[HN Gopher] Facebook knows Instagram is toxic for teen girls, co...
___________________________________________________________________
Facebook knows Instagram is toxic for teen girls, company documents
show
Author : jmsflknr
Score : 878 points
Date : 2021-09-14 12:27 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.wsj.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.wsj.com)
| clipradiowallet wrote:
| When I was a kid, my parents worked really hard to teach my how
| and why to avoid things that would harm me. This ranged from
| discouraging behaviors like running with scissors or drinking and
| driving, to substances like tobacco or heroin. Social media did
| not exist when I was a child, or I'm certain it would have been
| among those behaviors taught to me as harmful, addictive, and
| easy to screw yourself up by being involved with.
|
| Of course...it would have been much harder for me to absorb those
| life lessons if my parents did those things they told me were
| harmful. If dad got loaded and drove around, or if mom shot up
| smack, it would have compromised me avoiding those things by
| following their example. It's tough to tell your kid to avoid
| social media when they watch their parent mindlessly entranced by
| it. Do the right thing there, remind your children that what 'Joe
| Influencer' or 'Jane Fashionista' thinks doesn't fucking matter.
| There are attention seeking idiots all around us, but they exist
| in spectacular high volume on social media.
|
| tldr; parent your children to avoid social media, there is
| limited upside and infinite downside. This may mean not scrolling
| meme's all night on your phone while your kid does their homework
| - but you can do it.
| mym1990 wrote:
| Avoiding something completely can have very negative outcomes
| long term and can spur massive relapses if enough tension
| builds up. Realistically one would want to learn to be mindful,
| do things in moderation, etc...
|
| Harder said than done though.
| mpfundstein wrote:
| Just one more reason why my two girls won't get a smartphone
| until they are going to University
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| IMO, A simple social media site focused on pictures wouldn't be
| nearly as damaging on its own. What's really causing the issue
| are the filters and photo editing, which has caused "beauty"
| standards to hit extremely unrealistic levels, and their self-
| esteem plummets.
|
| I put beauty in quotes because many of those filters are
| extremely unattractive, making their skin look like plastic and
| lips look cartoonishly large. Sometimes, they don't even look
| human. And it baffles me that everyone knows the photos are
| altered, and yet they somehow expect themselves to look like
| them.
| Salgat wrote:
| My wife has many friends who use filters on all their pictures
| and these people look nothing like their original selves.
| Imagine you're even a decent looking kid and every damn photo
| you come across online are these unrealistic fake images that
| are portrayed as real.
|
| I know photo editing has been done in marketing for decades,
| but the biggest difference is that you knew those were
| professional models and people you'd never meet in real life,
| but this, this is pervasive down to the level of "normal"
| people, skewing what "normal" is supposed to be.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| A few years ago, my sister-in-law posted a picture of herself
| on Facebook, and so many people were commenting on how
| beautiful she was.
|
| And I'm over here thinking "Oh my god this photo is _so
| clearly filtered_. " The color in her eyes had added
| saturation, eyebrows filled in, skin tone smoothed out, skin
| texture basically completely removed...
|
| The worst part is, she's already a nice looking woman. She
| didn't _need_ the filters. And yet she felt the need to use
| them anyways.
| patwolf wrote:
| It really blows my mind that there isn't a larger pushback
| against social media. I do see it here on HN occasionally, but I
| rarely encounter anyone in the real world that has a strong anti-
| social media stance. Even then, it tends to be more of an anti-
| facebook-as-a-company stance. There are outspoken groups for just
| about every real or perceived social ill, but I don't see it for
| social media. Maybe it is there, and I'm just not in the
| demographic of folks that hear about it.
|
| I speak to a lot of folks in certain religious circles about it.
| A lot of the things the Church is typically against seems to be
| perpetuated by it--suicide, pornography, materialism. This is the
| same group of people that were vocally against rock music,
| drinking, sex, and D&D at various times in the past. The reaction
| seems to be "yeah, social media sucks" _returns to scrolling on
| phone_. My guess is that it 's now such a foundational part of
| modern culture that it's impossible to avoid. It'd be like trying
| to live without automobiles, which requires an almost monastic
| dedication to the cause.
| [deleted]
| jacquesm wrote:
| I wrote this:
|
| https://jacquesmattheij.com/the-social-media-problem/
|
| Which has a bit of a different angle, but my conclusion is that
| social media as a tool can be useful but that in the aggregate
| right now it is a serious problem for which we are ill prepared
| as society.
| JohnWhigham wrote:
| Because many, if not most parents are not good parents and
| don't give a fuck. Phones and tablets are handed to kids to get
| the kids to shut up for a couple hours while the parents do the
| exact same thing.
| hamzakc wrote:
| I totally agree with you. I am constantly asked by my two boys
| (11, 14) for a smart phone. In our mind they don't need one at
| this age. The issue is that everyone seems to have one in the
| school. When I pick them up I see it for myself.
|
| I don't understand why the school does not just ban them and
| discourage usage.
|
| If we want to change the use of social media in teenagers and
| younger, we as parents have a responsibility to control access
| to these kind of sites and the internet in general.
| thinkingemote wrote:
| Agreed. We clearly see a failure to condemn toxicity when users
| from HN defend onlyfans...
| joelbluminator wrote:
| 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 that 40
| years ago you watched some supermodel in a commercial for 20
| seconds and she was gone. The novelty with the internet is that
| now you can follow this supermodel and get dozens of alerts a
| week about her. If it's not Facebook it's gonna be TikTok or
| something other platform.
| mandevil wrote:
| If you read the original article, Facebook employees felt,
| based on their research, that Instagram was worse for teenage
| girls than Snapchat or Tik-Tok.
|
| "They came to the conclusion that some of the problems were
| specific to Instagram, and not social media more broadly. That
| is especially true concerning so-called social comparison,
| which is when people assess their own value in relation to the
| attractiveness, wealth and success of others."
|
| "'Social comparison is worse on Instagram,' states Facebook's
| deep dive into teen girl body-image issues in 2020, noting that
| TikTok, a short-video app, is grounded in performance, while
| users on Snapchat, a rival photo and video-sharing app, are
| sheltered by jokey filters that 'keep the focus on the face.'
| In contrast, Instagram focuses heavily on the body and
| lifestyle."
|
| So maybe they understand the dangers of Instagram better than
| you do?
| sasaf5 wrote:
| Once there are algorithms ranking the posts, they are meddling
| with the culture.
| joelbluminator wrote:
| I kinda agree maybe this can be better regulated but if
| someone decides to follow Beyonce or Lady Gaga (sorry I'm not
| really up to date with pop stars) or some supermodel, how are
| you gonna prevent that? As for algorithm ranking, I suppose
| 40 years ago it was a "human algorithm" reaching the
| conclusion that you better have hot chicks drinking coke on
| commercials, how is that different?
| sasaf5 wrote:
| Following a or b is not the problem. Ranking is. As you
| mentioned, it was already a problem in the times of simple
| broadcasting, it became an even bigger problem now. Our
| massive servers will go brrrrr serving algorithms all over
| the world much faster than we can dream about interveening.
| The Rohingya crisis stands as a terrifying example.
| [deleted]
| mnsc wrote:
| I'm just going to assume you are not a teen girl. And I'm
| certainly not one so we can just pull things out of our
| asses. But I don't think that the issue is the pop star or
| super model any more. It's the influencers and the idea
| that "anyone" can be top dog now. This means that you have
| young regular girls following other young "regular" girls.
| And if you do what they do, use the same products, be as
| charismatic then you too can be an influencer. Maybe not a
| global one but at your school. So suddenly you have young
| girls that "expose" themselves publically for their 62
| followers and pretending to be a influencer. Which makes
| you a very large target for bullying and "harsh truths"
| that will end your "influencer career" and at the same time
| that sliver of self esteem that a teenager normally has.
| And this is 100% caused by having a platform that is
| "democratic" and allows everyone to "compete for likes on
| equal terms".
| yunohn wrote:
| The difference is that Instagram/etc inundate you with
| nonstop algorithmically "related" posts from every
| supermodel, not just the ones you chose to follow.
| contravariant wrote:
| Though it's an interesting question whether the same culture
| would develop if the same thing happened again.
|
| Not that it really matters, I don't think either would help
| you find a fix that doesn't involve destroying the whole
| thing.
| altacc wrote:
| I think it's equivalent to the tobacco industry. They didn't
| invent smoking tobacco but they built it into an industry. Once
| they were aware of the health effects of smoking was it their
| fault that they suppressed this information and continued to
| market their products to more people, including children?
| wussboy wrote:
| I think this is exactly what should and will happen to social
| media. We, as a culture, did very well without social media
| for millenia. The internet was fine without it too.
| bostonsre wrote:
| Humans are easily addicted. It seems tantamount to selling
| drugs that are harmful to the minds of children. It is
| debatable about whether or not selling those drugs to adults is
| ok, but I'm not sure many people would be OK with selling them
| to children.
| supercanuck wrote:
| Is it Facebook / Instagram's fault or us as a culture?
|
| Yes.
| 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
| There are quotes from internal research in the article that
| Instagram is worse than the alternatives like tiktok. And
| internal researchers are quoted as saying that this research
| gets internal pushback because it's standing between people and
| their bonuses. Those bonuses aren't for letting culture play
| out; they're for things that wouldn't have happened otherwise.
| It seems super clear that it's an Instagram problem.
|
| A great example is the girl who searched for exercise tips once
| and then her feed was algorithmically focused on weight loss
| tips and the like afterwards, which is not a cultural issue.
| jhrmnn wrote:
| Facebook and social platforms in general are just very
| efficient in amplifying all these toxic elements of our culture
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| > Facebook and social platforms in general are just very
| efficient in amplifying all these <insert adjective here>
| elements of our culture
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| Is it as good at amplifying goodwill towards friends and
| neighbors as it is at amplifying negative sentiments?
|
| I don't think the former scales, whereas the latter lends
| itself to amplification. Authenticity and community require
| much more complexity to uphold than anger, anxiety, and
| resentment.
|
| I do take your point, and think that un-nuanced
| conversations about the evils of Social Media are
| unhelpful, but I think the scaling problem is the real
| danger. Negativity scales globally, positive sentiment and
| experience is limited to the individual or local level.
|
| What do you think of any of this?
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| > Is it as good at amplifying goodwill towards friends
| and neighbors as it is at amplifying negative sentiments?
|
| Probably, but because of salience asymmetry, we don't
| realise it. Like the good stuff is often more local as
| you say, and more distributed, while the bad stuff makes
| the news.
| joelbluminator wrote:
| Yes with that I agree. But we are already toxic, let's not
| blame Facebook for all our problems. And I just don't see how
| Twitter, TikTok or anything similar is better; maybe we
| should just say teens can't be on social media ? Unlikely to
| pass.
| meltedcapacitor wrote:
| Not all algorithms are created equal. TikTok's for instance
| seems to be biased to make weirdos find their niche, as
| opposed to the more binary steamrollers coming from Silicon
| Valley's monoculture.
| im3w1l wrote:
| Yes I think the "social platforms in general" part is key.
| It's hard to imagine what a social platform would look like
| that wasn't harmful in this way. Maybe chat apps I suppose,
| since 1-on-1 interaction is less of a popularity contest.
|
| But anyway, I think the reason that facebook is aware of the
| problem but doing nothing is not that they are cynically
| exploiting people, and it's rather that they don't know how
| to solve it.
| tgv wrote:
| I've never really believed it was Hollywood or the fashion
| industry that created it. People know who's attractive in their
| circle. You compete with them. The magazines and ads have upped
| the ante, and facebook turned it into an addiction, but the
| mechanism was there all along, I think.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| The mechanism are also there to prefer sugar and fat to
| healthier food, to become addicted to nicotine and opiates,
| and to do many other self-harming things.
|
| That doesn't mean giant corporations should allowed to
| exploit these mechanisms for profit.
| tgv wrote:
| Of course. If anything, it gives them a greater
| responsibility (and accountability), because it's such an
| easy trap.
| rhines wrote:
| Perhaps, but what would you propose?
|
| Do we take the approach we take with opiates, and ban
| companies from allowing users to upload images?
|
| Or do we take the approach we take with nicotine, and force
| companies to disclose the possible harms that can come from
| social interactions online?
|
| Or is there another approach you'd propose?
|
| Hopefully this doesn't come across too confrontational - I
| genuinely am curious as to what solutions are viable, and I
| do recognize the harm social media can cause. But it seems
| to me that as long as there exists any platform where we
| can freely post photos, we'll have toxic comparisons, and I
| don't see more education changing this - I don't think it's
| a rational choice that we make, to choose to compare
| ourselves to others.
| tw04 wrote:
| 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 upon a time kids would go
| home and those people would be gone. Now it's a 24/7 feedback
| loop and it's completely unhealthy.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| 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.
| justapassenger wrote:
| > 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.
|
| I agree with the 2nd part of your comment. But this part is
| just dishonest, and sounds like a startup pitch about
| addressable market. Do you honestly believe that each teen
| girl is being followed by hundreds of millions, who comment
| on every single photo of her? Almost everyone still lives in
| their social bubbles, and yes, it's easier to to communicate
| and say mean things to each other (totally 24/7 feedback
| loop), but they almost exclusively come from people you know,
| not hundreds of millions of internet randos.
| Version467 wrote:
| While that is true, many people (especially teenagers)
| curate their Instagram page as if they had tons of
| followers. That doesn't come with the downsides that
| actually having many followers does (hateful comments,
| etc.), but it certainly fosters a stressful mindset where
| every posts success is closely monitored and the content is
| carefully chosen to achieve as much growth as possible.
|
| Doesn't matter if it reaches 10 or 10000 people.
| joelbluminator wrote:
| > 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.
| ethanbond wrote:
| Guess those geniuses earning massive salaries are too dumb
| to figure out ways to counteract this effect -\\_(tsu)_/-
|
| Or they're paid massive salaries _not_ to do that.
| acdha wrote:
| This is true but the companies choose how to build and
| operate these spaces, which includes things like moderation
| and what they promote. Part of what makes Facebook
| important here is that they've put so much effort into
| taking over people's socialization everywhere with an
| emphasis on being where your friends and family are. The
| more toxic parts of the Internet used to be different
| places you had to seek out.
|
| Given how profitable that's been it seems reasonable to
| expect them to be involved in fixing it.
| riversflow wrote:
| 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_.
| topspin wrote:
| > 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_synd
| rome
| riversflow wrote:
| 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 comparable to social networks as
| silly. Neither has much to gain from having addicted
| users, the same can't be said for facebook, IG, or
| Reddit.
| topspin wrote:
| > 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.
| josho wrote:
| Facebook is the business that enables this problem on their
| platform. This problem could disappear overnight if
| Facebook decided to moderate their platform. Facebook
| chooses profitability over a safe platform for their users.
| This is where regulatory bodies should step in.
|
| And yes we need regulatory help. Tens of millions in this
| country are experiencing mental health issues as a result
| of these platforms. When we understood that other
| industries were causing a health crisis we regulated them,
| the same needs to occur here.
|
| Note. I don't know what the regulatory solution should be,
| but we should be having that discussion.
| ccn0p wrote:
| True, and the cat can't be put back in the bag, so it's up
| to the collective "us", who build the Internet, to
| rediscover our moral imperative to fix what's broken... and
| Facebook is a huge chunk of this brokenness.
| redleggedfrog wrote:
| You're assuming people have morals to appeal to - most
| don't. When everyone is connected to everyone else the
| asshole always prevail. The solution is to sever the
| connections.
| Nagyman wrote:
| [citation needed]
|
| I don't know many such morally-absent folks. Perhaps the
| perverse incentives in our system mean a bunch of CEOs
| are quite sociopathic, but on the whole, people seem
| rather good intentioned to me. The internet certainly
| serves as a platform for many that would be otherwise
| shunned IRL, but I don't think they're the general
| majority...just the majority that decide to voice their
| opinions. The rest aren't even paying attention - only a
| small fraction of people have a Twitter account, for
| example.
|
| Even reddit, which can be anonymous, is filled with good
| discourse, assuming you avoid certain subreddits, and
| sort by top. Moderation goes a long way to mimicking our
| more natural IRL tendencies to turn down the assholes.
| Twitter and Instagram generally lack those tools, so the
| assholes can be louder and _seem_ more prominent than
| they are.
| aduitsis wrote:
| One would dare say that an overwhelming majority of
| people does have morals.
|
| But a very small minority that doesn't have morals, is
| causing the illusion that it's most people that don't
| have them.
| wyre wrote:
| As individuals, maybe, but as a society I have a hard
| time seeing proof when there is normalized wage slavery,
| the animal industrial complex, and any industry with
| money or power is deeply corrupted.
|
| Right now we have a large percentage of people that
| refuse to get a vaccine to protect their neighbors.
|
| Everyone might have morals, but the bar is low.
| seneca wrote:
| Other people not sharing your values is not the same as
| them not having morals at all.
| joelbluminator wrote:
| I personally deleted my account but what is it about
| Facebook that is worse than say Twitter (also deleted) ?
| Twitter was a big bag of toxicity. Not saying it wasn't
| interested, tons of interesting people to follow; but the
| discussions were often rude, racist and hateful. And it
| poses the same problem of teens following supermodels and
| what not. What I'm saying is this is about social media
| in general, not about Facebook which just happens to be
| the (currently) number 1 platform.
| mandevil wrote:
| That is not what the data researchers currently employed
| by Facebook said, if you read the article.
|
| "They came to the conclusion that some of the problems
| were specific to Instagram, and not social media more
| broadly. That is especially true concerning so-called
| social comparison, which is when people assess their own
| value in relation to the attractiveness, wealth and
| success of others."
|
| "'Social comparison is worse on Instagram,' states
| Facebook's deep dive into teen girl body-image issues in
| 2020, noting that TikTok, a short-video app, is grounded
| in performance, while users on Snapchat, a rival photo
| and video-sharing app, are sheltered by jokey filters
| that 'keep the focus on the face.' In contrast, Instagram
| focuses heavily on the body and lifestyle."
|
| So I suspect that their understanding of the problem is
| better than yours, and that there is something about
| Instagram that makes it worse than generic social media.
| yunohn wrote:
| Twitter is not algorithmically pushing supermodel photos
| to teenage girls. The target demographics are completely
| different from Instagram.
|
| You are correct however, that Twitter is also toxic; like
| all social media.
| jfk13 wrote:
| The more basic issue seems to be that (many) _people_ are
| toxic. If not always, to everyone, at least some of the
| time, towards some other people.
|
| The problem with social media, then, is that it allows --
| indeed _encourages_ , because "engagement" -- all that
| toxicity to spread so much more widely and rapidly than
| ever before.
| yunohn wrote:
| We could argue about "general/basic problems" all day.
|
| This post is about FB suppressing their own research,
| which showed that Instagram and its algorithm are toxic
| to teenage girls.
|
| > We make body image issues worse for one in three teen
| girls,"
|
| > Teens blame Instagram for increases in the rate of
| anxiety and depression,"
|
| > "This reaction was unprompted and consistent across all
| groups."
| nodejs_rulez_1 wrote:
| Yes, but on flipside said girl now can and fully expects to
| be courted by best boys well outside of 1995 logistic reach.
| tw04 wrote:
| >Yes, but on flipside said girl now can and fully expects
| to be courted by best boys well outside of 1995 logistic
| reach.
|
| I honestly can't tell if you're joking or not, but study
| after study has shown that dating was far more mentally
| healthy in 1995 than it is today. Online dating falls into
| almost the exact same category of causing anxiety and
| making it more difficult for younger generations to form
| meaningful relationships - just like instagram and
| facebook.
| GnarfGnarf wrote:
| ... _far_ more...
| kodah wrote:
| I think GP is conflating an issue with online dating and
| the psychology of beauty. Basically, men in online dating
| on average get very low numbers of matches while women on
| average get a ton. It's a numbers game, the apps know it,
| and that's why they have upgrades to buy visibility
| etc...
|
| It's a genuine problem, in that it is fully exploitative
| of men, but not related to this imo.
| snayan wrote:
| Please reflect on the circumstances in your life that lead
| you to this belief. In my experience this is a very toxic
| viewpoint and couldn't be further from the truth.
|
| If anything I'd argue that more than ever both women and
| men are searching for authenticity in a partner. Something
| increasingly difficult to come by in our social media
| fueled world.
|
| Sure, there is a subset on both sides that has been
| completely sucked in by this culture and measures each
| others worth by the number of followers on their instagram,
| but I'd actually view this as a positive. It's really
| convenient to be able to identify and filter out these vain
| individuals early on in the dating process.
|
| Keep your head up nodejs_rulez_1, there are still plenty of
| good women and men out there.
| arvinsim wrote:
| I don't believe that is a toxic belief. Or even a belief
| at all. It's just human psychology.
|
| Simply put, any man or woman with a lot of choices would
| be less invested in any of the options presented.
