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Facebook knows Instagram is toxic for teen girls, company documents show

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Re: Facebook knows Instagram is toxic for teen girls, company documents show

#101

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…

Facebook was created to rate young women on their looks so... yes?

Re: Facebook knows Instagram is toxic for teen girls, company documents show

#102
post #86

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…

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.

Re: Facebook knows Instagram is toxic for teen girls, company documents show

#103
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I don't believe that is a toxic belief. Or even a belief at all. It's just human psychology. Simply put, any man or woman with a lot of choices would be less invested in any of the options presented.

Because the overall process, despite being more efficient as measured by outcome, does not lead to as many fulfilling experiences as before.

Re: Facebook knows Instagram is toxic for teen girls, company documents show

#104

> “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 mus…

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.

Re: Facebook knows Instagram is toxic for teen girls, company documents show

#106

https://archive.is/egPlc “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 anxiet…

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.

Re: Facebook knows Instagram is toxic for teen girls, company documents show

#107
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Much higher compared to adults? I don’t see it. Younger brains having a harder time breaking out of addiction than adults? I don’t see that either.

"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.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/03/160301103108.h...

Re: Facebook knows Instagram is toxic for teen girls, company documents show

#108
post #66

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 musici…

Great comment > 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.

From beauty, I think it will shift from conventional beauty to finding something that will set them apart from the rest.

Re: Facebook knows Instagram is toxic for teen girls, company documents show

#110

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…

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?
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