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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

#391

Post by lkey »

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.

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.

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

#392

Post by dado3212 »

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.

This is the Daisy project the article talks about, which appears to have been neutral on this kind of sentiment.

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

#394

Post by franga2000 »

finfinfin wrote: post #336
franga2000 wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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".

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

#395

Post by cortesoft »

bserge wrote: post #373
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…

It's definitely normal to blame everything and everyone but yourself for your problems. In some cases, it's justified, but the vast majority of time it's just avoiding responsibility.

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.

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

#396

Post by aerosmile »

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…

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.

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

#397

Post by Torwald »

wussboy wrote: post #200
andrewingram wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 go…

This is a very interesting point. As someone who wants to start an organization with a very strong mission statement, it brings a sense of caution. Is it the mission statement itself which is dangerous? Or is it possible to come up with a "good" one?

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.

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

#398

Post by pnutjam »

spockz wrote: post #5
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 shows how a statement can be factually true and completely disingenuous at the same time. Yes 1/3 are effected badly but we just say that it can have positive effects. Just omitting the fact that it often has a detrimental effect…

Yup, if a gang of 7 beats and robs somebody; you can accurately say 7 out of 8 people improved their situation.

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

#399

Post by everdrive »

bobthechef wrote: post #268
rendall wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

>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.

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

#400

Post by lkey »

at_a_remove wrote: post #219
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…

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 soc…

You were right to scoff.

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.

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