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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

#571

Post by elorant »

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #546
standardUser wrote: post #449

It used to be that if you were queer - in any sense of the word - and lived in one of the countless small, conservative, traditional communities in this country, you were shit out of luck. Now, thanks to the internet, there exists inclusive and positive communities for people of every type of background and experience. This simply did not exist for most people just a few decades ago, but now it's accessible to almost…

"Now, thanks to the internet, ..." This seems to be a common misdirection seen with defending Facebook. (Not to mention other Big Tech companies.) Facebook == "the internet" Facebook proponents, including public statements from the company, attribute the benefits we enjoy from the internet to Facebook. Criticism of Facebook == criticism of "the internet" It follows that any threat to Facebook is a threat to the inter…

For many people though, Facebook IS the Internet. Especially for those who don't own a computer and most of their online usage is done through the mobile version of FB.

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

#572

Post by mensetmanusman »

tnzm wrote: post #460
smithza wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't about protection . It is about values and moral principles. Parents can teach children tools about self control and mindfulness about evaluating if things are good for them or not. Teens and young adults have to explore and figure out their place in the world apart from their parents, but the skills and values taught are often transcendent of the shifting values in culture.

Let's face it, powerful forces in our society discourage self-control and critical reflection, and culture encourages people to have children regardless of whether they have learned those skills

“culture encourages people to have children…”

That’s not true in any western country :)

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

#573

Post by andrewla »

Isn't this really "Facebook is concerned that Instagram is toxic for teen girls" -- I don't think we can point to this conclusively and make any statement about "toxicity" because that's a subjective concept.

But that Facebook is aware of it and is investigating further I think is all that is noteworthy here; it's not like they are accused of using this data and attempting to make Instagram more toxic for teen girls, which would be a much more shocking allegation.

The idea that we (humans) can engineer engagement somehow is a misguided one; we stumble upon things and try to optimize things, but we don't have a theory of human behavior that will naturally give us concepts like this -- it's not even clear that such a thing could exist in any generality anyway, and if we had it, then it would naturally become ineffective because everyone would use it.

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

#574

Post by lizkm »

atonalfreerider wrote: post #551
voidnullnil wrote: post #503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>[porn companies] need regulation No, nothing needs regulation. Stop making the internet fucking worse. Can we go back to 2000 now (not that it was good then either since the internet was fundamentally broken already)? This is like the bat shit insane morons who think having a popup about cookies on every page is solving the """privacy""" issue. Literally every single political issue on HN is bogus. Take the ad block…

> nothing needs regulation This is a hyperbolic statement. Even if you are just talking about internet regulation. Let's imagine for a moment that someone invented a hypnosis algorithm and hosted it on a website. Anyone going to this website went into spasms and died in front of their screen. Would we seek protection for our children and for the general public from such a website from internet browser companies, ISPs…

Pornography does not cause you to go into spasms and die though. You being unable to control yourself does not justify undue restrictions on other people. The internet should not be ceded to nanny staters and morality police.

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

#575

Post by topspin »

riversflow wrote: post #558
joelbluminator wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and a large portion are more than happy to spout things they would NEVER say in real life This is pretty much an internet problem, not a Facebook problem. The things people say to each other on forums or Twitter or Facebook, especially when anonymous (but not always), are quite often horrendous.

Doesn't facebook & co design their service to be addictive, or, erm, "maximize engagement"? The internet is fine, as I see it, it's ad-revenue based social media that's the problem. It's absurd to absolve a company as wealthy as facebook who optimizes for "engagement" from their externalities on children .

> Doesn't facebook & co design their service to be addictive, or, erm, "maximize engagement"?

Is there something on the internet that isn't designed as such?

Maybe weather apps... Everything else, from wikipedia to github to stackoverflow to the site you're on now is yet another automated massively multiplayer kudo ranking system. The only meaningful difference appears to be demographic; Facebook is one of the places 'teen girls' spend their time. All I see here is evidence that clicks can still be had by ascribing some concern to the fate of young women[1].

