Facebook’s documents about Instagram and teens, published • Hacker News Board

Re: Facebook’s documents about Instagram and teens, published

#71

Post by Karawebnetwork » Fri, Oct 01, 2021, 5:46 PM UTC

_bfhp wrote: post #63

Karawebnetwork wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I moderate four LGBTQIA+ communities and support spaces on Facebook, totaling over 395k members. I cover both my local scene and international communities. Without the online spaces, most members wouldn't have friends. The bulk of the work is managing the news feeds and the main task is to approve posts individually. So we see them all. Many would otherwise be totally isolated. Teens in rural America are among the mo…

That "40 to 50%" trans statistic is incredibly worrying. Can you share where it's from so I can reference it in the future when these discussions come up?

It sounds worrying, and it is. But it's important to make one distinction.

It's not "transgender people inherently have a 40% suicide rate". It's "transgender people are in situations where their suicide rates climb to as high as 40%".

It's also important to understand the difference between "suicide ideation" and "suicide attempts" which are two different numbers that are often mixed up.

- https://www.thetrevorproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/...

- https://issuu.com/trevorproject/docs/talking_about_suicide_a...

To answer your question, here is a source I am familiar with as a Canadian:

"Among trans Ontarians, 35.1 % [...] seriously considered [...] and 11.2 % attempted, suicide in the past year."

"Lower [...] transphobia [...] was associated with a 66 % reduction in ideation [...] and an additional 76 % reduction in attempts among those with ideation."

- https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s...

US numbers are higher: the National Transgender Discrimination Survey (NTDS) found that 41% of 6,450 transgender respondents said they had attempted suicide. I don't have the source other than a PDF saved on my local machine, but you should be able to find it easily enough.

It's also very important to look at the sample pool of such studies. I remember that one number that was widely used in debates was actually done on the transgender women population of a men's prison in south america. Of course the people there are miserable but the numbers won't be representative of the larger population. It stopped being used as much after people pointed out that fact.

Re: Facebook’s documents about Instagram and teens, published

#72

Post by stadium » Fri, Oct 01, 2021, 5:52 PM UTC

echoradio wrote: post #55

stadium wrote: post #22

What is the relationship between individualistic cultures vs collectivist cultures, and social media? US is on the extreme end of the spectrum for individualism. Is social media toxic for that culture, and more benign for collectivist cultures?

Great question! Which countries would be ideal for study, do you think?

From a Google search, https://clearlycultural.com/geert-hofstede-cultural-dimensio...

Re: Facebook’s documents about Instagram and teens, published

#73

Post by 908B64B197 » Fri, Oct 01, 2021, 6:03 PM UTC

Karawebnetwork wrote: post #44

GhettoComputers wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for your perspective. Do you think that the LGBTQIA+ community is best served in this method? For instance, art communities would have been a stand in for many before, and from my exposure it seems to have had very good effects for marginalized people who aren't mainstream due to interests, sexual orientation, or creativity and ideas that are normally dismissed. They seem to be the least polarized people I…

> Do you think that the LGBTQIA+ community is best served in this method? Ideally, there would be dedicated spaces because the existing spaces are generally very hostile. For example, it is common for people to create fake profiles in order to get past the first layer of verification (looking at the profile and reading the required questions). Once in, they take pleasure in contacting members to push them to suicide.…

> or calling transgender people "the 41%" or "join the 41%" (in direct reference to suicide rates).

That's completely messed up.

Re: Facebook’s documents about Instagram and teens, published

#74

Post by thrav » Fri, Oct 01, 2021, 6:14 PM UTC

marcellus23 wrote: post #51

thrav wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My evidence is only anecdotal, but as someone who grew up in, and lived all over America, and lived abroad, I couldn’t agree more with OP. My friends in London, and their friends, many of whom grew up quite wealthy, were nearly indistinguishable from anyone else in London. They rarely bought anything (except drugs), even on vacation (I traveled with a few a couple different times). In America, people proudly declare…

So you observed a difference between one set of people you know and another, and you're expanding that to the entire countries those people are from?

Did I make claims about entire countries, or did I readily admit that I was only sharing my own small taste, explicitly stating that it shouldn’t be sufficient for broad conclusions?

Re: Facebook’s documents about Instagram and teens, published

#75

Post by 6gvONxR4sf7o » Fri, Oct 01, 2021, 6:17 PM UTC

BrianOnHN wrote: post #20

Nobody knows how good, or bad, they have it until they see how someone else lives. Isn't that explanation enough? Yes, the change is because of social media, and everything else that's made other peoples lives' more visible.

It's other people's lives, plus selection bias. It doesn't make other live visible equally, because people post more of the best moments (plus photo filters to look even better).