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| Because the overall process, despite being more efficient
| as measured by outcome, does not lead to as many
| fulfilling experiences as before.
| arvinsim wrote:
| Oh for sure. Seems to widely known that the more choices
| you have, the less happy you become.
| strgcmc wrote:
| You say this like it's some kind of benefit to the girl in
| question... IMO seems far more likely to lead to increased
| harassment and negative outcomes, rather than being a
| positive.
| zwirbl wrote:
| this. And then be bullied by even more people outside said
| reach
| busterarm wrote:
| https://www.fastcompany.com/90411925/having-too-many-
| choices...
|
| Also for all of the women I've seen flown out from Alabama,
| Mississippi, etc to NY, LA & Miami by the more affluent men
| in my social circles, I haven't seen a single long term
| relationship develop out of it. The wider net isn't leading
| to better outcomes.
| foobarian wrote:
| Wouldn't it be great if we could use the power of
| technology to then have one but not the other?
| aspaviento wrote:
| > An individual girl in 1995 who was concerned with her looks
| had at most a couple dozen people in her life to judge her
|
| An individual girl in 1995 had enough shows on TV and enough
| magazines to tell her she is not looking good.
| CivBase wrote:
| Yeah, but people have a certain level of disconnect with
| the models, athletes, actors, and superstars you see on TV
| and in magazines. Facebook brings that to the next level by
| encouraging that sort of content from people who you can
| actually relate to and feeds it to you around the clock. IG
| is especially bad about this.
|
| And that's just _some_ of the content. The algorithm is
| also just as happy to feed you a continuous stream of
| outraging, extremist "punditry", manufactured drama, fake
| "crafting" videos, conspiracies, and paranoid, depressing
| "news" - anything to keep you engaged.
| aspaviento wrote:
| > Yeah, but people have a certain level of disconnect
| with the models, athletes, actors, and superstars you see
| on TV and in magazines.
|
| I'm not really sure about it. When highschool girls wore
| the same clothes the Spice Girls wore, had the same
| haircut they had and replicated their dances, for me
| that's a lot of connection.
|
| I'm sure Facebook/Instagram have a lot to be blamed for
| but we (not just young girls; parents, teachers, etc)
| need to be responsible of our actions to some degree.
| francisofascii wrote:
| > As a culture we adore beauty, wealth, power To be fair,
| humanity has adored these three traits throughout history. This
| adoration is somewhat built into us naturally. Our current
| culture certainly amplifies and capitalizes on it. Facebook is
| a big player within the current culture.
| ssdspoimdsjvv wrote:
| Going back to the similarity between Facebook and the tobacco
| industry that the article points out, you could make the case
| that Phillip Morris is not to blame because people are
| naturally prone to nicotine addiction. I hope that at some
| point we as a society figure out that unregulated social media
| has the same damaging potential as tobacco, alcohol or
| gambling, especially for kids.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| Extremist conduct keeps people engaged longer, so they see more
| ads.
|
| Facebook/YouTube/Twitter all exploit the dark side of human
| nature. They've been doing it for so many years, that it's
| difficult to imagine that it's unintentional.
|
| >in Google's effort to keep people on its video platform as
| long as possible, "its algorithm seems to have concluded that
| people are drawn to content that is more extreme than what they
| started with--or to incendiary content in general," and adds,
| "It is also possible that YouTube's recommender algorithm has a
| bias toward inflammatory content."
|
| https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/03/youtube...
| raman162 wrote:
| 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.
| asoneth wrote:
| > as a society we need to prove that we are smarter than
| these companies ...
|
| I agree that this is a test of our society.
|
| > ... and are capable of discipline and self-control
|
| These organizations have enormous resources dedicated to
| exploiting our frailties and overcoming an individual's
| discipline and self-control. One option is to continue to
| expect every man, woman, and child to fight this battle
| alone in their own head every day.
|
| But we'd probably achieve better results more efficiently
| by organizing ourselves as well. Then we can combat it
| collectively as a community and a society like we have done
| for other human frailties. This would mean things like
| education, societal pressure, and regulation.
| raman162 wrote:
| Yes I agree that it's difficult for us to fight
| individually. I believe we should start informing
| children about the dangers of the internet once they
| begin to consume customized feed-based content. I believe
| parents also have the right to (and should to a certain
| extent) regulate consumption of their kid's digital
| media.
| acdha wrote:
| > 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.
| raman162 wrote:
| Except that this is not alcohol or tobacco, this is a
| digitized version of a free attention grabbing tabloid
| customized to the person's "interests" is always
| available to view at their desire. To me this makes it
| difficult to regulate as it's not purely based on the
| amount of consumption, it's based on the content you
| consume.
| acdha wrote:
| 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 makes more
| money if they get addicted.
|
| There are some things which you could try regulating: for
| example, a lot of what drives the dubious aspects comes
| back to algorithmic promotion maximizing time on site and
| advertising views. Legislators could ban algorithmic
| promotion for children, require companies to identify and
| curb addictive levels of consumption, or require
| companies to put more effort into moderation on the posts
| & comments which they promote.
|
| Similarly, I believe at least some countries are
| exploring requirements to clearly indicate photos which
| have been modified or retouched.
| raman162 wrote:
| 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 depressed when they
| compare it to their own. This issue is not a problem of
| an algorithm or moderation but of one's personal
| expectations.
|
| There are tons of great examples where algorithmic feed
| is useful, particularly when your feed is related to
| activities such as cooking, music and exercise.
|
| In theory I think the concept of forcing the companies to
| behave a certain way is ideal but I'm still unsure of
| what type of legislation could be put in place to address
| the problem in the article.
| acdha wrote:
| 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.
| lizkm wrote:
| Cigarettes aren't highly regulated because they are
| addictive, they are regulated because they literally rot
| and kill your internal organs.
|
| "Some people feel bad about their bodies after viewing
| social media" doesn't nearly meet the threshold of
| measurable harm that tobacco does. And algorithmic
| promotion can be positive, unlike the universally health-
| corrosive effects of cigarettes.
| acdha wrote:
| That's not the relevant part of the comparison: the point
| we were talking about is that there are plenty of
| examples of things where society uses regulation rather
| than expecting most individuals to make good choices all
| of the time.
|
| Where the impact of cigarettes is relevant is in the
| discussion of how _strong_ a particular regulation should
| be. A deadly threat certainly warrants stricter rules
| than something minor, just as we do not enforce zoning
| violations with the death penalty.
|
| If there's a specific policy proposal you could talk
| about whether you think it'd be effective or overkill but
| instead you appear to be arguing that there's no need to
| even consider the range of policy options.
| Guest19023892 wrote:
| Or walk into a casino and look at the people pouring
| their savings into addictive slot machines. It's kind of
| eerie how modern slot machines actually appear to be
| converging with mobile games in many ways.
|
| https://media.gettyimages.com/photos/todd-matthews-and-
| emily...
|
| https://www.bestuscasinos.org/wp-
| content/uploads/2020/12/slo...
|
| https://ak.picdn.net/shutterstock/videos/1023380611/thumb
| /1....
| lizkm wrote:
| 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.
| acdha wrote:
| > Expecting draconian regulations on social media to work
| is a recipe for failure.
|
| Regulations come in flavors other than draconian. Do you
| have a specific policy proposal which you're referring
| to? Otherwise it seems somewhat disingenuous to predict
| the failure of something which we don't even have enough
| detail to discuss.
| strogonoff wrote:
| > I think as a society we need to prove that we are smarter
| than these companies and are capable of discipline and
| self-control.
|
| I think it's a losing game.
|
| For as long as big social is allowed to be "free" with its
| paying customers being advertisers, it will keep
| benefitting from trolling and other unhealthy behaviours
| (narcissism?) that happen to drive up engagement and ad
| revenue. With user lock-in, full control over UI and
| algorithms at its disposal, big social has way too many
| tricks up its sleeve for your average tired-after-work-or-
| school, running-out-of-willpower, vulnerable user to
| consciously compensate for.
|
| Normalising paid social (forcing interoperability,
| downgrading platforms to pipes) is probably the most
| straightforward way for us to finally gain the ability to
| vote with our wallet and to choose client software crafted
| with our needs in mind. (I'm not a proponent of regulation
| bloat or special rules for select big companies; I think a
| small but strategically focused general requirement could
| be enough for such a change to happen.)
| jerf wrote:
| "As a culture we adore beauty, wealth, power.."
|
| Species, not culture.
|
| The evolutionary explanations for such are not hard to come up
| with just with a bit of thought, and not hard to confirm in the
| literature either. Which also means the species isn't about to
| stop admiring those things any time soon.
|
| Which means, rather than the "boil the ocean, then boil it a
| few more times again" plan of trying to somehow "fix" the
| species not to admire those things, one needs to pursue a plan
| of figuring out how to live within the existing constraints.
|
| Which takes you right back to old idea of one's rationality
| being a small human trying to corral the crazy elephant that it
| is riding to go where we want it to go. The trick is to learn
| how to prevent the crazy elephant from even seeing the
| undesirable stimuli, rather than trying to deal with what
| happens if it does after the fact.
|
| Unfortunately, explaining that to teenagers is a tough sell,
| especially when the alternative is tuning you out and going
| back to the highly-addictive social media.... even explaining
| it to adults can be a tough sell.
| cellularmitosis wrote:
| this is a much more compelling and eloquent way of saying "go
| touch grass"
| commandlinefan wrote:
| In the 80's people insisted that fashion magazines and beauty
| pageants were "toxic" for teen girls, for the exact same
| reasons. Apparently acknowledging that beauty exists is harmful
| to some people's mental health. Since it's unlikely that we're
| ever going to convince everybody that there's no such thing as
| physical beauty, maybe we'd be better off working out ways to
| help people come to terms with not being at the pinnacle of it
| while still accepting that there can be and is such a pinnacle.
| Veen wrote:
| > it was created long long ago by Hollywood and the fashion
| industry.
|
| It was created much longer ago than that. We've had beauty
| standards for as long as humans have created art, and probably
| for as long as humans have existed. It's probably biological to
| a large degree, although the manifestation has changed over
| time. As with many of social media's deleterious effects, they
| hijack, amplify, and distort our natural inclinations for their
| own purposes.
| joelbluminator wrote:
| > they hijack, amplify, and distort our natural inclinations
| for their own purposes
|
| Ironically it seems a totalitarian country like China is
| better equipped to deal with these things (see how they
| simply banned teens from gaming lately). The liberal
| democracies number one value is individual freedom; well it
| works out great most of the time but other times we are not
| that great ourselves in handling our lives and using our time
| constructively. Some of us get bored, addicted and obsessed
| under certain circumstances and I don't actually see an easy
| solution for that. Maybe social media should be age
| restricted like porn?
| peakaboo wrote:
| To me, it's obvious that "social" media is extreamly bad for
| people, and specially extra bad for young people who compare
| themselves with others a lot.
|
| If we figured too much TV was bad for people, "social" media is
| 100 times worse. How is it even possible to still feel good
| about yourself after spending time there? I don't use any of
| these services because I see them as obviously bad for our
| mental health.
| joelbluminator wrote:
| It might indeed be harmful for teens, or lets say overall
| unhelpful to them.but there are many examples where Facebook
| provides useful information, helps people stay in touch with
| family and friends or even date.
| ggggtez wrote:
| Implying that Facebook/Instagram _isn 't_ our culture.
|
| It's one and the same.
| andrew_ wrote:
| Why not both?
| zubspace wrote:
| Social media is neither good nor bad. It is a tool for
| communication.
|
| Most users benefit from social media and you can't condemn them
| for not questioning other aspects.
|
| Nevertheless, it is essential to question the intentions and
| procedures of the company behind it. I believe that external
| observers and institutions are required for this to happen and
| to spread awareness of things running afoul.
|
| However, like so many things, software can be used for good, as
| well as for evil purposes. The difficult task is to define that
| boundary without compromising the utility for most users.
|
| Related topics: Games, app stores, default browsers, etc....
| How far does the state have to intervene? How much responsible
| behaviour can be expected from the user themselves?
| freewilly1040 wrote:
| > Most users benefit from social media
|
| What evidence supports this? The story is about evidence that
| this is in fact not true.
|
| The software we are talking about is not dropped from the
| heavens. It is created by extremely large, powerful companies
| in pursuit of profit. If this software harms people, these
| companies are not neutral actors merely swept along with the
| tide of technology.
|
| > How far does the state have to intervene? How much
| responsible behaviour can be expected from the user
| themselves?
|
| Surely the most relevant question is how much responsible
| behavior can be expected from the companies themselves? They
| are the ones armed with research departments actually
| studying the effects of how their software affects people.
| handrous wrote:
| The medium is the message.
|
| The message of the Web isn't looking so great, all around, I'd
| say.
| sebastianconcpt wrote:
| If you are the designer of an environment that induces
| pathologic behavior in people is your fault or theirs?
|
| PS: Where is the people that use to proudly say "with great
| power comes great responsibility"?
| falcolas wrote:
| Where are they? Making salaries beyond most people's
| imaginations. And many honestly believe that "just" enabling
| communication and engagement can't be a bad thing.
| Voloskaya wrote:
| > Facebook just makes it super easy for people to become
| obsessed with something by "connecting" with it.
|
| "Just"? I would say this is plenty enough. And this is done
| willingly. So is it their fault ? Yes (not exclusively though)
| raman162 wrote:
| I agree that we need to hold ourselves responsible for our
| actions. If it's not going to be facebook capitalizing on our
| behavior, it will be some other company. From the article it
| seems that most teens are aware that they have an unhealthy
| relationship with instagram. Tackling this issue in a
| sustainable way is something I believe most teens are capable
| of this with the right guidance.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| If we should hold ourselves responsible, so should companies.
|
| Tackling this issue in a sustainable way is something I
| believe most companies are capable of with the right
| guidance.
| raman162 wrote:
| Morally I agree with you but the pessimist in me thinks
| that is unrealistic. I believe facebook is primarily
| motivated by their earnings. If an unhealthy behavior with
| instagram leads to more engagement, which means more ad
| sales, why would facebook interfere dramatically with that
| recipe? I won't be surprsied if they already A/B tested
| more "healthy" types of content with their feed and
| recognized it lead to a dip in engagement.
| foolinaround wrote:
| > If we should hold ourselves responsible, so should
| companies.
|
| Why "should" FB do so? It is doing the "right thing" for
| its stake holders. Of course, Ideally they should, but
| realistically not going to happen.
|
| It is us who need to protect our families because we are
| incentivized to do so. We have failed in protecting our own
| interests.
|
| It is no different from the drug dealers in our town, we
| warn our children of the dangers, take steps within our
| means to reduce our children's interactions, etc.
| smithza wrote:
| It would be VERY different if Facebook was not a free, ad-
| driven service where their sole optimization is engagement. If
| Facebook was a subscription service where users had 'timelines'
| (remember that Facebook era?), we would not be seeing the
| psychological phenomenon we see to this magnitude. Same for
| Twitter, Insta, TikTok, etc.
| Bishizel wrote:
| I think it's obviously a mix, however, an algorithm that
| maximizes purely for attention or time on site causes a lot of
| issues.
|
| Sometimes people are seeking something that is beneficial, and
| maximizing that is fine. Lots more times, people are mostly
| responding to angry posts, or falling down a conspiracy rabbit
| hole that they cannot critically think their way out of.
| Maximizing the attention of those people is clearly negative.
|
| So does society share some blame? Sure. Does an algorithm that
| maximizes some people into very bad places share some blame?
| Absolutely.
| yunohn wrote:
| > If it's not Facebook it's gonna be TikTok or something other
| platform.
|
| You are right that there will always be a different "drug" that
| exposes the same underlying societal issues. But given that
| FB+Insta are /algorithmically/ pushing these posts to users to
| increase engagement, it is their problem too.
| joelbluminator wrote:
| Every company will push whatever it needs to maximize user
| attention.They are all out there selling ads to make money, I
| don't think the other players are different than Facebook.
| yunohn wrote:
| Please stop with the incessant whataboutism.
|
| Nobody is saying that this is not a general social media
| problem, just that this article is reporting on FB hiding
| crucial information.
| joelbluminator wrote:
| Quite a few people here argued that Facebook is somehow
| doing a special evil, so yes people are kinda saying
| that.
| yunohn wrote:
| You're probably confused because you're speaking quite
| generally, while most of us here are commenting after
| reading the article:
|
| > "They came to the conclusion that some of the problems
| were specific to Instagram, and not social media more
| broadly. That is especially true concerning so-called
| social comparison, which is when people assess their own
| value in relation to the attractiveness, wealth and
| success of others." "'Social comparison is worse on
| Instagram,' states Facebook's deep dive into teen girl
| body-image issues in 2020, noting that TikTok, a short-
| video app, is grounded in performance, while users on
| Snapchat, a rival photo and video-sharing app, are
| sheltered by jokey filters that 'keep the focus on the
| face.' In contrast, Instagram focuses heavily on the body
| and lifestyle."
| joelbluminator wrote:
| I am not confused, the article is under a paywall so
| probably lots of people only read the tite, like me. But
| feel free to skip my comments of course.
| chmod600 wrote:
| "As a culture we adore beauty, wealth, power."
|
| Don't you mean "as a species"?
|
| Culture is one of the few tools we have to _overcome_ these
| natural inclinations. Religion, too.
| [deleted]
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| If you come home from work and your neighbor tells you that you
| accidentally ran over a stray cat as you left in the morning...
| do you just move on with your day and blame the cat... or do
| you start paying a little more attention so it doesn't happen
| again?
|
| The "fault" or "original sin" if you will, may lie with
| society, but Instagram and Facebook are capable of recognizing
| how their impact plays into that. At this point we know that
| they know. To be aware and not attempt to change their behavior
| is squarely unethical.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| >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
|
| Yes it is Facebook's or Instagram's fault. We are endowed with
| our natural desires (which are even more fundamentally
| biological than cultural in this case), that we have no choice
| over, but we have the choice to remove bad technologies from
| our societies.
|
| This is in fact the only choice we have. You can't cure people
| of their desire for power or beauty, but you can destroy the
| tools that amplify the worst instincts we have.
| wavefunction wrote:
| Facebook was created to rate young women on their looks so...
| yes?
