Facebook knows Instagram is toxic for teen girls, company documents show • Hacker News Board

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

#661

Post by majani » Wed, Sep 15, 2021, 7:32 AM UTC

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 .

We've had subscription media for a while now and it's shown that that business model has it's glaring weaknesses as well, especially when it comes to ideological pandering

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

#662

Post by raxxorrax » Wed, Sep 15, 2021, 8:59 AM UTC

pempem wrote: post #594

stickfigure wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 crea…

I think in contemporary culture and media in western nations sexism is vastly exaggerated. At least if you use the classical definition. Someone who is sexist rarely burdens people with expectations since those are by definition quite low.

I believe other social phenomena are responsible for this, mainly forms of peer pressur. The stories influencers use to lure their audiences often invokes the threat of sexism and that naturally increases fears that might lead to a feedback loop.

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

#663

Post by rwnspace » Wed, Sep 15, 2021, 9:03 AM UTC

javajosh wrote: post #417

jxramos wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It has a name, its called "sophistry", and the practitioners "sophists". [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophist

Gorgias was perhaps the most well-known ancient Sophist, and is also the namesake of one of Plato's Dialogues, which happens to be one of my favourites. Highly recommend reading the above, and into sophistry and rhetoric more generally, if you're the sort that gets annoyed by modern bullshit, and wants a set of names and tactics to defend the sanctity (and sanity) of your opinions.

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

#664

Post by grapist420 » Wed, Sep 15, 2021, 9:09 AM UTC

rg111 wrote: post #164

leokennis wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean...who else but Facebook (or Twitter, or any particular company) enabled this scale? I am not advocating for any stance here, but your argument reads a bit like "I don't blame gun manufacturers for gun deaths, I blame sharp solid metal objects travelling through brains at 3000 km/h"

Scale is a force of nature of human advancement. We can see geography invariance, viz. WeChat, TikTok existing in China where facebook, twitter are not allowed to exist. If these didn't exist, something else would. Scale might have begun with printed books. One author writes something, that is printed as many times as the market demands it. She does not have to lift her pen again. And with her grand success, other au…

scale began when the first RNA doubled itself, when the first cell doubled, when the first animal doubled, when the first rat learned from another, etc

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

#665

Post by grapist420 » Wed, Sep 15, 2021, 9:10 AM UTC

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.

I agree likes are bad, but 4chan doesn’t have likes. insta girls can still farm attention without it dude

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

#666

Post by grapist420 » Wed, Sep 15, 2021, 9:11 AM UTC

bedhead wrote: post #60

Jonathan Haidt has done a ton of research on this and it's terrifying. His thesis seems to make a lot of sense: boys bully each other physically while girls bully each other reputationally. This is likely why mental health issues for boys and girls have diverged wildly since about 2014, because as lives moved online, this was a recipe for disaster for girls since social media is so perfect for this kind of bullying,…

boys absolutely bully each other reputationally. “Trolling”, insults, etc

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

#667

Post by zo1 » Wed, Sep 15, 2021, 9:20 AM UTC

dgs_sgd wrote: post #446

zo1 wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would interpret it as "connecting via social apps has a greater than absolute 0 probability of giving positive mental health benefits".

Then I think we're in agreement? "Connecting via social apps has a non-0 probability of giving (to whom? at least one person?) positive mental health benefits".

I am agreeing with you. Just mentioning how I frame/see it in my head.

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

#668

Post by mensetmanusman » Wed, Sep 15, 2021, 11:06 AM UTC

smabie wrote: post #627

mensetmanusman wrote: post #566

We also know the advertising industry is toxic for teen girls; I shop at TJs just to bypass exposure of my children (girls) to the cover of Cosmo.

it's ok I'm sure their friends will show them soon enough

This sounds like an argument against the effect of dose.

e.g. ‘They will eventually be exposed, ergo it doesn’t matter if they are exposed more.’

This is likely wrong. People that consume more TV media have more body issues and more depression. e.g. In our part of the woods, most of the senior girl’s sports teams are on anti-depression medication.

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

#669

Post by Yizahi » Wed, Sep 15, 2021, 11:15 AM UTC

short_sells_poo wrote: post #445

throwaway2037 wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In some respects, "Say No to Drugs" seems out of date when some very advanced democracies have already legalised some drugs or are close to it. That said, I understand your sentiment. No parent should be encouraging their children to become habitual cocaine users! One thing that does some "obvious" for this generation of parents: Work hard to educate your children on the dangers of traditional cigarette smoking. That…

> In some respects, "Say No to Drugs" seems out of date when some very advanced democracies have already legalised some drugs or are close to it. I think there's a certain nuance there. Drugs (which ones?) can (should?) be legal - or at least their consumption decriminalized. We've made good progress already and yet much more is to be made. But all this is not saying that drugs should be pushed hand over fist down pe…

Nicotine and alcohol drugs are already legal everywhere :) . We are just hypocrites, classifying them separately.

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

#670

Post by RhysU » Wed, Sep 15, 2021, 12:33 PM UTC

bumby wrote: post #638

true_religion wrote: post #613

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well to elaborate on that… kids under 16 go to the schools their parents decide on, live in the neighborhoods their parents decide on, and associated with the kids of their parents friends when they were younger. Those are their peers. They aren’t their friends. Kids make their own friends, but it’s unusual for them to be able to make lifestyle choices like where they live before adulthood. To note, your peers aren’t…

> kids under 16 go to the schools their parents decide on, live in the neighborhoods their parents decide on, and associated with the kids of their parents friends when they were younger. True, but for most people this is only available within a subset of constrained choices. Parents in rural Appalachia or the rust belt probably aren’t going to have a lot of Phillips Academies to choose from

As a person who grew up in rural Appalachia certainly Phillips was not an option. But, choosing a municipality with an emphasis on the value of education certainly was something my parents actively did. And, we had families across the economic spectrum in my school.