Re: Facebook’s documents about Instagram and teens, published

#76

Post by Karawebnetwork » Fri, Oct 01, 2021, 6:22 PM UTC

908B64B197 wrote: post #73

Karawebnetwork wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do you think that the LGBTQIA+ community is best served in this method? Ideally, there would be dedicated spaces because the existing spaces are generally very hostile. For example, it is common for people to create fake profiles in order to get past the first layer of verification (looking at the profile and reading the required questions). Once in, they take pleasure in contacting members to push them to suicide.…

> or calling transgender people "the 41%" or "join the 41%" (in direct reference to suicide rates). That's completely messed up.

It is, and it's rampant.

Re: Facebook’s documents about Instagram and teens, published

#77

Post by sumtechguy » Fri, Oct 01, 2021, 6:22 PM UTC

DisjointedHunt wrote: post #35

BrianOnHN wrote: post #20

Nobody knows how good, or bad, they have it until they see how someone else lives. Isn't that explanation enough? Yes, the change is because of social media, and everything else that's made other peoples lives' more visible.

The argument is social media is not a neutral platform but __amplifies__ the extremes, thus reducing the "Visibility" to a rat race of envy, by design. If it were as simple as you suggest, the studies would not be pointing out the biased slant of these platforms being harmful as much as they have been.

Also add in a 'revenge' and 'pettiness', for lack of a better term, style posting. I just shudder at thinking what some of my peers would have posted about me and others when I was younger. They barely kept it together normally. But sitting behind the 'safety' of a screen... It would have been awful.

Re: Facebook’s documents about Instagram and teens, published

#78

Post by asdff » Fri, Oct 01, 2021, 6:24 PM UTC

RNCTX wrote: post #67

bawolff wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That describes how a lot of research gets done. Its not just fb, oil companies are notorious for that sort of thing as well.

An apt comparison, considering Steven Donziger is in court again this week, after having basically endured a corporate-funded prosecution that has drawn on for almost three years, for the crime of winning a civil pollution suit against Chevron. The children of every fed-level elected and appointed official in his jurisdiction and/or related to the case (house of reps member, both senators, judge, prosecutor) work for…

It happens in all forms of government everywhere, large city or small. Especially in southern california I find local city halls to be rife with corruption. The FBI has been probing Los Angeles city hall and has already arrested two former councilmen, Huizar was arrested while in office, for racketeering. In Huizars case hollywood couldn't have written a cheesier plot, it was literally cash in brown paper bags and hookers in vegas from developers. quid pro quo. That good old fashioned cronyism stuff has never left, because literally so many people are doing this stuff. Sanitation department. Water and Power. Building and Safety. LASD. Rife with open, overt corruption, and I honestly believe the press is scared to go after these agencies harder than they have with their union lawyers.

Re: Facebook’s documents about Instagram and teens, published

#79

Post by 908B64B197 » Fri, Oct 01, 2021, 6:28 PM UTC

GhettoComputers wrote: post #9

https://www.apa.org/monitor/2019/03/trends-suicide > The suicide rate increased 33 percent from 1999 through 2017, from 10.5 to 14 suicides per 100,000 people (NCHS Data Brief No. 330, November 2018). Rates have increased more sharply since 2006. Suicide ranks as the fourth leading cause of death for people ages 35 to 54, and the second for 10- to 34-year-olds. It remains the 10th leading cause of death overall. >But…

> Over roughly the same period, other countries have seen rates fall, including Japan, China, Russia and most of Western Europe. What is going wrong on our shores-and what lessons can we import from elsewhere?

Keep in mind a 17 years old in 1999 was born in 1982. These were interesting years in Russia, Japan and China to say the least (total collapse of the Soviet Union, for a start, with all the insecurities that ensued) and a pretty nasty economic crisis in Japan [0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Decades

Re: Facebook’s documents about Instagram and teens, published

#80

Post by 908B64B197 » Fri, Oct 01, 2021, 6:36 PM UTC

closeparen wrote: post #16

GhettoComputers wrote: post #9

https://www.apa.org/monitor/2019/03/trends-suicide > The suicide rate increased 33 percent from 1999 through 2017, from 10.5 to 14 suicides per 100,000 people (NCHS Data Brief No. 330, November 2018). Rates have increased more sharply since 2006. Suicide ranks as the fourth leading cause of death for people ages 35 to 54, and the second for 10- to 34-year-olds. It remains the 10th leading cause of death overall. >But…

The rising teen suicide proves everyone’s favorite social critique. Declining church attendance. Declining corporeal punishment. The academic rat race. Climate change. Whatever I don’t like about the world is why the kids are killing themselves. Having had friends struggle with this when I was a teenager, I find it incredibly disrespectful and in poor taste to leverage their suffering in this lazy and offhand way as…

Remember the moral panics around Dungeons and Dragons? [0] Or the "Hyper Realistic violence of Doom"? [1]

Social Media is the next in line. In 20 years people will laugh at the articles and news report about it.

Something I wonder too is if suicides aren't just better reported today because there's less social stigma around mental health than in previous decades (for an extreme example, just look at the 1950's...).

[0] https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26328105

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mEP4cflrd4