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| As humans we adore beauty and power*
|
| FTFY
|
| Most issues are human issues. Just because it is a human issue
| does not make it alright to exploit it at scale with such
| invasiveness. Especially since they know that is it harmful.
| Sounds like cigarettes marketed to children. It's not a
| cigarette company issue it's a human issue after all! We are
| not liable.
| ramon wrote:
| The problem is values, body is being treated as a product. People
| are being treated as disposable. We need to reshape these values
| into better ones for a better society in the future.
| csours wrote:
| Crack and Coffee are both stimulants, but you can live your life
| on one of them.
|
| From conspiracy theories to depression it seems like Social Media
| can be a deranging influence. Maybe we can make it more like
| Coffee, but simple algorithmic goals like 'engagement' or 'watch
| time' seem to engage with our worst impulses.
| GDC7 wrote:
| If this is the principle we should abolish the Forbes rich list
| to secure the mental health of teen boys and young adults.
|
| The 0.00001%ers are out there, in any realm of life. The genie is
| out of the bottle and it's not about social media, people are
| curious about extremely rare things, so they'd be digging them
| out on blogs and vlogs if social media didn't exist.
|
| The answer to make people feel better isn't to censor the
| 0.00001%ers but to show them that they are monodimensional
| individuals who excel at that particular thing and are world
| class bad at others
|
| See Bill Gates entrepreneurial abilities vs. social skills
| nix0n wrote:
| > The 0.00001%ers are out there
|
| Actually, on Instagram, they're not. It's Photoshop.
|
| Also, we should abolish the Forbes rich list, but in a
| different way and for a different reason. There's a limited
| amount of resources on the planet, so it shouldn't be allowed
| for some to have billions while others starve. But that's off-
| topic here.
| 1billionstories wrote:
| how do employees of Facebook reading this justify their
| employment?
| brezelgoring wrote:
| Just like all the other FAANG-ites do, six figure salaries.
|
| I'll admit it, I'd also toss my ethics to the side for that
| kind of money. Hell, I'd do it for half of that, some people
| out there would for less, even.
| Kiro wrote:
| We used to have the CTO of Facebook post on HN but that time is
| long gone due to employee shaming like this. Now we just have
| comment threads filled with hatred instead.
| nodejs_rulez_1 wrote:
| More to do with sexual liberation than Facebook to be honest.
| yawaworht1978 wrote:
| Not girls fault(too young too know) not facebooks (they know but
| don't force it on anyone, society does) fault. Parents fault.
|
| It's hard to raise kids, it's hard to be a parent, it's very hard
| to raise a good kid.
|
| It's always been like that, just amplified by a factor of 100k
| with apps being with you at all times.
|
| Kids are easy impressed by superficial things, try your best so
| your kid does not fall victim to this. Not by censorship, that
| will have adversarial effects.
| detcader wrote:
| Facebook can do things to reduce dynamics that they know are
| harmful to children, just like they remove (some) content that
| is clearly harmful to children but not illegal. They just
| don't, which is their choice.
| rafale wrote:
| I agree with this sentiment. We don't talk enough about the
| nuclear family and importance of structured parenting. In fact,
| there has been a leftist movement toward marginalizing the
| family in favor of centralized uniform progressive teaching.
|
| It's ultimately the parents' responsibility to shield their
| kids from society to a degree they deem appropriate. Not only
| to provide a healthy physical environment but also a digital
| one. And this until their personality develop and crystallize.
|
| In this case, it may involve limiting the amount of time spent
| on social media. And sit downs to discuss the fakery and
| deception involved.
| fortran77 wrote:
| > "When I went on Instagram, all I saw were images of chiseled
| bodies, perfect abs and women doing 100 burpees in 10 minutes,"
| said Ms. Vlasova, now 18, who lives in Reston, Va.
|
| I just logged into my Instagram. I saw a guy fixing an old
| "roundie" television set, someone baking food, some through-the-
| microscope photos of soldering surface-mount components by hand,
| a home-made 3D printer, and a couple of clips from musicians.
| What am I missing here?
| bthrn wrote:
| You are missing that Instagram (and nearly every other online
| platform) targets users based on the type of content it thinks
| they want to see. Instagram thinks you are more interested in
| tinkering and that Ms. Vlasova is more interested in other
| things.
| whydoyoucare wrote:
| The "targeted" content diversifies based on what FB thinks
| would interest you. FB is better at predicting your interests
| and hobbies than you do, which eventually leads to
| doomscrolling.
| mc32 wrote:
| It may be more "toxic" for teen girls but it's more degree than
| binary. It negatively affects the great majority of people
| involved.
|
| Keeping up with the joneses and in vs out cliques in school are
| bad enough things that get amplified multiple times perhaps
| orders of magnitude more in a setting that promotes and
| encourages negative social behavior.
|
| It almost validates the attitudes of anti socials.
| runawaybottle wrote:
| My parents keep seeing other people's kids getting married
| constantly, and it's driving them nuts. Also their relatives
| bought new houses recently. They are obsessed and pretty much
| make me feel like a loser (or worse, evil for not giving them
| those things), even though I have different life goals.
|
| And these are grown ass adults, so god knows how the kids deal
| with it. One thing I'll say is that _other people_ have a way
| of smushing this info in your face regardless of what era. They
| managed to do it when it was just rotary phones, and they'll
| manage to do it now with whatever the internet has. In fact,
| the real interesting one is when someone delivers food to you
| in jubilation. They will manage to rub it in your face, so
| Instagram is at the very least an asynchronous form of showing
| off that you can try to avoid.
| elisaado wrote:
| As a teen boy: Instagram is not only toxic for teen girls.
|
| The constant craving for likes that eventually turns into craving
| for attention can't be good.
| HelixEndeavor wrote:
| lol delete the app
| everdrive wrote:
| Facebook is an accelerant. The movie "Mean Girls" largely
| predated social media and highlighted many of the same issues.
| This seems to be a pretty ingrained issue, although I think most
| people agree that Facebook makes it worse.
|
| Here's a theory that's nearly guaranteed to land me in hot water:
|
| Why are young girls so awful to each other? I don't think it's
| unreasonable to suspect that is has to do with "hormones," new
| emotions, and new social awareness, etc. But, it's also the case
| that from a strictly evolutionary perspective, young girls are
| are the most fertile and therefore the most desirable. This will
| decline over time, and sharply as women enter their 30s, 40s, and
| 50s. Perhaps there's an evolutionary reason why young girls work
| so hard to identity and sideline any competition? If this is the
| period of their life where they are the most desirable, there
| might be an evolutionary benefit to be the most cut-throat when
| it comes to vying for the best mating opportunities.
|
| A few caveats:
|
| - Hopefully I don't have to explain that evolutionary impulses
| are not the same as desirable or positive social values.
|
| - Nor are evolutionary impulses immutable, or always expressed in
| the same way. (for example, sports are often observed as a
| peaceful replacement for warring city states.)
|
| - Further, I'm definitely aware that evolutionary psychology can
| sound very reasonable while being perfectly rubbish and
| unscientific. There are plenty of people who say things like
| "because hunter-gathers experienced X," that explains "dubious
| trend which I have anecdotally observed." Even in the case where
| an evolutionary psychology explanation may happen to be correct,
| it remains difficult to prove or test.
| magicink81 wrote:
| > "Facebook is an accelerant."
|
| What is the shape of evolution? Many believe the shape of
| evolution to be a line of deterministic "progress" with a
| forward and a backward movement that may be accelerated.
|
| Maybe evolution is a process which we are unconsciously subject
| to and consciously participate in forming. It seems directors,
| managers, and other employees working for Facebook may be more
| conscious of the role the Facebook systems play in social,
| psychological, and evolutionary processes, and the outcomes the
| systems grow.
| everdrive wrote:
| >Many believe the shape of evolution to be a line of
| deterministic "progress" with a forward and a backward
| movement that may be accelerated.
|
| I don't think this is correct. At least this is not a
| definition of evolution that I've ever seen reproduced. If
| anything, biologists I've read point to views such as this a
| misconception which must be corrected.
|
| Dawkins is mostly talking about evolution and creationism in
| "The Blind Watchmaker,"
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blind_Watchmaker) but I
| think it applies here as well: evolution is not guided, and
| there is no progress in the human sense of the word. ie,
| people are not "more evolved" than our ancestors. We have
| different adaptations which might be better (or worse) suited
| for certain evolutionary challenges. If the evolutionary
| pressures lined up properly, we could easily evolve to be
| more similar to other mammals. (ie, some people would call
| that "devolve.")
| BackBlast wrote:
| As a society we do a poor job helping children mature. We put
| them in environments where their models for behavior are peers
| instead of well-adjusted and behaved adults. So we end up with
| Lord of the Flys writ large. Many of the children-peer-models
| come from broken families, with significantly reduced ability
| to learn from stable well-adjusted adults. Worse, often their
| basic needs aren't being fully met, and they act out (bully,
| etc).
|
| We need fewer systems that put children (especially younger
| children) in situations where they are primarily interacting
| with and modeling the behavior of other children. This includes
| both our education and digital social systems.
|
| Some children have active and involved home and family lives.
| This helps. Some get more favorable interactions and time with
| teachers, this can help. Some find positive models in media
| (books and movies) and can help, but media is often negative.
| [deleted]
| lkey wrote:
| You seem to be aware that you are just navel gazing here.
|
| You've based your analysis on a comedy you saw in the 2000s
| that in turn based itself on the experiences of white affluent
| American teenagers.
|
| The second leg of your analysis is not grounded in an
| understanding of actual female biology.
|
| The one 'fact' you cite is wrong, 'young girls' are not the
| most fertile, the range for peak fertility for _women_ is from
| their _very_ late teens (18-19) to late 20s. The majority peaks
| in their early to mid 20s (~24 years old).
|
| If you want to comment about how women and men function
| 'evolutionarily', please at least understand a bit about how
| human biology works right now.
| everdrive wrote:
| >You seem to be aware that you are just navel gazing here.
|
| I like to think of it more as "presenting the details of my
| argument clearly so that they can be discredited if I've made
| an error.," rather than "navel gazing." Of course, there is
| nothing wrong with criticizing ideas, and so thank you for
| your response.
|
| I don't know that I have a direct counterpoint to your claim,
| and it might be that my argument is irreparably harmed. I
| might still wonder that this is still wrapped up in
| evolutionary psychology, as it seems to be related to the
| onset of puberty. So, perhaps my idea still plays a role in
| what's going on here, even if it is not the primary role.
| (ie, perhaps it's one of many factors at play. Women could
| still be quite invested their sexual prospects shortly before
| they hit their peak fertility.)
|
| I suppose my question for you would be, what do you think
| about all this? Do you believe that young girls are affected
| differently than young boys by social media? If so, do you
| believe this relies on a psychological tendency which existed
| prior to social media? If so, do you believe there's any
| evolutionary component to it, or do you believe there's some
| other explanation?
| saltminer wrote:
| > Do you believe that young girls are affected differently
| than young boys by social media?
|
| Yes.
|
| Women are taught from a young age how they must act, dress,
| etc. What they should look like, that they should fit into
| a size 0, be <100 lbs, start counting calories when they
| hit puberty, etc.
|
| Keep in mind that every attempt at a teenage boy's magazine
| has flopped, while teenage girl's magazines (at least until
| the decline of magazines and print media more generally)
| were quite popular. And this is in large part because there
| are a lot of expectations placed on girls that were never
| placed on guys, so these magazines helped guide a lot of
| young women through puberty (whether they guided them well
| is a matter for another discussion entirely, but they
| certainly did hold a lot of influence).
|
| While there certainly are images of the ideal man that
| societies have held up over time, they don't have the same
| weight as expectations for women. If you have a dad bod,
| nobody is going to be glaring at you at the beach for
| showing it off, whispering about how "un-masculine" you
| look, that you need to show a little modesty, but a woman
| who goes to the beach with hairy legs will absolutely be
| subject to comments about how un-ladylike you are and that
| you look "masculine," even though body hair is entirely
| natural.
|
| But it's not just when you're at the beach, and it's not
| just leg hair - it's everywhere, about everything, and it
| starts very early on. It's your parents telling you,
| advertisements and Hollywood reinforcing it, being told by
| your teachers you should be more feminine, your pastor
| saying that your outfit isn't "appropriate" for Sunday
| school (because it's not a dress), random men saying you
| should lose some weight... it never ends.
|
| So while men are definitely having more body issues these
| days, it's nowhere near the same extent. Social media helps
| to reinforce societal beauty standards that have been
| taught to us all our lives.
|
| > If so, do you believe this relies on a psychological
| tendency which existed prior to social media? If so, do you
| believe there's any evolutionary component to it, or do you
| believe there's some other explanation?
|
| Not any innate tendency but just being beaten down until
| you conform. The advent of social media didn't magically
| erase the expectations we place on women, instead it became
| another place for reinforcing them.
|
| > Women could still be quite invested their sexual
| prospects shortly before they hit their peak fertility.
|
| I am single and have no desire to have kids despite being
| in "peak fertility." I am also not actively seeking out a
| partner. I'm not opposed to dating, it's just more
| convenient for me not to at the moment.
|
| This is entirely anecdotal, but of my friends who do want
| kids, they don't really think about "oh god gotta find a
| mate and have kids I'm about to turn 26." They're more
| interested in finding the right person first, especially
| since we have so many fertility treatment options today
| (and having kids has gotten more expensive than ever).
| Having kids when you're not ready is generally a bad idea,
| and I hope I don't have to explain why.
| lkey wrote:
| I wrote and thought better of a too long response to this.
| Instead of trying to stay under the TL;DR word limit, I
| think instead you should focus on answering why you believe
| this:
|
| "I might still wonder that this is still wrapped up in
| evolutionary psychology"
|
| is a more useful frame of reference than, say, a model of
| addiction: https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers
| /w28936/w289...
|
| Do we _gain_ any explanatory power by adding untestable
| hypotheses to the existing body of work about how society
| constructs /impossible to realize/ standards for both boys
| and girls.
|
| To your question, yes, girls and boys are socialized
| differently in our culture, and thus they will be exposed
| to different social media, pressures, and expectations from
| the moment they are born. However, I don't think you need
| to immediately reach for evolutionary psychology to explain
| this.
|
| The underlying pressure, in my view, is the pressure to
| sell objects that relieve the dissonance that 'influencers'
| and ad writers amplify.
|
| Evolution certainly made us (regardless of gender)
| _susceptible_ to this kind of influence, but culture
| determines which of our insecurities weaponized and how.
|
| See also: brain pills, protein, and cars for predominantly
| male audiences.
|
| Would these same kinds of pressures have existed in the
| tribal circumstances under which we evolved? Sure, but
| they'd have been way way _way_ less potent.
|
| I also don't think evo psych tells us that our current
| societal structures are pre-determined or inevitable. If
| anything, we've been taught again that human brains are
| remarkably flexible and even _relatively light_ social
| pressure from social media can cut against the grain of
| other fundamental biological tendencies, like self-
| preservation.
| yaseer wrote:
| The toxic culture of Instagram is not driven by teen girls,
| it's driven by a toxic mix of a powerful capitalist machine and
| social media. Sell the perfect lifesfyle and body.
|
| For the record - I believe in capitalism generally, I just
| think the incarnation of capitalism on social media is
| particularly damaging. The free market has produced a product
| like big Tobacco did.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| Men can impregnate indefinitely many women. As long as we have
| communities in which an individual mother isn't totally
| dependent on the father during critical years, there doesn't
| seem much need for competition here. That's a result of
| monogamy and nuclear families that probably wasn't the norm
| when humans were evolving these behaviors hundreds of thousands
| of years ago.
| babyblueblanket wrote:
| Teen girls are _not at all_ ready for pregnancy in any respect.
| Just because they started puberty doesn 't mean puberty has
| been completed.
| saltminer wrote:
| Exactly, I hate seeing discussions about "peak fertility,"
| especially since the people posting about it usually don't
| know it's more like 30. [0] And more than that, the risk of
| complications is much higher for teenagers. [1] A relevant
| quote:
|
| > Adolescent mothers (ages 10-19 years) face higher risks of
| eclampsia, puerperal endometritis, and systemic infections
| than women aged 20 to 24 years, and babies of adolescent
| mothers face higher risks of low birth weight, preterm
| delivery and severe neonatal conditions. (4)
|
| And just because you might be in the "peak fertility" period
| doesn't mean you should rush to have children. If you are not
| ready for kids, they will suffer for it, and none of the
| girls I knew who got pregnant in high school were mature
| enough to handle a child and finish school (much less the
| fathers), so their parents and grandparents had to step in
| and do most of the parenting.
|
| These kinds of discussions, especially combined with the
| evolutionary biology pseudoscience, really remind me of the
| way incel forums talk about women. Especially with the
| interesting absence of any mention of men's fertility, which
| also peaks around 30. [0]
|
| [0]: https://www.bumc.bu.edu/busm/2013/07/02/fertility-peaks-
| arou...
|
| [1]: https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-
| sheets/detail/adolescent-...
| vmception wrote:
| Amongst mammals, human females actual limited fertility is the
| odd thing.
|
| Visual and maybe hormonal attractiveness may change over time
| with other mammals too, but not actual numeric quantity of
| eggs. (I'm not sure if there is broad enough data on egg
| viability across all mammals though, but the fixed quantity and
| therefore approximate time period of fertility is more easily
| seen)
|
| Given that this variable is the different one, the differences
| in human populations (ie. the competition for being chosen)
| really should be evaluated with this aspect weighted more
| heavily.
| spiznnx wrote:
| Does the evolutionary answer to "why are young girls awful to
| each other" matter? How does it inform our product design to
| make tech healthier for teenagers?
|
| We already know this is a vulnerable group, and that teen girls
| have tendencies to compare themselves with peers. Putting a
| 24/7 stream of perfect, curated, retouched posts from friends
| in front of all of them seems obviously not ideal.
