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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

#261

Post by analyst74 »

thiagoharry wrote: post #235
everdrive wrote: post #117

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…

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 dif…

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.

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

#262

Post by everdrive »

magicink81 wrote: post #245
everdrive wrote: post #117

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…

> "Facebook is an accelerant." 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…

>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.")

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

#263

Post by tomgp »

everdrive wrote: post #117

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…

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.

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

#264

Post by annoyingnoob »

blakesterz wrote: post #2

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…

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.

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

#265

Post by techer »

marjoram wrote: post #254
everdrive wrote: post #117

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…

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…

But it was based on a non-fiction book, “Queen Bees and Wannabes”.

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

#266

Post by padastra »

mattgreenrocks wrote: post #142
everdrive wrote: post #117

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…

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…

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.

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

#267

Post by pier25 »

Ozzie_osman wrote: post #216
everdrive wrote: post #117

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…

> 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 pro…

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.

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

#268

Post by bobthechef »

rendall wrote: post #249
everdrive wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

#269

Post by lvass »

zacharycohn wrote: post #236
foolinaround wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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…

He mentioned "gun crime" not deaths. Most deaths are from suicide.

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

#270

Post by zepto »

remarkEon wrote: post #234
jhardy54 wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Teenage girls are predisposed to behave in the way described, and Facebook/Instagram is profiting by exploiting that. Has this been studied, or are we taking an arbitrary thought experiment as a foundational axiom?

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”.

> Young girls are mean to each other, that’s a fact.

In all societies across time? Or just in American High schools and on Instagram?

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