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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

#311

Post by [deleted] »

Factorium wrote: post #99
rg111 wrote: 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…

We need Government regulation. Specifically, to not display the # of 'likes', friends, followers and other similar metrics publicly on each page. Remove this metric and you remove the major gamification/psychological element.

[deleted]

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

#312

Post by lancesells »

kwertyoowiyop wrote: post #61
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…

At some point I just wish Zuckerberg would give one single fuck .

I think it's that the worst of us usually come out "ahead".

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

#313

Post by jacquesm »

patwolf wrote: post #271

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 wrote this:

https://jacquesmattheij.com/the-social-media-problem/

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.

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

#314

Post by Guest19023892 »

hdjjhhvvhga wrote: post #144
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…

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.

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.

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

#315

Post by elliekelly »

prepend wrote: post #237
elliekelly wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why are young girls so awful to each other? 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…

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. I…

> 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.

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

#316

Post by jxramos »

pfortuny wrote: post #296
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…

"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 a…

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.

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

#317

Post by acdha »

raman162 wrote: post #275
acdha wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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.

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

#318

Post by zubspace »

joelbluminator wrote: post #14

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…

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?

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

#319

Post by mym1990 »

johnwheeler wrote: post #67
mym1990 wrote: 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.

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).

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

#320

Post by mbesto »

J-dawg wrote: post #178
revel wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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