|
| edit: I may be giving a gut reaction to seeing up-voted amateur
| evolutionary psychology
| jl6 wrote:
| Your theory seems backwards. Cut-throat competition for mating
| opportunities should be a strategy for the _least_ desirable,
| who have the _greatest_ need to compete for the scarce
| resource. If you 're top of the desirability scale, you _are_
| the scarce resource, and your job is to discern the best suitor
| amongst the many who put themselves forward.
| DarkByte8 wrote:
| But when you are in a competition even if you are nr. 1 you
| still have to defend the position so you still need to cut
| some throats.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| Part of the reason I dislike many evo-psych explanations as
| an archaeologist is that they end up reflecting a lot of the
| author's assumptions about the nature of human societies and
| not the diversity of forms we actually observe. You can
| support virtually any argument by just narrowing or widening
| this scope appropriately. One example here is that young
| women are free to actually decide which "suitors" to accept.
| In some gerontocracies, young women generally don't have that
| choice, socially at least.
| risky_opinions wrote:
| What if you're second best? What if you don't know your
| position?
|
| Game theory.
| foolinaround wrote:
| when 'best' is subjective, perceptions and biases come into
| play...
| webnrrd2k wrote:
| This is just speculation on my part, but maybe being cut-
| throat _is_ the strategy -- it 's just applied to both
| potential suitors _and_ potential competition. If you 're at
| the top of the pyramid then the easiest way to discourage
| both unsuitable competition and unsuitable suitors is to be
| mean about it.
| webnrrd2k wrote:
| Now that I think about it a little more, it's probably more
| applicable to be mean to anyone in an outgroup.
|
| And now that I think about it even more, I really have no
| idea of what I'm talking about. Most of the time that I've
| been mean to people, when I was younger, it was basically
| because I was an immature and confused jackass. And, as far
| as relationships go, who hasn't made a complete ass of
| theselves at one point or another?
| Enginerrrd wrote:
| The primary objection I'd have would be that you haven't
| defined "young girls" here and the age group cohort (~14-18)
| that we're really talking about is actually probably NOT the
| most fertile cohort. There's overlap of course, but that'd
| probably be more like 18-25. Which, in my anecdotal experience
| is definitely a time where young women seem to treat each other
| a lot better.
| mattgreenrocks wrote:
| One recent realization: I suspect many (read: more than just
| teen girls) see social media as a real-time status market.
| There is a constant stream of information, and the subtext of
| that is often status-oriented. Thus, for the status-hungry,
| keeping up with updates feels necessary even if it makes them
| feel terrible.
|
| There are elements of addiction at work here, too, but if
| social media was a net negative it wouldn't be as sticky as it
| is now. People are obviously getting something they want from
| it.
| padastra wrote:
| Tobacco was a net negative and, without regulation, would
| have remained super sticky. Exercise is a net positive and,
| for many, is horribly unstick you. How sticky something is
| correlated better with how well it hits up those short term
| dopamine surges (or how well its absence causes short term
| dopamine deficits) than it does with the net value it
| provides a person.
| eplanit wrote:
| Much of what you say about hormones has been considered
| scientific fact for a long time -- but I wouldn't be surprised
| to learn that the facts have been banished by political
| correctness.
|
| Plus, Facebook is indeed a harmful product for society at large
| (like cigarettes), and often has bigger negative impacts on
| younger users (again like cigarettes).
|
| The combination of these is obviously bad...but Facebook
| knowing it and hiding the fact is _very much_ (again) like what
| tobacco companies did.
| marjoram wrote:
| Mean Girls wasn't a documentary, and as a former teen girl, I'd
| argue that girls aren't actually uniquely awful: what they are
| is especially sensitive to social cues and influences. You may
| note that the article here isn't really about bullying, it's
| more about girls making themselves miserable by comparing their
| lives and their bodies to what they see online. I do actually
| think there may be an evolutionary element to the fact that
| females are (on average) more oriented to language and
| interpersonal skills, more attuned to social feedback, and on
| the flipside, more prone to anxiety as a result, but I think
| it's a mistake to view that through too simplistic a lens.
| techer wrote:
| But it was based on a non-fiction book, "Queen Bees and
| Wannabes".
| hdjjhhvvhga wrote:
| Your theory doesn't explain why boys don't act the same. Their
| attractiveness also dwindles with time - you could argue it's
| happening less steeply, but still.
| everdrive wrote:
| >Their attractiveness also dwindlew with time
|
| First, young boys are certainly competitive with each other.
| Bullying is largely about social status, and social status is
| the main predictor for mate choice.
|
| Second, male attractiveness does not follow the same pattern.
| Yes, sperm quality does degrade with age, but that decline is
| nowhere near as sharp as the decline in a woman's
| reproductive health. Not only will their eggs run out, but
| their chance of surviving childbirth drops sharply with age.
| Remember, we're not talking about western societies with
| modern medicine, but evolutionary imperatives which would
| have developed prior to any sort of antibiotics, pain
| killers, C-sections, etc.
|
| Third, male attractiveness is strongly correlated with access
| to status and resources. Which young men almost universally
| don't have. (although young men may show traits which
| indicate potential future access to status and resources:
| intelligence, drive, assertiveness, popularity, etc.)
| However, an older man (30s-40s) still has very healthy sperm,
| and may have proven access to status and resources, which is
| nearly universally considered attractive.
|
| So, I don't think it's fair to claim that male attractiveness
| declines over time an sort of the same way as female
| attractiveness. (Once again, from a strictly evolutionary
| perspective.)
| jhardy54 wrote:
| Which studies are your claims based on?
| mpweiher wrote:
| All of them?
|
| For an intro:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_attractiveness
| justToAddLink wrote:
| just to add a source of the attractiveness declining less
| steeply:
|
| Maestripieri, Dario et al. "A greater decline in female
| facial attractiveness during middle age reflects women's loss
| of reproductive value". Frontiers in Psychology 5. (2014):
| 179. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.
| 0017...
| Guest19023892 wrote:
| I think the difference is that men are more physically
| violent. Boys fight and throw punches. This doesn't translate
| well to Instagram. If teenage boys spend more time online and
| not in person, then they have less opportunities for physical
| violence and abuse towards each other. However, it's
| different with teenage girls. There's more emotional abuse
| and pressure to look a certain way. Instagram and social
| media are a very efficient way for this type of abuse to take
| place, so it prospers there with young girls.
| wussboy wrote:
| Males aren't sexually selected for attractiveness. They are
| selected for their ability to provide for a mother and baby.
| So, human male's desirability increases with time, peaking at
| some point where their peak wealth crosses their inability to
| procreate.
| justToAddLink wrote:
| this can also be seen through the fact that females are
| four times more sensitive than males to economic status
| cues when rating opposite sex attractiveness [1]
|
| [1] - Guanlin Wang, Minxuan Cao, Justina Sauciuvenaite,
| Ruth Bissland, Megan Hacker, Catherine Hambly, Lobke M.
| Vaanholt, Chaoqun Niu, Mark D. Faries, & John R. Speakman
| (2018). Different impacts of resources on opposite sex
| ratings of physical attractiveness by males and females.
| Evolution and Human Behavior, 39(2), 220-225. https://www.s
| ciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S10905...
| datavirtue wrote:
| My old boss used to say he would just hold up a picture
| of his paycheck on Tinder if his wife ever dumped him.
| Unfortunately it would also show the child support
| deduction.
| throwaway306744 wrote:
| I read that there is pressure on boys to appear
| nonthreatening for as long as possible. They benefit when the
| growth spurt from aw cute to damn hot is quick.
| everdrive wrote:
| That's really interesting. I've always observed anecdotally
| that female preferences change drastically between very
| young women and older. Specifically, teen magazines aimed
| at young girls always seem to have very feminine, boyish,
| non-threatening males. My observation has been that this
| preference is dropped pretty sharply as women get a little
| bit older.
|
| I never knew (and still, don't know) to what degree this
| trait is actually universal. (ie, perhaps it's just a weird
| quirk of teen magazines in the last 30 years) Do you have
| links to that study or anything like it? I'd like to check
| it out.
| Ozzie_osman wrote:
| > Why are young girls so awful to each other?. I don't think
| it's unreasonable to suspect that it has to do with "hormones"
|
| I don't see why this is relevant (if it's even true). The
| article barely talks about bullying or girls being awful to
| each other. It more broadly talks about people spending hours
| in their feeds comparing themselves to what they see and
| feeling bad about it, which seems like a very different
| problem.
| pier25 wrote:
| It's related because, even when the article doesn't mention
| bullying, this competition influences the perception girls
| have of their body and self image.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| In college, I suppose I must have looked especially naive,
| because this gal-pal of mine sat me down and explained in a
| rather grave tone: "at_a_remove, there are two things you
| should understand about women. First, everything we do is about
| men. Second, women _hate_ other women. "
|
| I scoffed. I scoffed for a long time. But there is an
| uncomfortable kernel to her statement that I have seen again
| and again, long before social media, in young women and their
| constant status hierarchy struggles, and _Mean Girls_ wasn 't
| even the first time it was made too evident. I would point to
| _Heathers_ and _Carrie_ as even earlier examples. Teenage girls
| are vicious with one another 's emotions and friendships,
| trusts and secrets, in a way that boys and men rarely get a
| glimpse of.
| lkey wrote:
| You were right to scoff.
|
| Heathers was a movie also about an abusive sociopathic male
| engineering the deaths of his classmates in an act of petty
| rebellion against his abusive sociopathic father who killed
| his mother.
|
| Anyone that tells you that 'All {men,women} do is about
| {power,sex,men,women}'. is just telling on themselves and
| their social group specifically.
|
| On the first and second statement, lesbians the world over
| would like a word.
| rendall wrote:
| > _If this is the period of their life where they are the most
| desirable, there might be an evolutionary benefit to be the
| most cut-throat when it comes to vying for the best mating
| opportunities._
|
| I appreciate the approach, but I do think it is probably (as
| you yourself warned) a "just so" story.
|
| Teenaged girls can be mean. Teenaged boys can be mean. Adults
| can be mean. Members of all of these groups can be nice,
| sometimes transcendently kind. These behaviors can be explained
| without reference to ancient drives to fertility and mating, I
| think.
| armchairhacker wrote:
| Yeah i think teenage girls are sometimes mean to each other
| because they have pride, just like every other human being.
| Some people's pride makes them work long hours, some makes
| them work out, some makes them debate, and some makes them
| dress up and try to be the most popular.
|
| Also i don't think most teenage girls act like "Mean Girls"
| in real life. I was once in school and I have a teenage
| sister. Many girls like to post instagrams and tiktoks to get
| likes and follows, but they're not cutthroat about it and the
| girls are sympathetic to each other.
|
| The places where girls are backstabbing each other, are
| probably the same places where guys are fighting each other.
| everdrive wrote:
| I really appreciate your comment. I still think my theory
| seems reasonable, but we should all be clear that a theory
| which "seems reasonable to some people" is very far something
| which is scientifically proven or even likely.
| rendall wrote:
| Agreed. Evolution drives our behavior; that fact horrifies
| some people; and for every observation there is an
| explanation that is clear, simple and wrong.
|
| We humans are apes and, so, teenaged girls are apes. Apes
| are obsessed with hierarchy, status and sex. That doesn't
| change because we communicate using abstract symbols over a
| ridiculously innovative invention.
| lkey wrote:
| Agreed, hardware drives computer behavior; this fact
| horrifies some "people";
|
| Raspberry pis are computers and, so, raspberry pi picos
| are computers. Raspberry pis, and picos especially, are
| obsessed with computation related to hobby projects. This
| doesn't change because computers can technically compute
| anything.
|
| Is what people are "horrified" by the dangerous facts you
| spill, or the fact that your analysis here completely
| misses the point when we talk about social media and
| interventions aimed at curbing their tremendously
| negative impact.
| bobthechef wrote:
| You seem to be both treading into naturalistic fallacy
| and brushing up against ad hominem. The latter because
| you don't know the motives of those who disagree with you
| (they could just find your explanation unconvincing) and
| the former because just because human beings have been
| phylogenetically classified as apes does not mean you can
| deploy your syllogism so easily.
|
| Note: I am not arguing one way or the other here.
| Obviously there is competition for mates among human
| beings. What I'm suggesting is that we be careful when
| drawing on evolutionary explanations flippantly and
| simplistically. Lord knows that e.g. "evolutionary
| psychology" (which this would fall under) is packed with
| just-so stories.
| everdrive wrote:
| >Lord knows that e.g. "evolutionary psychology" (which
| this would fall under) is packed with just-so stories.
|
| I think this has to be admitted, and that any explanation
| based on evolutionary psychology should be viewed more
| skeptically than other arguments. However, I think it's
| absolutely true that genetics do influence our psychology
| to some degree. And so, there must be some evolutionary
| psychology claims which can be said to be true. At a very
| high, and very basic level, some are so self-evident that
| no one bothers to make them: ie, that sexual attraction
| exists, is a strong motivator for most people, and must
| have a basis in evolutionary fitness. Obviously things
| can get more murky when you want to discuss behaviors
| with more nuance or complexity. Further, even when a
| claim is probably true it's quite hard to actually test
| in a scientific manner. You can isolate the behavior, but
| not the explanation. How can you truly prove that a
| behavior is caused by evolution rather than social
| pressure?
|
| That said, I don't think the whole field can be thrown
| out, despite your accurate claim that the field can be a
| bit of a mess.
| dsr_ wrote:
| It's cultural.
| tomgp wrote:
| the article is mainly concerned with body image and passive
| social comparison rather that 'young girls being awful to each
| other' a view which is not a universal truth and says more
| about the holder of the opinion than anything else.
| revel wrote:
| Can we please not react to this article by immediately blaming
| teenage girls? You have an article that shows one of the most
| powerful corporations in the world exploiting teenagers to
| boost revenues and lying about it in testimony before congress.
| That's the story.
| debrice wrote:
| I believe he's not blaming the teenage girls but _maybe_
| trying to understand why it overwhelmingly impacts girls?
| richwater wrote:
| > exploiting teenagers
|
| Anyone, at any time, can stop using Facebook or Instagram
| with 0 repercussions.
| detcader wrote:
| Children don't have the agency/brain development to take
| care of themselves in the presence of societal and peer
| pressure. This is the basis of many, many laws, social
| mores, and taboos.
| [deleted]
| colechristensen wrote:
| Can we please not pretend that these issues are new?
| Instagram didn't invent body image issues or children being
| monsters, they're just participating in something which has
| existed forever.
| J-dawg wrote:
| I don't understand how you could read the parent comment and
| decide that it's "blaming" teen girls, unless you are
| deliberately arguing in bad faith.
|
| Teenage girls are predisposed to behave in the way described,
| and Facebook/Instagram is profiting by exploiting that.
| Nothing about the explanation above is blaming them. If
| anything the comment makes a stronger case for Facebook's
| actions being immoral.
| jhardy54 wrote:
| > Teenage girls are predisposed to behave in the way
| described, and Facebook/Instagram is profiting by
| exploiting that.
|
| Has this been studied, or are we taking an arbitrary
| thought experiment as a foundational axiom?
| revel wrote:
| Facebook studied it internally and covered it up in
| congressional testimony. That's literally what the
| article is about
| mrgreenfur wrote:
| Agreed. SOME may behave this way, but without more info
| who are we to say that they "are predisposed" in general.
| Teenage years are very hard for tons of reasons mentioned
| above and the way people handle those stresses comes down
| to tons of factors, support systems, upbringing, context,
| culture, etc.
|
| Facebook is immorally exploiting that stress.
| remarkEon wrote:
| It's kind of amazing to me that an observation that
| anyone could make based on their experience as a human
| living on planet earth gets discounted because there
| isn't some peer reviewed study from Harvard or whatever
| that confirms the observation. Young girls are mean to
| each other, that's a fact. We don't need an army of data
| scientists to "look into it".
| zepto wrote:
| > Young girls are mean to each other, that's a fact.
|
| In all societies across time? Or just in American High
| schools and on Instagram?
| remarkEon wrote:
| Lemme get Yale on the phone, or better yet Oxford. Maybe
| they can provide us an answer to the question of "are
| young girls mean to each other, yes or no".
| zepto wrote:
| How is this sarcastic answer helpful? As far as I can see
| you have provided no useful information.
|
| If you don't think universities are the right people to
| help with this question, who would you recommend to
| answer it?
|
| You said: "Young girls are mean to each other, that's a
| fact."
|
| How do you know this fact?
| remarkEon wrote:
| > How is this sarcastic answer helpful?
|
| It's helpful because it's pointing out how absurd it is
| to constantly demand "data" to verify rudimentary
| observations of human nature. For whatever reason, and
| maybe it's because of tech being so data obsessed, you
| can make a claim on this website as benign as "look both
| ways before crossing the street" and inevitably someone
| will want to see a "peer reviewed" study that says
| looking both ways before crossing the street "affects the
| outcome variable" of not getting hit by a car.
|
| > If you don't think universities are the right people to
| help with this question, who would you recommend to
| answer it?
|
| Your mother, or your sister if you have one.
|
| >How do you know this fact?
|
| My name is remarkEon and I went to middle and high school
| in the United States on a planet I call Earth.
| zepto wrote:
| >>> Young girls are mean to each other, that's a fact.
|
| >>> In all societies across time? Or just in American
| High schools and on Instagram?
|
| >> How do you know this fact?
|
| >My name is remarkEon and _I went to middle and high
| school in the United States on a planet_ I call Earth.
|
| Ok, so you think your American High school experience
| gives you insight into _all societies across time._
|
| Understood. Your answers make sense now. Thanks for
| answering.
| remarkEon wrote:
| Is your claim that _only_ in the United States is it that
| girls are mean to each other when they are in primary and
| secondary school? This seems like a _much_ more extreme
| claim than mine. You have to argue that there's something
| unique about the not_the_United_States schools such that
| there's something nullifying intrafemale competition.
|
| It's a claim so extreme that ... I'd like to see some
| data to back it up.
| zepto wrote:
| > You have to argue that there's something unique about
| the not_the_United_States schools such that there's
| something nullifying intrafemale competition.
|
| Why do you think this? You only have your school
| experience to go on. You have nothing to base this claim
| on.
|
| I think it's entirely possible that the conditions of
| school create much of the competition you are observing,
| and that US schools are more extreme than others.
|
| School intentionally creates behaviors. There is no
| reason not to believe that it has side effects.
|
| And yes, to get any insight into which of is right, _we'd
| need someone to have studied it._
| remarkEon wrote:
| I honestly think you must be trolling at this point.
| You're taking this pedantic, academic view about the
| behavior of children and taking it to such an extreme (US
| school structure and its problems explain all malevolent
| minor female behavior) that I can't believe you're
| arguing in good faith.
| zepto wrote:
| No - I'm arguing that culture and social structures
| influence behavior, and that you can't generalize from
| what you have observed at school to other cultures and
| times.
