new mantra in big tech is "data driven decision making", which is supposed to mean that you do research and collect data prior to making decisions, not that you A/B test everything to a local maxima ignoring intuition and the holistic bigger picture, but companies have taken it to mean the former. Intuition is the basis of taste-making and aesthetic and is one of the most important things to develop if you're doing product design, and it's absolutely something that can be learned, it's not innate. All intuition is, is your mind making inferences and extrapolations from prior knowledge to the current situation before you, which you can't adequately explain or don't follow the strict rules of formal logic / rationality.
Part of wisdom is being able to apply knowledge in new situations, and this is the basis of intuition. Intuition is wisdom in action, and we ignore our intuitions as people and as societies at our peril, both in our personal lives and in business.
Things we know instinctively are frequently wrong. It leads to us discarding any information that goes against our intuitive beliefs. It leads to use thinking that anyone who disagrees with us is mentally deficient.
When I was a kid, my parents worked really hard to teach my how and why to avoid things that would harm me. This ranged from discouraging behaviors like running with scissors or drinking and driving, to substances like tobacco or heroin. Social media did not exist when I was a child, or I'm certain it would have been among those behaviors taught to me as harmful, addictive, and easy to screw yourself up by being involved with.
Of course...it would have been much harder for me to absorb those life lessons if my parents did those things they told me were harmful. If dad got loaded and drove around, or if mom shot up smack, it would have compromised me avoiding those things by following their example. It's tough to tell your kid to avoid social media when they watch their parent mindlessly entranced by it. Do the right thing there, remind your children that what 'Joe Influencer' or 'Jane Fashionista' thinks doesn't fucking matter. There are attention seeking idiots all around us, but they exist in spectacular high volume on social media.
tldr; parent your children to avoid social media, there is limited upside and infinite downside. This may mean not scrolling meme's all night on your phone while your kid does their homework - but you can do it.
Avoiding something completely can have very negative outcomes long term and can spur massive relapses if enough tension builds up. Realistically one would want to learn to be mindful, do things in moderation, etc...
> Mr. Mosseri… said the company’s plan for the Instagram kids product, which state attorneys general have objected to, is still in the works.
A lot of engineers have to spend a lot of time in order to make something like this a reality. Sometimes I like to think that we’re “better” (morally) than that trope of the growth-obsessed exec who’s willing to exploit kids for an extra 5% revenue in the quarter. People will be people no matter the job title, I suppose
Not girls fault(too young too know) not facebooks (they know but don't force it on anyone, society does) fault.
Parents fault.
It's hard to raise kids, it's hard to be a parent, it's very hard to raise a good kid.
It's always been like that, just amplified by a factor of 100k with apps being with you at all times.
Kids are easy impressed by superficial things, try your best so your kid does not fall victim to this. Not by censorship, that will have adversarial effects.
Facebook can do things to reduce dynamics that they know are harmful to children, just like they remove (some) content that is clearly harmful to children but not illegal. They just don't, which is their choice.
I agree with this sentiment. We don't talk enough about the nuclear family and importance of structured parenting. In fact, there has been a leftist movement toward marginalizing the family in favor of centralized uniform progressive teaching.
It's ultimately the parents' responsibility to shield their kids from society to a degree they deem appropriate. Not only to provide a healthy physical environment but also a digital one. And this until their personality develop and crystallize.
In this case, it may involve limiting the amount of time spent on social media. And sit downs to discuss the fakery and deception involved.
I think the number for teens/tweens is much higher compared to adults, and that is what they are getting at. Adults can(presumably) make their own decisions. Younger brains will likely have difficulty in finding the steps to break out of the loop.
"In humans, adolescence, namely the period between the early teenage years and early twenties, is a time of heightened susceptibility to the effects of addictive drugs, but previous studies have struggled to explain why. Our studies support the idea that regulation of protein synthesis by eIF2 might be the underlying cause," says senior author Mauro Costa-Mattioli.
1) Kids have less experience from which to pull from to inform them that an action might be harmful, how an action might affect those around them or when they are doing too much of something.
2) How the development of the prefrontal cortex affects decision making is a thoroughly studied topic and it is very clear that decision making ability becomes better as we mature(when looking at a significant population...again there are OBVIOUSLY outliers).
What are the rules / law for identifying an instagram post as an ad? If this isn't enforceable then young people don't stand a chance against the insidious nature of marketing.
In the 90's, "cool-hunters" would hire street promoters to hype brands one-on-one, directly to the consumer. These promoters were often friends of the consumers, who essentially became walking adverts for <insert big brand here>. Sounds a bit like the company "Influenceter". It's always been a goal of advertising to capture the minds of the youth culture. Facebook just does it to scale.
Stop blaming random companies. Control your daughters maybe. Facebook has no moral obligation to 'protect' your teen girls. Funny how people wine about "others" rather than controlling what they can.
IMO, A simple social media site focused on pictures wouldn't be nearly as damaging on its own. What's really causing the issue are the filters and photo editing, which has caused "beauty" standards to hit extremely unrealistic levels, and their self-esteem plummets.
I put beauty in quotes because many of those filters are extremely unattractive, making their skin look like plastic and lips look cartoonishly large. Sometimes, they don't even look human. And it baffles me that everyone knows the photos are altered, and yet they somehow expect themselves to look like them.
My wife has many friends who use filters on all their pictures and these people look nothing like their original selves. Imagine you're even a decent looking kid and every damn photo you come across online are these unrealistic fake images that are portrayed as real.
I know photo editing has been done in marketing for decades, but the biggest difference is that you knew those were professional models and people you'd never meet in real life, but this, this is pervasive down to the level of "normal" people, skewing what "normal" is supposed to be.
A few years ago, my sister-in-law posted a picture of herself on Facebook, and so many people were commenting on how beautiful she was.
And I'm over here thinking "Oh my god this photo is so clearly filtered." The color in her eyes had added saturation, eyebrows filled in, skin tone smoothed out, skin texture basically completely removed...
The worst part is, she's already a nice looking woman. She didn't need the filters. And yet she felt the need to use them anyways.
I'm not familiar with this particular set of findings, but generally speaking internal research at Facebook are generally either large scale in-app surveys (which suffer from response bias) or small scale (often ~10 participants from a single city) in-person interviews. It's useful for informing product roadmaps, but I don't think we can really draw bigger conclusions from it. Put it a different way, if this research had found that Instagram was NOT toxic for teen girls, would anyone buy that?
You're claiming a company that has over 20% of the WORLD POPULATION is informing themselves based on 10 participants from a single city? Are you making fun of their internal research team?
Yes, if a rigorous study found that social media helped girls, and there were replications of said study, then people would buy that. This is how research works!
Most UXR is not the same as a rigorous (ie peer reviewed) study. Not every qual study is in person interviews, but based on the part about users bringing topics up unprompted I'm guessing that's what at least some of this was based on.
Interesting point you bring up. If this research claimed the opposite result, people here would be ripping it apart, but since it confirms their biases, they double down on it and accept it as ground truth.
Our bodies can’t handle large doses of refined/high density compounds (sugar, alcohol, opioids, etc) or social interactions (being judged by 1000s/millions).
“The research that we’ve seen is that using social apps to connect with other people can have positive mental-health benefits,” CEO Mark Zuckerberg said at a congressional hearing...
“We make body image issues worse for one in three teen girls,” said one slide from 2019, summarizing research about teen girls who experience the issues. “Teens blame Instagram for increases in the rate of anxiety and depression,” said another slide. “This reaction was unprompted and consistent across all groups.”
From what researchers said in a March 2020 slide presentation posted to Facebook’s internal message board.