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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

#591

Post by Godel_unicode »

Darmody wrote: post #509
SavantIdiot wrote: post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As bad as that was, in the past you could move to another of the 380,000 towns on this planet. 1. That assumes you have the money to move, can land in a new city and find housing, and then find a job. Pre-internet this was absolutely nontrivial. 2. It's not 380,000 towns on this planet, in the 80's/90's it was just a handful of cities that were more evolved, like San Francisco or P Town. There's a reason those citi…

I just want to point out that people moved without any money back in the day. Now we play it safe. We save money. We find an apartment, a job and then we move. We live comfortably now and we don't want to lose that when moving. You can even see it today with people from certain parts of the world. They leave with nothing else than maybe a 20 dollar phone hoping they'll be able to call their family once they get somew…

People also crossed oceans in tiny wooden boats that sunk without a survivor on a regular basis.

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

#592

Post by EchoAce »

tommymachine wrote: post #585
dillondoyle wrote: post #582

Earlier quoted context omitted.

a non white person.

So in your mind, creating a category of people that excludes only one race, and affording special privileges to that category of people alone is not racist in nature?

Wait, I think you’re misunderstanding a bit. The culture of professionalism ALREADY inherently represses non-straight people (and allows straight people privilege to be who they want). For example, men suits women dresses. There is no culture of professionalism that I know of that gives the privilege to all people. Like a dress code would be fine if it wasn’t obviously biased towards certain culture standards (in this case, western/white, straight).

Edit: to put it another way, professionalism in the case of clothing for example would be more fair if there could be a professional qipao, or professional burka, rather than only a professional western option aka the suit.

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

#593

Post by voidnullnil »

Time for a history lesson:

1. Teens had their stupid magazines and MTV before this smart phone crap.

2. The media hyped potential problems of "negative self image blah blah blah" exactly as much as now.

3. Nothing happened. It was all concern hype.

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

#594

Post by pempem »

stickfigure wrote: post #427
treis wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The research the GP's quote is referencing said Instagram made 41% feel better, 31% worse, and no impact for the other 28%. It's not clear why that can be used as evidence that it makes some girls feel worse about themselves but that it makes some girls feel better about themselves.

Probably any social activity is similar. I'm willing to bet the statistics for "high school prom" are much worse. And then there's Cosmo and Vogue...

Your note that the world is sexist and many things make women, teens and girls continously negatively evaluate themselves is something I agree.

The rest I would truly contest.

Prom is not an every single morning, universe commenting event no matter how the teenage brain may attempt to blow it up.

Cosmo and Vogue do not have the same continuous feedback loop and clearly have 100x (1000x? 1mnx?) less content being created, repeated, refreshed, etc. Its a magazine. If you want to invoke their IG handles honestly I could find 100s of influencers with more reach and engagement

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

#595

Post by pempem »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #569
tremon wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will say emphatically that parents of teens are the most influential people in their lives You might say that, but you would be wrong. Parents of teens have been the most influential people in their lives up to them becoming teens. Part of the process into adulthood is to break away from that pattern, to explore and build connections outside the family sphere. That's why teens are the most vulnerable demographic fo…

You can’t decouple the entire growth process from 0-teen though…

Agreed, and the parent comment hasn't done that. Its identified a shift and a period of time that indicates the (usually) first shift of its kind in a person's social life.

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

#596

Post by topspin »

riversflow wrote: post #590
topspin wrote: post #575

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Wikipedia, Github and Stackoverflow don't really have a "feed" much less a opaque, hidden algorithm to induce addictive behavior behind the feed. They don't press you into the app and then send you frequent push notifications. Gamification is benign compared to an interactive news feed developed to drive ad sales. I find pointing at especially wikipedia, but also github as being designed to maximize engagement compar…

> Wikipedia, Github and Stackoverflow don't really have a "feed"

All three have various feed mechanisms. They all have various ranking systems. Every one of them have people employed (even if mere 'volunteers') to 'maximize engagement.' And every one of these systems have people obsessed with their profile. Every. Single. One.

They're just mostly not 'teen girls' and so the 'problem' makes for poor headline material.

"especially wikipedia"

Wikipedia is rife with obsessed 'editors' climbing the rungs of the interweb status ladder. They're easy to find. Look at their profile pages; filled with achievement badges (gamification) and vast profiles of their lives. Does Facebook have 'campaigns' for 'elections' that grant power on the platform? I honestly don't know because I spend no time there, but I know Wikipedia does, and we can only imagine the anxiety involved for these 'candidates.' Thankfully though, they're mostly not 'teen girls' so we're not going to worry about them.

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

#597

Post by bumby »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #568
bumby wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I will say emphatically that parents of teens are the most influential people in their lives I don't work in behavioral science, but this isn't my understanding. I was under the impression that research indicates peers are the larger influence, which can be tempered somewhat by parents. For an easy example, whether or not peers smoke is a better predictor than whether parents smoke.

Not true in educational outcome. Almost all educational outcome is correlated with parent situations, effect of the school is within the noise.

Fair point. Most of the studies I came across were focused on aberrant behavior.

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

#598

Post by bumby »

true_religion wrote: post #487
bumby wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I will say emphatically that parents of teens are the most influential people in their lives I don't work in behavioral science, but this isn't my understanding. I was under the impression that research indicates peers are the larger influence, which can be tempered somewhat by parents. For an easy example, whether or not peers smoke is a better predictor than whether parents smoke.

Sure but in the long run parents can choose the peer group for children.

I’d argue it may be possible in the short term but not in the long term unless the idea is to raise your child like a house cat.

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

#599

Post by staplers »

stickfigure wrote: post #427
treis wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The research the GP's quote is referencing said Instagram made 41% feel better, 31% worse, and no impact for the other 28%. It's not clear why that can be used as evidence that it makes some girls feel worse about themselves but that it makes some girls feel better about themselves.

Probably any social activity is similar. I'm willing to bet the statistics for "high school prom" are much worse. And then there's Cosmo and Vogue...

Without data, these are biased assumptions.

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

#600

Post by lizkm »

acdha wrote: post #138
raman162 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These companies are always going to want to hold our attention but it's us at the end of the day who decide to give them our attention. I think as a society we need to prove that we are smarter than these companies and are capable of discipline and self-control. In corporate america, it's hard for me to see any private owned corporation doing what's in best interest for the public versus their own pockets.

> 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.

Expecting draconian regulations on social media to work is a recipe for failure. How many billions wasted on the war on drugs? People are always going to want to view extremist content, see beautiful people that cause body image issues, etc.

If people didn't want to see it, they wouldn't click on it. Banning it or regulating it is not going to change that, it's just going to cause it to shift elsewhere. It's human nature.

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