|
| There is nothing pedantic or academic or anything I have
| said.
|
| > US school structure and its problems explain all
| malevolent minor female behavior
|
| This is simply a lie. I never said anything that implies
| this extreme view.
|
| You are arguing that malevolent minor female behavior is
| universal and doesn't need to be studied.
|
| You might turn out to be right about the former, but
| without studying it, it's just your baseless prejudice.
| JohnWhigham wrote:
| It's a weird phenomenon that's unique to HN. I understand
| that the idea is to elevate online discussion here, but
| many do it to such an absurd degree that anything anyone
| says always has someone asking for a source.
|
| I sometimes wonder how these people would have survived
| at parties or social gatherings before the Internet when
| you couldn't just whip out your phone, spend 2 minutes
| not talking to anyone, click on the first Google search
| result, and then proclaiming "um acksually..."
| everdrive wrote:
| Experience and observation are a great place to begin an
| investigation. Of course if you're not careful, they can
| incorrectly color your results. As you say, anecdotal
| beliefs are not necessarily facts.
|
| That said, the error I see more commonly is that the
| observation is perfectly valid, (or at least roughly
| valid) but the explanation is poor. People believe in the
| explanation because they feel so strongly about the
| observation. This is a fallacy I see over and over again.
| (and is often something I've seen leveraged in scams:
| "You've all experienced X. Here are some emotional
| stories about X. Now let me tell you how I have all the
| answers to X.")
|
| I've tried to make it clear that my idea is not proven,
| but is something that I think is reasonable, and will
| hopefully lead to an interesting discussion. I'm
| definitely not suggesting that I have access to the
| truth, or that my idea is fact simply because I've
| explained something using scientific terms.
| sseagull wrote:
| Maybe experience shouldn't be thrown outright, but there
| is a history of "obvious" stuff that falls apart under
| scrutiny.
|
| Observer expectations can be really strong.
|
| For example, does sugar make kids hyperactive? No real
| evidence for it (last I checked). But widely believed as
| fact.
| mbesto wrote:
| > Why are young girls so awful to each other? I don't think
| it's unreasonable to suspect that is has to do with
| "hormones," new emotions, and new social awareness, etc.
| But, it's also the case that from a strictly evolutionary
| perspective, young girls are are the most fertile and
| therefore the most desirable.
|
| How could the words "I don't think it's unreasonable to
| suspect..." not be considered blaming them? There is
| definitely some nuance here (I don't think the parent
| comment is hard-lining to say that the victims here are
| 100% to blame), but they are most certainly associating
| some level of blame to teens and their inherent
| "predisposed" behavior as you say.
| franga2000 wrote:
| The comment doesn't sound to me like blaming the girls, but
| just taking the core of the blame off of Facebook.
|
| And it's really pretty clear that Facebook didn't create any
| of these problems and that removing it won't solve them.
| Facebook makes it easier for girls to bully each other in the
| same way that relaxed gun laws make it easier for criminals
| to shoot people. Or, as Londoners will tell you: "you can't
| solve knife crime by taking away people's knives".
|
| The fact that Facebook profits from the issue doesn't make it
| their fault unless you can prove that they actively seek to
| make it worse. And even then, they can only carry the blame
| proportional to how much they made it worse.
| foolinaround wrote:
| > relaxed gun laws make it easier for criminals to shoot
| people
|
| A little O/T, but this trope needs to please stop.
|
| The places with the highest gun crimes are also the places
| with the toughest gun laws. It should go without saying
| that criminals without definition would not care about
| laws.
| muglug wrote:
| > The places with the highest gun crimes are also the
| places with the toughest gun laws
|
| Only in America. Other western nations have tough gun
| laws and also low gun crime, because you can't hop in
| your car and pick up a gun in a neighbouring state.
|
| And actually the correlation is only seen in parts of
| America. New York City has tough gun laws, comparatively
| low gun crime and a lower homicide rate per capita than
| the rest of the country.
|
| Time and time again people say "tough gun laws lead to
| more gun crime" but really they mean "in a country where
| it's really really easy to buy guns, we mostly see the
| negative impact of gun ownership in high-density poor
| neighbourhoods".
| zepto wrote:
| > because you can't hop in your car and pick up a gun in
| a neighbouring state.
|
| You can't do this in America either. You can only buy
| guns legally in your state of residence.
| germinalphrase wrote:
| There's no paperwork or background check on a private
| sale, so it's almost a meaningless distinction.
| zepto wrote:
| > There's no paperwork or background check on a private
| sale, so it's almost a meaningless distinction.
|
| If someone is willing to buy a gun illegally, they don't
| need to go out of state.
| germinalphrase wrote:
| Private sales aren't illegal, but - yes - guns are easily
| available (legal or not) in the United States.
| zepto wrote:
| Guns are widely available to anyone who wants to break
| the law.
|
| The claim that this is because people can drive to others
| states is false.
|
| For everyone else, how available they are depends on
| where you live.
| germinalphrase wrote:
| Yes, I agree with everything your are saying. On a
| practical level, guns are _available_ to anyone who wants
| one. Regional and city level restrictions only create a
| mild level of friction.
| zepto wrote:
| > On a practical level, guns are available to anyone who
| wants one.
|
| For the law abiding, that's not true in places where you
| need a license just to buy one such as NYC, or in CA
| where most handguns and many rifles are not available.
| hkt wrote:
| > The places with the highest gun crimes are also the
| places with the toughest gun laws.
|
| Big claims require some big evidence. In the UK there are
| strict controls on gun ownership and we have virtually no
| crimes carried out with legal guns, and more but still
| very few with illegal ones. Can you give some counter
| examples?
| franga2000 wrote:
| I meant criminals in this context as anyone who commits a
| crime using a gun. If you shoot someone you're a criminal
| regardless of whether you used an illegally acquired gun
| like a "career criminal" certainly would or if you had
| the gun legally and then decided to commit a crime.
|
| And I can't really agree with your assertion either. See
| stats in [0] and a gun law map in [1]. At best it's a
| correlation without causation, but the correlation
| certainly isn't the inverse as you suggest.
|
| I also don't see how it's not a relevant example - it's
| Thing A making Thing B worse, but Thing B would still
| happen without Thing A and so Thing A can't be blamed for
| Thing B. Regardless of whether the underlying assertion
| is correct (less gun control leading to more gun crime),
| the logic is valid.
|
| [0] https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-
| rankings/gun-death... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O
| verview_of_gun_laws_by_nation
| mpweiher wrote:
| In addition to the other comments: have you considered
| that the causality is reversed?
|
| That is, tough gun laws are enacted exactly because of a
| high rate of gun crime?
|
| And of course those tougher laws can have at best a mild
| moderating effect when guns can freely enter that area
| with the tougher gun laws from other areas that do not
| have them.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firear
| m-r...
| zacharycohn wrote:
| While there is very little research on this (because
| Congress banned funding research on this after pressure
| from the NRA in the 90s), what research does exist does
| not support your assertion:
| https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/27/states-with-strict-gun-
| laws-...
|
| It's not about criminals not caring about the law.
| Shooting people is already illegal. It's about making it
| more difficult to access and acquire these weapons. If
| you can't access something, it is much more difficult to
| use.
| foolinaround wrote:
| > what research does exist does not support your
| assertion
|
| the link you posted does not oppose it as the other
| comment pointed out.
|
| I hope you will keep an open mind as you look into this,
| setting aside the agendas of the NRA or the anti-gun
| groups.
|
| When there is an item (gun, in this instance) which has
| both good and bad uses ( what they are, we are reasonably
| argue) -- there needs to be a balance in how the item is
| procured.
|
| Nowhere in the country does one just go and pick one up.
| There are (again, we can argue on what is reasonable)
| checks and balances - checking the person's track history
| etc.
|
| All this goes out the window when it is possible to skirt
| the law, or in the case of London, use knives instead of
| guns for the crimes.
|
| We need to solve the problem at the right level of
| abstraction.
|
| We need to focus on why the society today sees more
| shootings in the past decades when the guns have been
| existing for much longer.
| lvass wrote:
| He mentioned "gun crime" not deaths. Most deaths are from
| suicide.
| thiagoharry wrote:
| Teen girls are always mean, in all cultures? You always can
| pick any non-universal human characteristic from your culture
| and with creativity find biological hipothesis to justify this.
| But this is very dangerous because it can easily naturalize
| prejudices, taboos and social norms that never were biological.
|
| If you want to ask about these things, you first should first
| ask to anthropology how teen girls behave in different cultures
| before jumping to biological explanations.
| everdrive wrote:
| I think this is a really fair counterpoint, and worth looking
| into. (so far as anyone would look into what I have
| suggested.) I'd offer a few things, though:
|
| We'd want to measure things like "stress" or "anxiety" rather
| than simply meanness, it's possible this trend is not always
| expressed through cruelty. (notably, the facebook article
| suggests explicitly that it's not.)
|
| I think in general the idea of leveraging sociology and
| anthropology in these cases is perfectly sound. If this
| _only_ happened in America, I think there 'd be a good
| argument that there is not a genetic component. (or perhaps,
| that there is a genetic component which is only activated in
| some contexts.)
|
| One point I'd like to push back on is something I observed
| when studying anthropology in college. (and to be clear and
| fair, I am not suggesting that you have pushed this point of
| view.) Evidence of a single and rare outlier would be brought
| forward as proof that a set of behaviors did not have an
| evolutionary basis. Usually this was taken even further: if
| an outlier could be found, then the entire trait was
| completely socially constructed. Evolution affects behavior
| for certain, but these are experienced as drives an impulses
| which get filtered through the mind, the contextual social,
| and more. So, if a behavior is very broadly expressed cross-
| culturally, it is reasonable to suspect there is an
| evolutionary component to it. (of course this alone does not
| prove it.) If the outlier scenarios are sufficiently rare,
| this is likely proof that although there is an evolutionary
| basis for the behavior, they are not set in stone, and can be
| suppressed by the right circumstances.
| analyst74 wrote:
| Agreed, American highschool dynamic is quite unique in many
| ways. I think partly due to American culture, partly due to
| lack of authoritative figures in school.
| imgabe wrote:
| Let's suppose you're correct: teen girls are evolutionarily
| predisposed to be especially cutthroat.
|
| Does this make it acceptable that a corporation like Facebook
| exploits this tendency for profit? Should we not recognize this
| vulnerability and protect our children against it?
| everdrive wrote:
| I'm very opposed to Facebook and social media in general. I
| think social media is bad for almost everybody. (and
| certainly bad on the whole for any large cohort.) Even if
| teenage girls were not predisposed to this sort of behavior,
| Facebook would still be bad for them. It would simply be bad
| for them in the ways which it is bad for everyone else.
| Instead, it's bad for them in all the other ways it's bad for
| people, and additionally bad for them when it comes to these
| particular social behaviors.
| 9dev wrote:
| I don't think OP ever suggested this was acceptable? Can't we
| discuss multiple facets of a piece of news individually,
| without everyone always having to condemn or support the
| overall premise of the article? I think the topic of young
| girls being predisposed to being mean is worth discussing on
| its own, no matter my opinion on it.
| elliekelly wrote:
| > Why are young girls so awful to each other?
|
| Why does this conversation always have to exclusively revolve
| around how young girls treat each other? Young boys are awful
| to young girls. Women and men are awful to young girls. The
| question you should be asking is why do we as a society
| tolerate _people_ (of any age and any gender!) being so awful
| to girls?
|
| The article is about _Facebook_ , the company. Facebook isn't
| run by young girls. And yet many comments in this thread are
| focused not on Facebook's responsibility to (and profiteering
| from the exploitation of) girls mental health and are instead
| focused on blaming the girls themselves.
|
| Seems more than a little backwards to me.
| saltminer wrote:
| > The question you should be asking is why do we as a society
| tolerate _people_ (of any age and any gender!) being so awful
| to girls?
|
| This.
|
| Girls are policed from a very young age - how you have to
| act, "proper" ways to dress, to wear makeup, etc. Being told
| from a young age that old men being absolute creeps and
| knowingly hitting on prepubescent girls is _normal_ and that
| you should be _happy_ that he finds you attractive. Being
| told that you basically have no agency for something entirely
| out of your control. Having teachers stand by and do
| _nothing_ when boys pull up your skirt to cop a look.
|
| And this only gets worse as teenagers, with guys getting
| ballsier with their creepiness, expectations to be mature and
| wear outfits that appeal to the male gaze while
| simultaneously being chastised for being "too distracting,"
| as if men get the uncontrollable urge to masturbate just
| because of a pair of leggings... (It seems absurd, but just
| look at dress code enforcement at public schools in America
| and you will find this is basically the thought process of
| many administrators.)
|
| And that's ignoring how religious figures and other men in
| your life tell you that because you are a woman, you are
| inferior and should always be subservient, always do as your
| husband tells you, demonizing women who cheat or have
| children out of wedlock while glossing over absent fathers
| who didn't feel like wearing a condom or have a mistress.
|
| And to top it all off, if you try and speak up for yourself,
| to have agency, you're shut down by the adults who are
| supposed to be keeping order, saying "boys will be boys" and
| dismissing groping and rape by blaming you for the way you
| dressed, for hanging out with some crowd, being out late at
| night, etc.
|
| If you try to resist this treatment, you're labeled rude,
| catty, a bitch. People who already treated you as unimportant
| simply for being a woman now actively denigrate you. They
| already said you were exaggerating your menstrual pains, now
| they say you're faking it all.
|
| So, what do you get when girls hit puberty? There's a lot of
| frustration at the world, frustration with the boys in our
| classes, frustration at the men in charge, frustration with
| the women in power who defend the system just because it's
| slightly less horrendous than what they grew up with, and it
| comes to a head with hormones throwing emotions into
| overdrive and the general awkwardness of puberty. And you
| can't take it out on the guys your age, they're untouchable,
| and adults will just write you off as being on your period if
| you try to get them to change their behavior.
|
| Reading about how teenage girls' "peak fertility" (which
| isn't even accurate) causes fighting really just shows how
| many men on this website believe _everything_ women do is
| about them, that our worlds revolve around attracting mates,
| that we have no other priorities in life. No, it 's just that
| we can take out frustrations on other girls our age without
| being labeled as crazy. It sucks, but that's the reality of
| it. Not that we only take out our frustrations by bullying
| others, of course, (most do not bully, just vent to friends,
| and I know I was never one to dish it out) but there's a
| reason it's rare for teenage girls to bully teenage guys the
| way they do each other.
|
| Every time I hear guys say stuff like "you can't even
| approach women now thanks to #metoo," I think about all the
| anger they've never had to deal with, how high on a pedestal
| they've been their entire lives. They think "oh well if girls
| catcalled me, I'd love it," while not thinking about getting
| catcalled since before you were even old enough to know what
| catcalling is. They think the idea of male privilege is
| "feminist bullshit" while never having to worry about getting
| whistled at and approached by creeps who won't take no for an
| answer until you say "I have a boyfriend" (because they only
| respect women when they can see them as the property of other
| men). They've never regularly felt fear when strangers
| followed them because the average man can pummel the average
| woman, or feared going to the police who will ask you a
| million degrading questions instead of focusing on
| prosecuting your rapist.
|
| I wish that the generations who come after us wouldn't have
| to worry about this. But given how much work it took to get
| to where we are now, and how much conservatives (at least in
| America) have already taken away, I do not have faith that
| the status quo will meaningfully change before humanity
| manages to destroy itself. Especially after seeing so many
| conservatives openly say that the Taliban doesn't seem all
| that bad after realizing they'd like to control women and
| minorities in the same way.
|
| Rant over. I really hate these "men debate women's biology
| without ever asking for a woman's opinion" comment chains.
| These "discussions" really need to stay put on incel forums.
|
| Edit: I didn't really even go into the pressure to look
| skinny (oftentimes to an unhealthy degree) and the way people
| talk about you for not conforming. To fit into a size 0, stay
| <100 lbs, count calories from your teenage years, try to have
| an hourglass figure (which is mostly determined by the
| genetic lottery), etc. (Just look at what celebrities do to
| bounce back quickly after pregnancy. [0]) Even amongst my
| friends who no longer struggle with disordered eating, they
| all still have complicated relationships with food.
| Ironically, it's starting to spread to men. [1]
|
| [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyK1wc4kWj4
|
| [1]: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/jul/31/eating-
| disor...
| prepend wrote:
| 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.
|
| It's not blaming young girls to develop interventions that
| work to help based on the common characteristics. Nor is it
| blaming African Americans to study and create specific
| diabetes interventions to address the specific risks of that
| subpopulation. It's not African Americans fault that they
| have higher diabetes and different characteristics of the
| disease and they shouldn't be blamed for this condition. But
| to help, creating customized interventions will be more
| effective.
|
| I would think it bad if there were only specialized
| interventions and no one address other parts of the
| population.
| elliekelly wrote:
| > 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.
| refenestrator wrote:
| Teenage boys' bullying tends to be physical and a lot
| less socially adept, stereotypically speaking. Social
| media is less of an accelerant for that sort of thing.
| prepend wrote:
| 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/
| JohnWhigham wrote:
| 100% on the money. People will gnash their teeth because they
| don't like the truth being told out loud. It's the same reason
| why online dating is completely fucked up: incentives are
| completely different for men and women. Women hold access to
| sex (which men want), men hold access to relationships (which
| women want). The problem is that each wants completely
| different demographics; women generally want older secure men,
| and men want younger more fertile women. There's nothing wrong
| with this.
|
| This has been ingrained in us for millions of years yet people
| act like a few decades of social upheaval will change this.
| tubby12345 wrote:
| >100% on the money.
|
| yea this random comment on a random tech site about
| evolutionary biology passes the smell test why? oh is it
| because of preconceived notions and biases rather than
| rigorous argumentation (i.e. well cited and published
| research)? hmmm
| hrfbi wrote:
| You talk as if psychological or sociological research held
| any value at all
| everdrive wrote:
| The tone of your comment is not helpful, but the factual
| claim you've made is definitely correct. This is something
| that I think seems reasonable, yes. But I am not a
| biologist, and no one (as far as I'm aware) has made any
| attempts to scientifically test my claim. At best, we have
| to call this a plausible idea. At worst, of course, it's
| not even that.
| chakkepolja wrote:
| I understand Evo-psych is not a hard science. But boys are
| supposed to be much more competitive because they had a more
| 'winner takes all' situation in our evolutionary past. Thus I
| don't think this has much to do with evolutionary impulses
| instead of easy availability of photo editing tools, and just a
| large scale (being surrounded by photos of celebrities and
| models, who have PEDs + dedicated diet + make up + professional
| photography, but media perpetuating it as normal body image).
|
| Now there's similar issue with male body image, but somehow
| that's even more extreme (visible six pack abs with single
| digit body fat), thus boys will think its not achivable without
| 8 hour workout a day and not bother, whereas for girls it seems
| like contemporary female body image is perfectly achivable to
| them or their peers and they lose sleep over it.