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_white_woman_syndrome

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

#576

Post by [deleted] »

atonalfreerider wrote: post #551
voidnullnil wrote: post #503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>[porn companies] need regulation No, nothing needs regulation. Stop making the internet fucking worse. Can we go back to 2000 now (not that it was good then either since the internet was fundamentally broken already)? This is like the bat shit insane morons who think having a popup about cookies on every page is solving the """privacy""" issue. Literally every single political issue on HN is bogus. Take the ad block…

> nothing needs regulation This is a hyperbolic statement. Even if you are just talking about internet regulation. Let's imagine for a moment that someone invented a hypnosis algorithm and hosted it on a website. Anyone going to this website went into spasms and died in front of their screen. Would we seek protection for our children and for the general public from such a website from internet browser companies, ISPs…

[deleted]

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

#577

Post by MisterBastahrd »

standardUser wrote: post #449

It used to be that if you were queer - in any sense of the word - and lived in one of the countless small, conservative, traditional communities in this country, you were shit out of luck. Now, thanks to the internet, there exists inclusive and positive communities for people of every type of background and experience. This simply did not exist for most people just a few decades ago, but now it's accessible to almost…

"The internet" is not facebook.

"The internet" is not Instagram.

There were a fuckton of websites and forums devoted to gay issues and emotional support before Zuck ever got horny in his dorm room.

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

#578

Post by MisterBastahrd »

tw04 wrote: post #17
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…

It's their fault. An individual girl in 1995 who was concerned with her looks had at most a couple dozen people in her life to judge her. In 2021 it's hundreds of millions, and a large portion are more than happy to spout things they would NEVER say in real life. Does society value beauty? Sure. Do models set "unrealistic expectations"? Sure. Are some high school girls assholes to other girls? Absolutely. But once up…

The judging of other people towards these girls isn't nearly as toxic as them having a poor body image because of all the beautiful people they see online.

Those girls in 1995 got their media fix through magazines geared at women and teenaged girls, where they'd find an impossibly thin model on every other page. The Kardashians wouldn't have been well-received in the 90s, because all of them would have been considered fat by those standards.

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

#579

Post by LanceH »

bongoman37 wrote: post #541
smithza wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will say emphatically that parents of teens are the most influential people in their lives, whether acknowledged or no. It is likely the case that parents will forever be the most influential people in someone's life and the positions you take, the behaviors you engage in, and what you teach will stick with them for their whole lives. Take a stance and teach them. They may rebel, they may not, but years down the ro…

Have you ever been a teen? When I was a teenager when my parents told me to stay away from something, I would absolutely check it out.

Have you ever met a teen? Maybe Instagram isn't the party bringing the toxicity.

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

#580

Post by acdha »

raman162 wrote: post #562
acdha wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 m…

I agree that content consumed by facebook/instagram can be addictive. But I don't think this is unique to them, I think youtube (my personal weakness), netflix, television, video-games and movies all fall into this category. The particular problem with instagram is that it encourages people to post the "highlights" of their life. Therefore people end up consuming a super un-real version of what life is and end up dep…

Yes, I don't think anyone is saying that this is unique to Facebook — they just get the most attention by virtue of popularity and profitability, and having lied about what they knew and when in various related areas. Ignoring the question of the exact effects of all of the political use of social media in the previous decade, that simply happening to the degree it did guaranteed that they'd get a lot more scrutiny.

I definitely agree that there isn't a proven solution for this problem — that's normal for major technological changes. We saw the same thing with printed books, magazines, and newspapers; radio; TV; the internet; etc. — not to mention things like cars which weren't communications technologies but definitely had major impacts on society. I think the best thing we can get right now is more of the data companies like Facebook and Google tend to avoid sharing, especially after various governments experiment with rules and it becomes possible to see what does and doesn't work.

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