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

#511

Post by uniqueid » Tue, Sep 14, 2021, 7:43 PM UTC

standardUser wrote: post #497

uniqueid wrote: post #459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. As bad as that was, in the past you could move to another of the 380,000 towns on this planet. Today, if your social media trail renders you unemployable (or the target of persecution) there's no longer any corner of the planet to…

Humiliation, bullying, shame, abuse.... these things have been inflicted upon millions of young people generation after generation just because they didn't fit a very narrow mold. But you want me to shed a tear for who exactly? People who wrote hateful things and chose to share them with the public? Those are the very people dishing out the humiliation and shame and abuse. I for one am very happy that those behaviors…

  But you want me to shed a tear for who exactly?

For the same people the parent comment described.

Ugh, does everyone think the people to whom I was referring were the bigots?

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

#512

Post by rayiner » Tue, Sep 14, 2021, 7:43 PM UTC

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…

We’re bad as a society at talking about the mixed effects of social change. Undoubtedly, social changes, including the Internet, have made things better for some minorities. But progress in the treatment of minorities shouldn’t overshadow discussion of the majority of people. Are the majority of teen girls better or worse off as a result of social media? That’s a really important discussion to be having.

In the worse case, companies like Facebook and Instagram can point to improvements in the treatment of a small number of people to provide cover for activities that hurt the majority. After being excoriated in the 2000s for destroying people’s livelihoods, Wall Street refocused the narrative by publicly backing various social justice issues. Without detracting from the value of those issues themselves—the finesse with which these companies changed the conversation should give everyone pause.

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

#513

Post by rapnie » Tue, Sep 14, 2021, 7:44 PM UTC

xgulfie wrote: post #505

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…

As a queer in several senses of the word, Instagram is not a place to find a supportive queer community. Instagram is the most one-way of all social networks — i.e. it's almost all plebs following celebrities.

Indeed. I find there's a lot of inclusive and positive communities on the Fediverse with Mastodon as twitter alternative and Pixelfed as instagram alternative (and increasing integration between the two).

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

#514

Post by prepend » Tue, Sep 14, 2021, 7:44 PM UTC

elliekelly wrote: post #315

prepend wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Young girls and young boys (and adults, etc) have peculiar behaviors that differ among groups. Statistically speaking. Of course this isn’t exclusive behaviors among groups, but young girls are more likely to do some things than young boys. Since this article is talking about young girls, the interest is in behaviors and interventions that would be more impactful for young girls, as a population, than other groups. I…

> Young girls and young boys (and adults, etc) have peculiar behaviors that differ among groups. But what I’m saying is this behavior isn’t “peculiar“ among these groups at all. It’s the same. Yet we only seem to talk about how it happens amongst young girls and ignore how the behavior is frequently directed towards them as well.

Sorry about that, I assume everyone is familiar with difference in bullying rates and types by gender. There’s quite a bit of difference on how girls bully and are bullied [0] and there’s lots of statistics and it all seems to echo the same thing.

This was referenced in the article for how Facebook knew it’s stuff affected girls differently than boys.

I’ve read a lot [1] on how social media, in particular, disproportionately negatively impacts girls.

I don’t think we only talk about this, but because it is more significant it comes up more, I think.

Again, I don’t think this is a reason to blame girls or individual girls, since much of the bullying is not caused or targeted to girls. But it affects girls differently.

[0] https://www.pacer.org/bullying/info/stats.asp

[1] https://time.com/5650266/social-media-girls-mental-health/

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

#515

Post by dillondoyle » Tue, Sep 14, 2021, 7:44 PM UTC

berkes wrote: post #457

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…

Is that really so? Has this been researched over longer periods? I'm honestly curious, because I'm probably biased when I think about medieval inquisitions or 1930 Race theories. Was, say, a black person in Rome treated bad because of racism? Were Jews hated in ancient early Muslim cities? Were there no same sex couples in, say, a 1500 village at the swedish coast? I can imagine many 'queer' were just accepted as suc…

there are definitely cultures that were more accepting that the US in the previous say 100 years. I know an example is 3rd gender in India as an example.

It does seem like the US took a step backwards. But from like a tiny percent. If queerness was say at 5%, it goes to 1%. and now we're at like 70% type of analogy.

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

#516

Post by standardUser » Tue, Sep 14, 2021, 7:46 PM UTC

xgulfie wrote: post #505

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…

As a queer in several senses of the word, Instagram is not a place to find a supportive queer community. Instagram is the most one-way of all social networks — i.e. it's almost all plebs following celebrities.

That is not how I experience it. Obviously, it is 100% about who you follow, and two people can have two entirely different experiences depending on those choices.

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

#517

Post by _bfhp » Tue, Sep 14, 2021, 7:46 PM UTC

thinkingemote wrote: post #418

fortran77 wrote: post #30

Perhaps teen girl culture is what's toxic.

Related: does toxic feminity exist? I think most would say no, but who knows

I think you could find many people who would agree that gender roles are toxic. Who is responsible for them is another question

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

#518

Post by tommymachine » Tue, Sep 14, 2021, 7:47 PM UTC

foldr wrote: post #508

tommymachine wrote: post #504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that because you find it irritating that sex can mean something beyond erotic pleasure for straight people (i.e. procreation)?

Sorry, I thought the sarcasm would be obvious. I’m not irritated by my straight colleagues talking about their families. You, however, seem to have a problem with your gay colleagues talking about theirs. As a side note, quite a lot of straight people are irritated by the fact that straight sex can mean more than just erotic pleasure (hence the popularity of contraception).

In most workplaces, sexual eroticism of any kind is an inappropriate topic.

I don't have any gay colleagues. To your last point, I would also point out the popularity of "abortion", and say that degeneracy takes many forms.

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

#519

Post by dillondoyle » Tue, Sep 14, 2021, 7:50 PM UTC

xgulfie wrote: post #505

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…

As a queer in several senses of the word, Instagram is not a place to find a supportive queer community. Instagram is the most one-way of all social networks — i.e. it's almost all plebs following celebrities.

True for you but not for everyone.

I think though that this 1:many culture e.g. the mainstreaming and appropriating of queer culture has had a positive affect of allowing kids to have way more freedom of expression to be themselves. Like looking back growing up only 15 years ago in a liberal area the progress is insane. Gay marriage was illegal & Obama was against it! that's crazy to think about.

Time has flown by (not fast enough especially for gender) and my point is I don't think we can ignore the role of social media & traditional media in those positive changes. Which is a 1:many broadcast like you mention.

It's an interesting balance though I think OP makes a good point in looking both the bad and the good.

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

#520

Post by dillondoyle » Tue, Sep 14, 2021, 7:52 PM UTC

SavantIdiot wrote: post #480

uniqueid wrote: post #459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. As bad as that was, in the past you could move to another of the 380,000 towns on this planet. Today, if your social media trail renders you unemployable (or the target of persecution) there's no longer any corner of the planet to…

> 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…

AND queer people have always struggled to gain access to workplaces. Even today income lags & opportunities are hindered by bias

The history of drag balls and specially the category of business executive is a great example of how the only access to so many professions was performative art and impersonation (& still is especially for POC, non normative gender, trans etc)