| goertzen wrote:
| Our bodies can't handle large doses of refined/high density
| compounds (sugar, alcohol, opioids, etc) or social interactions
| (being judged by 1000s/millions).
| omgitsabird wrote:
| I don't think this analogy holds.
|
| Those exogenous compounds bind to endogenous receptors.
|
| Social interactions lead to endogenous release of compounds
| that bind to endogenous receptors.
|
| A human body limits how much endogenous ligands it produces.
|
| There are different types of limits for exogenous ligands.
| bedhead wrote:
| 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, but sort of
| a non-event for boys who were already online playing video games
| all day. Social media unlocked and turbocharged all those
| preexisting pathologies for girls.
| sixQuarks wrote:
| I think you're dismissing the fact that a lot of young boys
| also feel terrible about themselves when they go on Instagram.
| Besides the whole chiseled body thing, there's a lot of
| influencers who flaunt money and wealth also.
| bedhead wrote:
| Oh I certainly didn't mean to be dismissive of the negative
| effects on boys, it's just been far worse for girls and
| there's lots of data showing it (eg hospital admissions for
| self-harm)
| swayson wrote:
| Facebook has no integrity.
| [deleted]
| gunfighthacksaw wrote:
| Lets not forget that Facebook was founded as a platform to rate
| people on looks.
|
| Also, Facebook is a case where a somewhat immoral but acceptable
| behaviour (judging people by their looks) has been warped and
| focused by technology to such a degree that 1/3 teen girls (and
| who knows who else) are suffering real effects from it.
| healingfrog010 wrote:
| It's jammed packed full of nonsense meme accounts giving snake
| oil pop "psychology", which is extremely dangerous.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| bob_theslob646 wrote:
| The daily usage numbers by these teens are fairly remarkable.
|
| Does any major government fund public research into social media
| addiction in the youth?
| johnwheeler wrote:
| Where have you been for the last 10 years? And it's not just
| youth. It's adults too.
| mym1990 wrote:
| I think the number for teens/tweens is much higher compared
| to adults, and that is what they are getting at. Adults
| can(presumably) make their own decisions. Younger brains will
| likely have difficulty in finding the steps to break out of
| the loop.
| johnwheeler wrote:
| Much higher compared to adults? I don't see it. Younger
| brains having a harder time breaking out of addiction than
| adults? I don't see that either.
| bob_theslob646 wrote:
| "In humans, adolescence, namely the period between the
| early teenage years and early twenties, is a time of
| heightened susceptibility to the effects of addictive
| drugs, but previous studies have struggled to explain
| why. Our studies support the idea that regulation of
| protein synthesis by eIF2 might be the underlying cause,"
| says senior author Mauro Costa-Mattioli.
|
| https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/03/16030110310
| 8.h...
| mym1990 wrote:
| 1) Kids have less experience from which to pull from to
| inform them that an action might be harmful, how an
| action might affect those around them or when they are
| doing too much of something.
|
| 2) How the development of the prefrontal cortex affects
| decision making is a thoroughly studied topic and it is
| very clear that decision making ability becomes better as
| we mature(when looking at a significant
| population...again there are OBVIOUSLY outliers).
| neonate wrote:
| https://archive.is/egPlc
| rg111 wrote:
| 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 musicians, i.e. numerically.
|
| One movie is seen across the world and then millions of times on
| streaming services, while your local theatre group starves.
|
| Just like that, before, some people were considered more
| beautiful than others as it is done now. But one beautiful girl
| could only make, say, 20 girls jealous and anxious.
|
| Now, with the advent of Instagram, and internet-driven scale in
| general, one beautiful girl makes 20,000 girls jealous. So the
| anxiety and jealousy is numeracally widespread. This is where
| beauty scales.
|
| Also, before, one average looking girl felt threatened by the
| beauty of one beautiful girl in her area. Now, there is the
| "feed", where she sees hundred girls more beautiful than her.
| This would not have been statistically possible in earlier times.
| This is where "occurrence of beauty" scales. Where, hundred years
| ago, a girl would see maybe 3-4 girls better looking than her,
| now she sees 300.
|
| ____
|
| - I don't believe in a set standard of beauty. I don't believe
| that beauty is objective either. In this comment, I use "beauty",
| "beautiful", etc. as a short and logistically convenient way to
| represent "perceived beauty", "seemingly beautiful", etc. I hope
| this won't be an issue.
|
| - I am also aware of other sources of anxiety, one simply being
| money- money buys new clothes more frequently, and people in new
| clothes and/or makeup look more pretty. Cosmetic surgery is in
| similar line. Here what scales is _display of wealth_.
|
| - Filters, editing, etc. also might play a big part. People know
| this. Hence the popularity of the "Instagram vs. Real Life" meme
| format.
| nemo44x wrote:
| Yes, Nassim Taleb comments on those extensively in his books.
| He calls the world we live in today "Extremistan" and the world
| from before the age of connectivity "Mediocristan". In essence,
| things are more and more inclined to be distributed with a
| power law in today's world as people and things are more and
| more connected and distributed.
| mikeyla85 wrote:
| Hard disagree. Facebook does not need to optimize profit and
| growth in every product decision. They make choices about what
| to amplify, knowing the consequences of those choices.
| richwater wrote:
| > They make choices about what to amplify, knowing the
| consequences of those choices.
|
| You think Facebook specifically crafts algorithms to make
| teen girls self-conscious...?
| mandevil wrote:
| I think that Facebook knows that Instagram is doing
| exceptional- worse than other social media services popular
| with teens- damage to teenage girls minds, and doesn't care
| enough to fix it[1]. Just saying "the algorithm did it," as
| if humans didn't create that algorithm, constrain it, and
| are now carefully monitoring its destruction of people's
| lives, is to absolve the people who work for Facebook of
| their agency. They built those algorithms and are
| responsible for their actions. They made a choice to build
| the algorithm and to give it power.
|
| Much like tobacco companies knew that their product was
| doing exceptional damage to their users lungs, and clearly
| didn't care either.
|
| [1]: They know that because they are quoted in the original
| article saying that- that Instagram seems to be worse than
| Snapchat and Tik-Tok for the psyche's of their users. They
| seem to be taking steps to try and rectify that, but they
| seem very small, in proportion to the damage that they are
| inflicting.
| tickbird wrote:
| There is standard set of beauty see https://imgur.com/a/j0Llx02
| I found instagram extremely useful they have great algorithm
| for finding cute girl which is daily source of masturbation.
| Clubber wrote:
| >I don't blame Facebook (or Twitter, or any particular company)
| for this. We can only blame scale.
|
| That's very convenient for the execs and shareholders at
| Facebook and Twitter.
| standardUser wrote:
| I see a much more diverse display of beauty these days than I
| ever did in the 80's and 90's. There is a conscious effort by a
| lot of people to broaden beauty standards in recent years, and
| a larger appetite from people to see different standards in
| media. I think a lot of this is due to more women in positions
| of influence and power across fashion and media, including a
| lot of women who grew up on the hyper-narrow standards of the
| late 20th century.
| leokennis wrote:
| 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"
| rg111 wrote:
| 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 authors have to find jobs being
| private tutors of children of barons and dukes and such or
| finding adjuct roles in community colleges in modern times.
| Hell, there is even competition with dead people in this
| trade.
|
| But accountants, devs, barbers don't have to face this.
|
| And, I am not supporting this. I know that these girls should
| not have to face this. But eliminating social media is not
| the answer, but having better interests is. (This reeks of
| snobbery and privilege, I know.)
|
| Almost all teenager girls I know or knew, did not feel this
| way for social media. Because they have/had better things to
| do in life. They were busy with ballet, prep school,
| volunteering, math clubs, music class, etc. So, there is also
| a socio-economic aspect to it.
|
| As a heterosexual male, I never conformed with the mainstream
| beauty standards. I, and hence my potential and past partners
| did not have to face the bad side of scale.
|
| I also actively, regularly listen to young pianists on Twitch
| and donate to them, rather than some decades old recordings
| (better, too) I could find for free on YouTube or Spotify.
|
| I see it this way- scale is inevitable, and even desirable
| (one girl makes 3000 girls jealous instead of 30; one Physics
| teacher teaches 300 girls instead of 30- who otherwise would
| not have access to one- scale is not evil in itself), but you
| can bypass its effects if you properly want.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > I mean...who else but Facebook (or Twitter, or any
| particular company) enabled this scale?
|
| Unrealistic and manipulated portraits of models in media (as
| well as treatment of said models) leading to body imaging
| issues already was a problem in my teens, way before
| FB/Instagram.
|
| If there is one company and product to blame, it's Adobe
| Photoshop.
| helen___keller wrote:
| I think a more charitable interpretation is that no specific
| gun company is responsible for gun deaths, as long as it
| remains legal to manufacture and sell guns, there's going to
| be _somebody_ out there selling them because the technology
| /profitability is there.
| afavour wrote:
| > I don't blame Facebook (or Twitter, or any particular
| company) for this.
|
| Perhaps I would agree with you that I don't blame Facebook for
| the root problem here. After all, it's been around a lot longer
| than Facebook.
|
| However, Facebook is actively _providing_ the scale you 're
| talking about. They are an accelerant. Not only that, they're
| making absolutely wild amounts of money while they do so. So,
| they have an opportunity and the resources to offset the damage
| done by the scale they profit from. But they have zero interest
| in doing so. I most definitely blame them for that.
| smoldesu wrote:
| Who cares?
|
| Everyone makes money by pulling a magic lever that hurts
| other people. Apple pulls their slave labor lever to make a
| new iPhone, Facebook holds down their 'moderate content' key
| until their employees start falling apart, and Microsoft
| occasionally pulls the 'fuck it, ship it' lever to the
| chagrin of millions of Windows users. There's always a bigger
| fish, and sometimes that fish is more shareholders, not more
| consumers.
|
| I despise Facebook, and they're almost certainly the most
| evil FAANG member. But at this point, it's nothing more than
| par for the course. Facebook is in glib obedience of every
| 3-letter-agency in every country, everywhere. Blaming
| Facebook for the behavior that _everyone_ practices in the
| Fortune 500 is a little misguided.
| [deleted]
| Factorium wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| dado3212 wrote:
| This is the Daisy project the article talks about, which
| appears to have been neutral on this kind of sentiment.
| helen___keller wrote:
| I think that's an interesting approach although I'm not
| convinced that's sufficient. Is addictive content less
| addictive without a visible metric? It removes one
| potentially harmful aspect but teen girls will still see
| feeds full of beautiful models living in LA mega mansions.
| rg111 wrote:
| I don't think that's sufficient at all. Before likes and
| shares, we had TV, and before TV, we had newspapers and
| tabloids.
|
| The newspapers regularly printed pictures of women
| considered beautiful according to the beauty standards of
| that time.
|
| That propagated that standard even more widely.
|
| And people could easily compare those traits with the
| traits they saw in the women they knew, and women did feel
| bad about not looking like the woman in the newspaper.
|
| This is old.
|
| So, even if we make non-algorithmic, time-based feeds, this
| problem cannot be fully gotten rid of.
| helen___keller wrote:
| Great comment
|
| > We can only blame scale. Some things are much more scalable
| than others, and "beauty" scales. And the "occurrence of
| beauty" does, too.
|
| I think over the next few generations we're going to see
| humankind adapting to what it means to live with near-infinite
| scale on all things digital. I don't know what that will look
| like, but I do hope it works out for the better.
| arvinsim wrote:
| From beauty, I think it will shift from conventional beauty
| to finding something that will set them apart from the rest.
| rhines wrote:
| For many people it has - defining yourself by your quirks,
| or disabilities, or unique sexuality, or whatever else has
| become celebrated in many circles. Things that at one time
| might have been considered private or taboo are now used to
| differentiate yourself from the crowd and gain attention
| from people who may otherwise have ignored you.
| blodkorv wrote:
| I fully agree to this. I do also beleive that beauty outside of
| instagram has become much more common. More people than ever
| knows about how to work out and eat correct than before.
| Cosmetic and knowledge about them is also much more widespread.
| OneEyedRobot wrote:
| Put the logic and profit motive of a slot machine in everyone's
| pocket. What could go wrong?
| fortran77 wrote:
| Perhaps teen girl culture is what's toxic.
| bthrn wrote:
| Perhaps both teen culture and social media contain toxic
| aspects? It is not mutually exclusive.
| mym1990 wrote:
| Anecdotal, but as a kid from the 90s it always felt like kids
| were really abusive/toxic and there were always power dynamics
| going on.
| iamstupidsimple wrote:
| Kids are brutal. I'm not sure if it's like that everywhere
| but it sure feels like a universal truth.
| macintux wrote:
| I wish I could remember where I found this, but there was a
| fascinating read a few years ago that helped me understand the
| social impetus behind teen girl behavior. In essence, they're
| learning how to build communities, but some of that is
| expressed in gatekeeping/negative ways.
|
| Unfortunately, that bullying is amplified to incredibly toxic
| levels online.
| thinkingemote wrote:
| Related: does toxic feminity exist?
|
| I think most would say no, but who knows
| detcader wrote:
| I think you could find many people who would agree that
| gender roles are toxic. Who is responsible for them is
| another question
| healingfrog010 wrote:
| Instagram is jammed packed with meme accounts spreading dangerous
| pseudo-pop "psychology". This is a wild fire, and extremely
| dangerous. Facebook is corrosion.
| marmaduke wrote:
| > Plus, "We're standing directly between people and their
| bonuses," one former researcher said.
|
| Reminds me of something..
|
| > It Is Difficult to Get a Man to Understand Something When His
| Salary Depends Upon His Not Understanding It
|
| Ah that's it. Tried and trued. Interesting story of the quote
| here:
|
| https://quoteinvestigator.com/2017/11/30/salary/
| aspartate wrote:
| How about we start adding a tag like "[gatekeeped]" to articles
| behind a paywall/register wall?
| dang wrote:
| Recent and apparently related (to the same set of leaks):
|
| _Facebook has exempted high-profile users from some or all of
| its rules_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28512121 - Sept
| 2021 (489 comments)
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| This is the problem with all social networks, instagram is just
| the most popular.
|
| Imagine working overtime for months, saving money, paying for a
| hotel room at some seaside vacation place, travel in a shitty
| plane and in a shitty buy to that location, be tired, sleep the
| first of the three nights there on a shitty bed, eat shitty
| breakfast, go to the shitty with sewer flowing into the water
| 100m away...
|
| ...and then you take out your camera, pull in your stomach hard,
| pose in a way that hides body imperfections, hold in your hand a
| really shitty cocktail, that you paid half your days spending
| budget for, be carfeul to frame in a way, that the sewer is not
| visible, and click...
|
| ...you now have a perfect photo of someone enjoying their perfect
| vacation on the beach, drinking a good looking cocktail, enjoying
| themselves. Maybe even more than one, so you can post them even
| after you've gone back home.
|
| And what do the viewers who of course follow hundreds of people
| see? A bunch of happy people, enojing their lives, while they
| "slave away" at their shitty jobs.
|
| No wonder people get depressed.
| elliekelly wrote:
| According to the article Facebook's own research found that
| while it is a problem for all social networks it's a
| significantly more pronounced problem for Instagram in
| particular:
|
| > They came to the conclusion that some of the problems were
| specific to Instagram, and not social media more broadly. That
| is especially true concerning so-called social comparison,
| which is when people assess their own value in relation to the
| attractiveness, wealth and success of others.
|
| > "Social comparison is worse on Instagram," states Facebook's
| deep dive into teen girl body-image issues in 2020, noting that
| TikTok, a short-video app, is grounded in performance, while
| users on Snapchat, a rival photo and video-sharing app, are
| sheltered by jokey filters that "keep the focus on the face."
| In contrast, Instagram focuses heavily on the body and
| lifestyle. The features that Instagram identifies as most
| harmful to teens appear to be at the platform's core.
|
| > The tendency to share only the best moments, a pressure to
| look perfect and an addictive product can send teens spiraling
| toward eating disorders, an unhealthy sense of their own bodies
| and depression, March 2020 internal research states. It warns
| that the Explore page, which serves users photos and videos
| curated by an algorithm, can send users deep into content that
| can be harmful.
|
| > "Aspects of Instagram exacerbate each other to create a
| perfect storm," the research states.
| pickledish wrote:
| > Mr. Mosseri... said the company's plan for the Instagram kids
| product, which state attorneys general have objected to, is still
| in the works.
|
| A lot of engineers have to spend a lot of time in order to make
| something like this a reality. Sometimes I like to think that
| we're "better" (morally) than that trope of the growth-obsessed
| exec who's willing to exploit kids for an extra 5% revenue in the
| quarter. People will be people no matter the job title, I suppose
| Bettyb007 wrote:
| The issue has always been there, but it is now not only easily
| accessible, but pushed on us through ever adaptive personal in-
| app adverts. Search thinspo and it gets scary very quickly. Note
| : Don't forget but this is affecting boys as well, with
| increasing anorexia and muscle dismorphia
| healingfrog010 wrote:
| Instagram is jammed packed full of meme accounts pushing pseudo
| pop "psychology" This type of misinformation is extremely
| dangerous. Nothing is done about it.
| healingfrog010 wrote:
| Hey
| pattisapu wrote:
| Are there any teenage girls here on HN who could comment from
| personal experience?
| dgdfg wrote:
| https://twitter.com/Ert2541/status/1437773745188442124
| https://www.reddit.com/r/youngboysvmanunited/
| https://www.reddit.com/live/17ngxvwo14e9r
| https://www.reddit.com/live/17ngy4u3kwpnb
| https://www.reddit.com/live/17ngyaz2i7k58
| https://www.reddit.com/live/17ngypzh6qviw
| https://www.reddit.com/live/17ngzszxejq8d
| https://www.reddit.com/live/17ngzz8prwl1c
| https://www.reddit.com/live/17nh07dryebur
| https://twitter.com/Ert2541/status/1437778285874843650
| https://www.reddit.com/r/chelseavzenit/
| https://www.reddit.com/live/17nh61qn74nbg
| https://www.reddit.com/live/17nh682rvcp2v
| https://twitter.com/Ert2541/status/1437773745188442124
| https://www.reddit.com/r/youngboysvmanunited/
| https://twitter.com/Ert2541/status/1437773745188442124
| https://www.reddit.com/r/youngboysvmanunited/
| https://www.reddit.com/live/17ngxvwo14e9r
| https://www.reddit.com/live/17ngy4u3kwpnb
| https://www.reddit.com/live/17ngyaz2i7k58
| https://www.reddit.com/live/17ngypzh6qviw
| https://www.reddit.com/live/17ngzszxejq8d
| https://www.reddit.com/live/17ngzz8prwl1c
| https://www.reddit.com/live/17nh07dryebur
| https://twitter.com/Ert2541/status/1437778285874843650
| https://www.reddit.com/r/chelseavzenit/
| https://www.reddit.com/live/17nh61qn74nbg
| https://www.reddit.com/live/17nh682rvcp2v
| https://twitter.com/Ert2541/status/1437773745188442124
| https://www.reddit.com/r/youngboysvmanunited/
| tqi wrote:
| I'm not familiar with this particular set of findings, but
| generally speaking internal research at Facebook are generally
| either large scale in-app surveys (which suffer from response
| bias) or small scale (often ~10 participants from a single city)
| in-person interviews. It's useful for informing product roadmaps,
| but I don't think we can really draw bigger conclusions from it.
