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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

#381

Post by chmod600 »

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…

"As a culture we adore beauty, wealth, power."

Don't you mean "as a species"?

Culture is one of the few tools we have to overcome these natural inclinations. Religion, too.

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

#382

Post by gonehome »

andreime wrote: post #106
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…

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…

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.

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

#383

Post by AnimalMuppet »

malfist wrote: post #376
deepfriedrice wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cdc [1] has some figures that show a remarkably clear trend upward after ~2007. But IIRC it's pretty even across gender. [1] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db352-h.pdf

Facebook might be asking girls where their body image issues came from, but boys/men are not much different. It's reasonable that if one gender is developing self esteem issue from a social network, then the other gender _probably_ is too.

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'.

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

#384

Post by chakkepolja »

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…

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.

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

#385

Post by seneca »

wyre wrote: post #346
aduitsis wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One would dare say that an overwhelming majority of people does have morals. But a very small minority that doesn't have morals, is causing the illusion that it's most people that don't have them.

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. Everyone might have morals, but the bar is low.

Other people not sharing your values is not the same as them not having morals at all.

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

#387

Post by Frost1x »

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…

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.

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

#388

Post by sangnoir »

deepfriedrice wrote: post #201
Tarsul wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The cdc [1] has some figures that show a remarkably clear trend upward after ~2007. But IIRC it's pretty even across gender. [1] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db352-h.pdf

So, around the same time as the Great Recession?

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

#389

Post by twoWhlsGud »

aspaviento wrote: post #131
andreime wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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…

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.

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

#390

Post by colechristensen »

revel wrote: post #153
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…

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.

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.
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