| Put it a different way, if this research had found that Instagram
| was NOT toxic for teen girls, would anyone buy that?
| blobbers wrote:
| You're claiming a company that has over 20% of the WORLD
| POPULATION is informing themselves based on 10 participants
| from a single city? Are you making fun of their internal
| research team?
|
| Yes, if a rigorous study found that social media helped girls,
| and there were replications of said study, then people would
| buy that. This is how research works!
| tqi wrote:
| Most UXR is not the same as a rigorous (ie peer reviewed)
| study. Not every qual study is in person interviews, but
| based on the part about users bringing topics up unprompted
| I'm guessing that's what at least some of this was based on.
| bryan_w wrote:
| Interesting point you bring up. If this research claimed the
| opposite result, people here would be ripping it apart, but
| since it confirms their biases, they double down on it and
| accept it as ground truth.
| GoodJokes wrote:
| Facebook knows this and you do too. Don't let your kids use
| anything fb touches. Don't let yourself. Unless your salary
| depends on it like a wanker.
| ___luigi wrote:
| It is disappointing to read some comments saying that "It is not
| FB/Insta's fault?". Those who don't see the challenges that these
| teens go through is clearly delusional. While there are some good
| things in the tech, it clearly has a negative side that impact
| children's mental health through unrealistic beauty standards,
| and trap them into dopamine loops.
|
| I still believe that ranking/recommendation models should be
| open, parents/individuals should have -at least- the choice to
| make these algorithms less harmful.
| JohnWhigham wrote:
| I fully agree these social media platforms are problems, but
| they're simply catalysts that amplify what was already there.
| Bullying in high school existed before the Internet, and was
| arguably worse.
| reayn wrote:
| It's safe to assume that the majority of the people on both
| this specific post and this website as a whole are _not_
| teenagers, thus probably can 't understand how the situation is
| like for us.
| cbtacy wrote:
| Yup.
| ___luigi wrote:
| > .. I still believe that ranking/recommendation models should
| be open.
|
| Today, we don't know how social media recommend posts to us, we
| don't know if it is biased, or good for some sub communities.
| There are [1] some engineering blogs where we can see that is
| based on some research ideas (e.g. embeddings) are prune to
| bias [3] and "rich gets richer" phenomena. There should be an
| open marketplace where institutes/researchers submit open &
| explainable ranking/recommender systems. This is how you
| democratize access to such social platforms, but the business
| model opposes such idea to make it reality. There is a large
| body of research in the area of explainable recommendation
| systems/Explainable AI. There are regulations today to use
| Explainable AI systems in healthcare field, but few of them in
| areas that impact our mental health (e.g. the use of Social
| Media).
|
| [1]: https://ai.facebook.com/blog/powered-by-ai-instagrams-
| explor...
|
| [2]: Explainable Recommendation: A Survey and New Perspective,
| https://arxiv.org/abs/1804.11192
|
| [3]: https://aclanthology.org/P19-1162v2.pdf
| kansface wrote:
| > Those who don't see the challenges that these teens go
| through is clearly delusional.
|
| No one is debating the challenges of coming of age in the age
| of the Internet. I'd disagree that its entirely FB's fault as
| if the rest of society, kids and parents alike, lack all agency
| to make sound choices - that they must passively consume and be
| consumed by all that FB offers... or that theses sorts of
| problems are best addressed by literally legislating morality.
|
| Its convenient and easy to hate FB; expedient, really...
| detcader wrote:
| Young girls lack agency, that's been the general consensus of
| the human race for a very long time save for the extreme
| right wing and some relatively new corners of the left.
| Always good to examine the structural inequality that
| Instagram magnifies (guardians and the media enforcing beauty
| standards) but children have zero responsibility in this
| case.
| dieg0 wrote:
| IMHO social media is toxic for almost everybody
| standardUser wrote:
| 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 every young person
| in the country.
|
| I don't mind bashing the bad about social media and the internet,
| but I am kind of sick of people overlooking the good.
| xgulfie wrote:
| 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.
| rapnie wrote:
| 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).
| standardUser wrote:
| 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.
| xgulfie wrote:
| Yeah that's totally fair
| dillondoyle wrote:
| 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.
| laumars wrote:
| I think the fact that we are discussing this on a social
| platform served over the internet, the good parts haven't been
| overlooked.
| berkes wrote:
| 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 such in many
| communities throughout the world, throughout the ages. But I
| can just as well imagine it being literally deadly to be even a
| little out of line, just as well.
| dillondoyle wrote:
| 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.
| lthornberry wrote:
| You are correct that racism as we know it is a product of,
| roughly speaking, the post-1550 world. The response to
| homoerotic acts has varied extremely widely across time and
| space. "Same sex couples" were pretty uncommon in most times
| and places (largely because almost no one thought of
| marriage/cohabitation as something constituted primarily by
| romantic love or even sexual desire). But plenty of examples
| of people having same-sex sex and even long-lasting
| relationships.
| ipaddr wrote:
| Those communities existed before social media on bbses, then
| forums, websites. Social media has drawn in more people but
| connected your real life identity and that will still cause you
| problems at a local level. If you are a young teen not out two
| profiles are required. But these services want your real
| name...
| rayiner wrote:
| 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.
| uniqueid wrote:
| 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 which you can escape.
|
| Edit: People seem to be misinterpreting my meaning entirely. By
| 'unemployable' I was thinking of, for example, racy photos. By
| 'persecution' I mean actual IRL stalking/assault etc. The kind
| of example I had in mind was, say, a racy photo from Pride
| Parade following someone around for the rest of their living
| days, preventing them from working at certain lawfirms, or
| attracting the attention of some violent psycho.
| ssully wrote:
| Kind of wild to say gay people actually didn't have it that
| bad, and that getting cancelled today is actually worse.
| SavantIdiot wrote:
| > 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 cities are so
| LGBTQ heavy.
| Darmody wrote:
| 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
| somewhere.
| Godel_unicode wrote:
| People also crossed oceans in tiny wooden boats that sunk
| without a survivor on a regular basis.
| dillondoyle wrote:
| But queer people don't always have families, especially
| back in the day. So many were kicked out, ostracized, cut
| off.
|
| RuPaul is correct when she says queer people create their
| own family. Even today.
| [deleted]
| Darmody wrote:
| I was purely talking about moving to another place.
| dillondoyle wrote:
| you specifically said 'hoping they'll be able to call
| their family once they get somewhere.'
| dillondoyle wrote:
| 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)
| uniqueid wrote:
| I'm 'yes, but...' on both those points.
|
| (1) is true, but I was thinking more about the persecution
| aspect than the community aspect. If being gay made life
| unbearable in a particular town, it was at least
| _physically possible_ , if expensive, for a person to cross
| state-lines and start life fresh. Today people leave a
| trail that follows them globally and for a lifetime.
|
| In terms of community, (2) is a little more bleak than the
| reality. I'm guessing in the 1980s, most college towns had
| at least a gay bar (or cafe, bookshop, whatever), and
| community formed around it.
| monocasa wrote:
| I don't know about your (2) argument. There's a lot of
| college towns even today that don't have gay bars. I've
| lived in Boulder, CO (CU Boulder) and Athens, GA (UGA)
| and neither really have a gay bar.
|
| In the 1980s? Only the major metros really.
| uniqueid wrote:
| I don't have any statistics, but there may well be
| _fewer_ brick-and-mortar gay hang-outs today, precisely
| because the internet has given people other ways to meet.
| monocasa wrote:
| There hasn't ever been a gay bar in either of those towns
| AFAIK, so my point still stands. And that includes 'The
| People's Republic of Boulder'.
| uniqueid wrote:
| I'll settle at more than your 'major metros' and fewer
| than my 'most college towns' -- although now that I think
| those two numbers over, it's probably not that large a
| delta to begin with ;)
| monocasa wrote:
| To be totally fair I never said "handful of cities", but
| instead "major metros". My point is that the presence of
| a college is not a good predictor for the presence of a
| gay bar. It's very much a large metro thing.
| uniqueid wrote:
| I revised the comment to correct the misquotation.
| standardUser wrote:
| 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
| are no longer tolerated like they were for so many
| generations.
| uniqueid wrote:
| 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_?
| eropple wrote:
| I'll be honest: on first read, I did feel like there was
| some submarine equivalency going on in that post. (I
| don't think that having read your follow-ups.)
| uniqueid wrote:
| My bad. I reread my comment, and I easily can see what it
| sounded like.
| geebee wrote:
| People you care about will regularly experience this, if it
| hasn't happened already. You'll be shocked and depressed
| when you discover who is doling out the shame and abuse,
| you will not recognize who you thought they were, and you
| will discover that if you stand up for them, you will also
| become a target.
|
| I find it bewildering and worrisome, the way people think
| that this little monster won't grow and will stay on their
| leash.
| standardUser wrote:
| I find it confusing that people fail to to see the
| obvious switcharoo. It used to be unacceptable to be
| queer, non-white, non-Christian, non-male and it was OK
| to mock people for those traits. Now, it's all backwards,
| and it's OK to be queer, non-white, non-Christian etc.
| What is no longer OK is mocking people for these traits.
|
| So, now the people who are getting the pointy end of the
| stick are the people who used to do the poking. I for one
| prefer the new paradigm to the old.
|
| The anti-cancel-culture people make it sound like they
| are being horribly oppressed. But for what? The color of
| their skin? Their gender or sexuality? No, simply for the
| dumb words they insist on uttering. Say what you what,
| when you want, to whomever you want, but don't tell me
| you realistically expect there to be no consequences.
| ipaddr wrote:
| People do mock other people for being Christian or for a
| political belief. Nothing has changed but the bullies are
| now using the power of social media and the press to
| amply that bullying. The bullying continues to employers
| or schools, groups, friends.
|
| Same as it ever was.
| standardUser wrote:
| It's certainly not the same as it ever was. I think
| you're missing the distinction between "punching up" and
| "punching down". Punching up - taking aim at dominant
| power structures - is a necessary part of social
| advancement. Punching down is just cruel. Punching down
| used to be encouraged and celebrated, now it isn't, and
| some people are mad that they can't get away with it any
| longer.
| uselesscynicism wrote:
| > The anti-cancel-culture people make it sound like they
| are being horribly oppressed. But for what? The color of
| their skin?
|
| At work last week, our "diversity and equity" team
| announced that our company is "obviously" not diverse
| enough.
|
| This is a company in the US with employees across North
| America and Europe, with some employees in South America,
| Australia, India, and even Africa, and not just South
| Africa, either.
|
| The company does have more employees in Europe and North
| America than elsewhere, and those employees share one
| thing in common: skin color. They do not share a
| nationality, a language, a cuisine, or a mindset.
|
| The only possible interpretation of the D&I&E officer is
| that there is too much white skin at our company.
|
| Is that horrible oppression? No, but it is racist and
| prejudiced AF and I would 100% lose my job of I said a
| single word.
| standardUser wrote:
| Skin color is one of the characteristics that influences
| our lived experience, and a lot of companies are seeking
| a diversity of experiences in their staff and leadership.
| They may look around and feel like they have a
| significant diversity of backgrounds and experiences, but
| not in one particular and very important way. So they
| want to correct this.
|
| I'll readily concede that many companies do this for
| image reasons alone, though I'm sure some do it out of a
| genuine belief that diversity can lead to better business
| outcomes, or create a more desirable workplace for
| attracting new talent. But in the end, this is the
| decision of a private company and they are not being
| coerced to make these decisions by any authority, nor
| does it sound like they are breaking any laws.
| danuker wrote:
| You probably wouldn't want to get hired by someone who
| wouldn't tolerate (if not share) your views.
| noduerme wrote:
| Is this a defense of cancel culture, or saying that ruining
| someone's career is in all cases appropriate since they
| must have view X which they wouldn't share with an
| employer? It's actually rather hard to know the views of
| people who've been mobbed on social media, since millions
| of other voices drown them out and make assumptions without
| them having a proper chance to defend themselves. Moreover,
| an employer may believe such a person to not hold noxious
| views, and still find them unemployable because of the
| social media backlash. Are you seriously arguing in favor
| of mob justice on the basis that the victims of internet
| mobs should be happy to not be employed by someone they
| disagree with politically?
| uniqueid wrote:
| That depends on the salary and the cache of the position.
| Plenty of people will put up with an asshole boss if the
| price is right, or to fast-track a career.
| jlkuester7 wrote:
| Wait, what? Why should intellectual homogeneity be a
| requirement (or expectation) for coworkers? That seems like
| the opposite of encouraging diversity.
| makeworld wrote:
| The key word is "tolerate". If you're gay, you're going
| to want to be hired by someone who will tolerate you
| being gay, otherwise you'll have to hide part of yourself
| and/or be fearful at work.
| dillondoyle wrote:
| Just the fact that we're arguing and using terms like
| 'tolerate' just shows how wildly off base parent comment
| is to the reality of queerness and discrimination.
|
| what about workplaces or spaces that simply 'tolerate'
| people of color? it puts that word in that context into a
| different light that more here might understand.
|
| that language & context is so tinged it reveals real
| problems that still exist despite the mainstreaming of
| queer culture and appropriation that exists now - good or
| bad.
| Reubachi wrote:
| but...in a perfect world this isn't a question, "Will my
| employer tolerate my sexuality at work". Do you have to
| hide being straight at work? If so, I don't think we have
| the same idea of what work is. (the royal you, not you
| specifically. I think a lot of people think this way.)
| tommymachine wrote:
| They used to call keeping your personal life separate
| from work "being professional". Feel free to correct me
| if I'm wrong here... don't most companies hire people to
| do a job, not to flaunt who they are in their private
| lives in a distracting manner?
| dillondoyle wrote:
| wow. do you think people of color should somehow separate
| their skin & culture as to maintain 'professionalism' in
| the office? you can not 'separate' race just as you can't
| separate ones gender or sexual orientation. it is simply
| a fact and truth of that persons existence.
|
| the mere existence of us queer people is not flaunting
| anything. the expression of our true selfs does not
| 'flaunt' and thinking it's some kind of attack on
| 'professionalism' is just backwards.
|
| my life is not distracting, just as your life is not.
| tommymachine wrote:
| Please, without being racist, tell me, what is a "person
| of color"?
| dillondoyle wrote:
| a non white person.
| tommymachine wrote:
| 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?
| dillondoyle wrote:
| what?!?! you have clear bias so this is pointless. A
| descriptive - factual - term has nothing to do with
| excluding one race or class of people.
|
| I'm gay. That does not mean that every non gay man is
| excluded ffs
| tommymachine wrote:
| So saying "people of color" = "non white people" has
| nothing to do with excluding a race or class of people?
|
| Also, what exactly is factual about the term non-white?
| In what way is a person categorized as "colored" or
| "white"? I've never met any person with any part of their
| body that was entirely "white" other than the whites of
| their eyes, and even those are more of a very light gray.
| This line drawing and categorization that you're doing is
| anything but "factual".
|
| I am in disbelief that someone can even say the things
| you've said, and not be able to see the irony and
| contradiction. I think you know exactly how nonsensical
| and racist your argument is, and it doesn't bother you
| one bit.
| EchoAce wrote:
| 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.
| tommymachine wrote:
| Great job. I could scarcely describe the failures of
| multiculturalism better if I tried.
| foldr wrote:
| Yes. I am so sick of hearing straight people talking
| about their spouses and children in a professional
| context.
|
| Political correctness has reached such extremes that we
| were expected to make contributions to a _gift_ for one
| of my straight colleagues after he announced to the whole
| team that his opposite sex partner was pregnant. I really
| wish people would keep their sexual predilections to
| themselves.
| tommymachine wrote:
| Is that because you find it irritating that sex can mean
| something beyond erotic pleasure for straight people
| (i.e. procreation)?
| foldr wrote:
| 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).
| tommymachine wrote:
| 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.
| cto_of_antifa wrote:
| your use of the word degeneracy is kinda saying the quiet
| part out loud
| foldr wrote:
| You seem to find gay relationships more erotic then most
| actual gay people do :)
| lhorie wrote:
| > there exists inclusive and positive communities for people of
| every type of background and experience
|
| I mean, sure, but this also goes for flat earthers, incels,
| fatphobia activists, dreamsexuals, etc. In other words, it
| normalized selfish individualism over collective conformism.
| Looking at it in aggregate, I'm not sure I can agree on whether
| that was a good thing or not. Personally, it strikes me as the
| pendulum shifting too far to the other side.
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| "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
| internet. Threat to Facebook == threat to
| "the internet"
|
| Its quite sneaky.
|
| EDIT: One insidious implication is to create or reinforce a
| false belief that we cant derive any benefits from the internet
| unless we support Big Tech and their mass-scale, popularity-
| driven, advertising-based "business model". This helps Big Tech
| to stifle competition and new and/or different ideas not under
| their control.
|
| The internet isnt the web, nor is the web a small collection of
| popular websites, or a small collection of popular web
| browsers.
| Jonanin wrote:
| I think you are reading too much into the exact wording of
| the OP's comment. You can replace "the internet" with "social
| media" or even "Facebook" and it still makes sense. Internet
| platforms for communicating with others (the use case that is
| being described in the OP) is literally _the definition_ of
| social media.
| elorant wrote:
| 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.
| erikig wrote:
| In many cases this was exactly Facebook's aim and they
| subsidized internet access to enable this.
|
| e.g Burma https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-55929654
| neilk wrote:
| The focus of the article is how Instagram knows that their
| product is harmful. It's not saying that all products, or even
| all similar products, are harmful for everyone.
|
| I think this thread is at the very least offtopic; at the most,
| it's intentional whataboutism. This could well be your honest
| reaction, but maybe consider carefully before shifting focus
| like this.
|
| Large tech companies would like the conversation to shift in
| exactly this way. They want us to choose between "the internet"
| and no internet, but the real choice is between _their_
| internet and other possible internets.
| tester756 wrote:
| How about numbers / net outcome?
|
| If we trade 10 good things for 10 000 terrible, then is it
| worth?
| stickfigure wrote:
| According to another commenter here, the research that
| spawned the WSJ article said Instagram made 41% feel better,
| 31% worse, and no impact for the other 28%.
|
| I haven't found the original material to verify, but if this
| is accurate, seems like the net outcome argument works in
| Instagram's favor.
| ethanwillis wrote:
| It doesn't necessarily work in Instagram's favor. If the
| 41% and 31% had a baseline of both feeling "ok" then you
| took 72% who had a baseline that is acceptable and
| polarized them into groups who felt better or worse. Is it
| more favorable to have more people who have a stable
| baseline or to have one group have a good baseline and
| another similar sized group with a bad baseline?
| stickfigure wrote:
| I don't know, but at the very least the article title is
| grossly misleading.
| lxgr wrote:
| Not an ethicist, but I don't think this is how ethical
| evaluations work in most frameworks.
| feoren wrote:
| It could be one input into a "utilitarian" model, which in
| my opinion describes all of the even remotely viable
| ethical frameworks.
| tester756 wrote:
| Definitely, but still saying that "some people benefit from
| it" is difficult to agree/challenge. Numbers at least give
| some information.
| freewilly1040 wrote:
| It's discouraging that the top comment is in effect sticking up
| for the billionaire caught red handed in a lie (think of the
| good things FB has done for us!).
|
| I'm sure people smoking cigarettes throughout the years have
| had very nice conversations and maybe even made friends. That
| doesn't absolve the manufacturers from responsibility for
| knowingly selling poison.
|
| The same is true here.
| heywherelogingo wrote:
| "Now, thanks to the internet, there exists ... communities for
| people of every type of background and experience." -- this is
| good for the individuals, but what if there is a
| biological/societal/ecosystem negative eg organised crime, gene
| mutations? ie harmless singletons scaling into destructive
| masses. Is isolation nature's fire-break, broken by bridging
| technology? The negative connotations are hypothetical
| questions about unknowns, not a claim or suggestion.
| detcader wrote:
| It's free to submit another story to HN about the topic you
| prefer, this one is about teen girls though!
| dontblink wrote:
| Could minorities who need connection still find that connection
| via forum-based communities (i.e. pre social media)?
|
| Social media was helpful for me to connect with lost
| acquaintances (which was novel at first, but now I barely
| continue to converse with them if at all).
| [deleted]
| ryanisnan wrote:
| Is Facebook/Instagram this medium? I find this really hard to
| believe, especially in 2021.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| "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.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > 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.
|
| Doesn't stop at the country's border: Social Media has been a
| gift to the whole world.
|
| And it's not just queers either: just look at the 2011 Arab
| Spring. Suddenly, people could just get news from their peers,
| see live videos of what was really happening and not just the
| curated content allowed by the local warlord. They could see
| how westerners lived and wonder: "Why do I have to bribe
| everyone around me?" "Why can they just go to school and not
| me?" "Why are woman able to have jobs and walk down the streets
| without a man?" and "Why are they allowed multiple sources of
| information?"
|
| There's a wonder some countries are trying hard to restrict
| internet access, and western social media. The great Firewall,
| Cuban Intranet, Egypt cutting out the countries network during
| protests...
| rayiner wrote:
| And then what happened with the Arab Spring?
| [deleted]
| ravenstine wrote:
| When does a vice of society get created and the creator not know
| of its harmful effects? Rarely, it seems.
|
| In actuality, though, as much as I think it's obvious that
| Instagram was designed specifically for the mindset of teens (and
| incidentally the countless with Peter Pan syndrome), it's too
| easy for us to simply blame Facebook. We are also responsible for
| raising our children to a certain level of emotional maturity and
| ego awareness, which I believe isn't necessarily a solution but
| may prevent some from getting sucked into the void of social
| media. My parent's generation pretty much failed at achieving
| that with their children, and their children haven't done much
| better with theirs. Maybe it's an overreliance on institutions
| which has made us complacent and often careless; as a society we
| seem to only react to problems rather than be proactive, acting
| like a deer in the headlights long after the symptoms of the
| illness have manifested.
| agent008t wrote:
| I guess the fact that every generation seems to have moral
| panics about new technology (radio, tv, video games, internet),
| and every generation seems to complain about the decline of pop
| culture, led many reasonable people to adopt the heuristic that
| this is all just the talk of old curmudgeons, and new fads are
| no worse than old fads.
|
| But what if facebook, instagram, youtube etc. are actually
| harmful? What if modern pop culture is toxic trash compared to
| that of the previous decades? What if popular music has, in
| fact, been getting worse?
| arvinsim wrote:
| I think the big difference is that society transformed a lot
| faster compared to previous ages that most people were not
| prepared to adapt.
| runawaybottle wrote:
| It's because every generation is very good at teaching the
| platform of comparison. Take just software developers for a
| second, we are drowning in the Leetcode unrealistic beauty
| standard. Young men/woman/teens are comparing and
| narcissistically validating on these social networks. The extra
| sad thing is some don't grow out of it and keep doing it into
| middle age, on the same childish platforms.
| earthscienceman wrote:
| I'll make a comment that tries to be different than the range of
| criticism here already. Instagram is toxic for _everyone_.
|
| For reasons too personal to put here, I've been pretty depressed
| and dysfunctional lately and I've unintentionally discovered the
| experience of doomscrolling. The output of the instagram
| algorithm is absolutely terrifying. It has the perfect metrics
| (swipe time, profile browsing, etc etc) to _prey_ on every
| impulse inside of you and to send you the perfect cocktail of
| content to feed those impulses. Fear, doubts, wants, etc. etc.
| are all inputs to the algorithm and the output is content that
| makes you feel those things more.
|
| I have to wonder if this type of media is similar to magazines on
| steroids, or other pulp media of the bygone era. No one here
| makes this comparison so maybe I'm off base but I do often if I'm
| scrolling through the worst possible version of a home produced
| checkout-aisle magazine.
|
| EDIT:
|
| I appreciate the comments that make this personal and are trying
| to help, but my instagram problem will be fixed when I manage to
| fix my real life problems... a much bigger task. My point is to
| highlight that the algorithm can suck anyone in, not just teen
| girls. They just happen to be the most vulnerable.
| wussboy wrote:
| I echo others here and encourage you to just delete your
| account and get off it. I did so with Facebook many years ago
| after getting sucked in to so many arguments and so much angst,
| and now, when I log in every year or so to check if an old
| friend has messaged me, I get physically sick within minutes
| seeing the garbage posts that get pushed by the algo.
|
| Do it. You're not missing out on anything but happiness.
| akeck wrote:
| I've developed a healthier way to use IG for myself. I follow
| only a small number of artists in the particular fields of art
| in which I'm interested _and_ I keep my accounts private. As a
| result, I 'm limited in what's available for scrolling and the
| 10 or so people who like and comment on my art I know are
| actually interested and very likely not bots.
| pantsforbirds wrote:
| I mean it helps you auto curate content, but you can tell it
| what you do or don't want too.
|
| I was getting hella bikini girls for a while but a few "not
| interested" and they are all gone. Now my feed is just people I
| know and my explore page is entirely almost woodworking content
| with a little bit of car stuff or travel stuff.
|
| I think of it like reddit. The front page or all of reddit is
| absolute hot garbage that seems intentionally made to be
| divisive politically at this point (even on non political
| subreddits), but I also have a curated part of reddit with my
| woodworking and programming and video game hobbies i can browse
| happily.
| earthscienceman wrote:
| Sure. I know this, and it's true. But by analogy, this is
| like saying "heroin is only addictive in small doses if you
| choose to take less". Is it good advice? Absolutely. Will
| everyone follow it? Nope. Should we despise heroin addicts?
| No. We should create a better system.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > Instagram is toxic for everyone.
|
| > For reasons too personal to put here, I've been pretty
| depressed and dysfunctional lately and I've unintentionally
| discovered the experience of doomscrolling.
|
| I never check the Instagram discover tab and I don't feel like
| I'm missing anything. For me, Instagram has been a good tool
| for keeping in touch with friends as we all move around the
| country. If someone starts posting memes or content I don't
| want to see, I use the Instagram mute function on their stories
| or posts. I can catch up on everything I want to see on
| Instagram in about 5-10 minutes per day and then I'm done.
|
| Obviously, not everyone has the same experience with Instagram
| that I do. But by the same token, not everyone has the same
| experience with Instagram that you do.
|
| If someone is unable to control their compulsion to "doom
| scroll" and setting limits on app usage isn't working, I think
| deleting the app or the account is a good solution.
|
| I had some friends go through similar problems with Netflix:
| They insisted Netflix was evil because they couldn't control
| their usage and were staying up until 2AM every night watching
| shows. Meanwhile, they couldn't understand how I managed to
| watch one episode and be done.
|
| Same story with alcohol: I can have one drink and be done or
| decline to drink at all. Yet I have friends who find themselves
| drinking to excess every time they're around alcohol.
| Interestingly, the demonization of alcohol is almost taboo
| despite arguably causing more damage than products like social
| media. No one has ever died from social media withdrawal, but
| alcohol has massive negative effects on addicts.
|
| > I have to wonder if this type of media is similar to
| magazines on steroids, or other pulp media of the bygone era
|
| Definitely. Even if we could make Instagram, Facebook, and
| Twitter disappear tomorrow, the people who struggle to control
| their compulsions would quickly find the next thing to fill
| their time. The only sustainable solution I see is more
| education about responsible consumption and taking
| accountability for time management. Not an easy thing to do,
| but it's the only lasting solution I can see.
| temp8964 wrote:
| Instagram basically wouldn't allow you see anything if you
| don't login. All you need to do is delete your Instagram
| account, then you are out.
|
| I never have an Instagram account, and never see the need to
| create one.
|
| I had a Facebook account, but I deleted it years ago. Problem
| solved.
| q3k wrote:
| Unfortunately, this shit is addictive and implying that the
| solution is _just_ for people to delete their account is
| effectively blaming the victim.
|
| Some people never start smoking and never have a nicotine
| addiction problem. Some people smoke a few times or even
| occasionally but don't pick up a habit. Some people get
| addicted but manage to quit easily, some manage to quit after
| many attempts. Some can't quit ever, but we don't tell them
| that they just need to try harder or they shouldn't have
| started smoking in the first place.
|
| Try quitting smoking or drinking in a place where it's
| socially expected to do one of these, and you'll be quite
| close to how difficult it's for someone to quit social media
| in a society where using social media is the social norm.
| root_axis wrote:
| > _for people to delete their account is effectively
| blaming the victim._
|
| I think it's fair to describe social media as addicting,
| but it's not the same thing as a chemical addiction where
| one can experience physical dependency and withdrawals.
| "Just quit" really is a valid solution, the reality is that
| most people just prefer to complain about social media
| rather than accept that they are responsible for how they
| spend their time.
| sureglymop wrote:
| That might be a solution to you as an (i suspect)
| rational adult. But the article is about teens, who might
| have a number of reasons why they wouldn't "just quit"..
| peer pressure and so on. That in turn "starts" the
| addiction or problem. When they do become rational adults
| they are so immersed in and interconnected on that
| platform that losing it would still be a very difficult
| decision.
| blakesterz wrote:
| https://archive.is/egPlc
|
| "The research that we've seen is that using social apps to
| connect with other people can have positive mental-health
| benefits," CEO Mark Zuckerberg said at a congressional hearing...
|
| "We make body image issues worse for one in three teen girls,"
| said one slide from 2019, summarizing research about teen girls
| who experience the issues. "Teens blame Instagram for increases
| in the rate of anxiety and depression," said another slide. "This
| reaction was unprompted and consistent across all groups."
|
| From what researchers said in a March 2020 slide presentation
| posted to Facebook's internal message board.
| andreime wrote:
| I'm not defending Facebook and I just had some thoughts reading
| the quotes and am curious what you think of them.
|
| 1. I remember that while growing up fashion magazines,
| actors/actresses and I want to say peer pressure (but am
| fearful its incorrect) were a big source of body image issues.
|
| 2. Maybe it's a side effect of our society or "normal" to have
| security issues while growing up. We've been having good
| childhoods for how long - 100 years? Maybe there are some
| feelings that we never had the option of expressing or feeling.
| [deleted]
| tclancy wrote:
| Magazines came once a month, the people in them were clearly
| supposed to be uncommonly attractive and they couldn't talk
| back to you.
| karxxm wrote:
| I think these social media platforms give teenagers the
| feeling, that everyone is pretty and successful. Back in the
| days, only famous people where in fashion magazines. They
| where an elite group of people one could easily distinguish
| from. But nowadays, there are so many "noname" persons out
| there, having a successful instagram feed. This could create
| the impression that all people out there are good looking and
| successful, except yourself.
| Grustaf wrote:
| Yeah, that's exactly true. It's cargo culting. Super models
| are beautiful and popular, so if I pay for a photo shoot I
| am also beautiful and popular seems to be the logic of many
| "influencers".
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| > 1. I remember that while growing up fashion magazines,
| actors/actresses and I want to say peer pressure (but am
| fearful its incorrect) were a big source of body image
| issues.
|
| I remember reading somewhere, can't remember where, something
| that addressed this point.
|
| Broadly speaking, the idea was that "people in magazines"
| weren't perceived as "peers", so you wouldn't compare
| yourself to them in the same way as you'd compare with a
| classmate, or some other "regular person", "just like
| yourself".
| treis wrote:
| To me this sounds like post hoc reasoning to justify the
| conclusion you already want to make. There doesn't appear
| to be any real correlation between the introduction of
| Instagram and suicide rates for girls. Suicide rates are
| up, but it's for both boys and girls and the beginning of
| the increase predated Instagram.
|
| Instagram is an easy target like Video games, TV, Cell
| Phones, and Internet were before it. But like those things
| I don't think there's much causation going on.
| [deleted]
| bserge wrote:
| It's definitely normal to blame everything and everyone but
| yourself for your problems.
|
| In some cases, it's justified, but the vast majority of time
| it's just avoiding responsibility.
| cortesoft wrote:
| On an individual level, it makes sense to talk about
| personal responsibility.
|
| However, if you are looking at a large percentage of people
| experiencing something, it isn't helpful to just say all
| those people need personal responsibility. You can point to
| individual failings when you talk about an individual, but
| if 75% of people are having individual failings it is
| symptomatic of something structural.
| bserge wrote:
| Yeah, human condition.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| Wow, this is such a thoughtful post. I really drummed my
| fingers thinking of something witty to reply.
|
| About #1: From my childhood experience, this is accurate.
| Youth fashion magazines and network TV from 7PM to 10PM
| played and outsized role to influence our (small) world view.
| However, I find it interesting that as social media has
| exploded, there is parellel movement to reduce digital post
| processing on models photographs. It is still a moving
| target, but the trend is less and less processing of
| photographs in fashion magazines and adverts. (Note: This
| "commitment" varies wildly by region!)
|
| About #2: This comment is so deep. I remember reading the
| novel "Orphan Train" a few years ago, and the author spent
| considerable time pulling you into the world within which
| these young people lived. Granted, the events occur about 100
| years ago, but they help us the understand the pressures of
| youth from four generations ago. By the end, you felt like a
| movie director, peering into their fractured lives. Generally
| speaking, I think about a "generation" as being 25 years. If
| we look back 100 years, someone born in 1921, then each 25
| years is a new generation. Assuming these people lived in
| relatively free and prosperous places... I dunno, pick
| Belgium or Argentina or Australia... each 25 years,
| children's lives would be hugely different than their parents
| due to major social advances, improved education, and new
| media outlets. In my generation, one of the biggest concerns
| was "peer pressure" and "too much TV or video games". Some of
| that still exists, but it has morphed more towards bullying
| (including early-age homophobia and transphobia) and too much
| Internet / social media. An exciting question: What comes
| after this generation? Too much AR / VR!?
| WhompingWindows wrote:
| Normal means that there is a bell-curve distribution of how
| insecure individuals would be; you'll see both more and less
| self-confident individuals. However, if you barrage the
| populace with photoshopped, top 1% in beauty, frankly
| unhealthy bodies, that distribution is going to move to the
| "right" towards more insecurity. I'd wager anyone susceptible
| to insecurity would experience a much greater level, than in
| a poor farming town where young people see almost no
| sexualized supermodels or celebrities to compare themselves
| to.
|
| For example, take some 13 year old girl, probably a poor
| farmer, from Ireland in 1800. She will have seen almost no
| examples of the female body except her own, her peers rarely,
| and her familial elders. Then plop her down into today's
| world, and she'll definitely be barraged by all the most
| ridiculous images of flat stomachs, huge anatomical parts and
| tiny anatomical parts, immaculately photoshopped forms:
| she'll be made to feel less than them.
| aspaviento wrote:
| The less I want is to defend Facebook but I think lately
| people don't want to acknowledge their own responsibilities.
| It's like every time there is a problem, the cause is
| someone/something else. I don't think Instagram is impossed
| to anyone. Young people can feel the pressure to use it
| because their friends use it but they aren't forced to do so.
|
| From the article it seems that young girls know about the
| toxicity in the application, why they keep using it? if their
| parents are aware too, why do they let their daughters use
| it?
| toss1 wrote:
| Then do not defend facebook.
|
| Period
|
| Their business model is poisoning the well of society, and
| strip-mining its value by breaking the bonds that hold it
| together.
|
| The very best that can be concluded about it's entire
| leadership is that they entirely lack any hint of moral
| compass or sense of responsibility to the society from
| which they extract their wealth.
|
| The more I observe their behavior, the more it looks like
| worse conclusions are supported by the data.
|
| Just stop justifying things on technical bases. It is what
| FB is doing the the top post above
| twoWhlsGud wrote:
| There's an old joke: When you owe the bank a million
| dollars, it's your problem. When you owe them a billion
| dollars, it's their problem. (these numbers likely need
| adjustment for inflation...)
|
| If FB/Instagram use is damaging a substantial percentage of
| your population, it's your problem, regardless of whatever
| moral frame you decide to put around it.
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| Right, no one is forcing anyone to use their services. It
| is only that they create an environment, which is actively
| damaging other "players" in the environment:
|
| If you are not using it, uninformed people will laugh about
| you (peer pressure, network effect). Furthermore, because
| so many people use FB, many people will use FB to organize
| events, which one does not even know about, because of not
| being on FB. In the end, they will spin it, because they do
| not know better themselves, that it is you, who isolated
| yourself from the rest of "society".
|
| I have experienced it many times. I have missed out on
| probably many things over time. Yet I refuse to be a part
| of FB and stuff like that. However, I am only one person.
| The peer pressure probably works on most people, because
| most are not as informed about FB (and Instagram and
| whatever else they own) and what it does, as the crowd on
| HN is for example. That means, that the argument of "no one
| is forcing anyone" is a bad one, because you would need to
| add "but they will make your life worse, if you do not
| join!". It is kind of an extortion, which an uninformed
| society unknowingly is excerting on the individual, put in
| motion by dark patterns, privacy-hostility and bad
| practices on the side of FB.
| picardythird wrote:
| > From the article it seems that young girls know about the
| toxicity in the application, why they keep using it?
|
| This is a disheartening take.
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| I'm only speculating, but if "everyone's on instagram",
| maybe people don't want to be left out?
|
| They may know that it's bad for you, just as I expect most
| smokers to know smoking is bad for you.
|
| But the "badness" isn't direct, it grows, and they could
| think "maybe I'll be able to control it / I can quit
| whenever I want", whereas if you don't follow current
| trends (or whatever it is people follow on instagram),
| you're left out _immediately_.
|
| Of course, by the time you realize you can't quit, it's
| already too late.
| pyrale wrote:
| In order to answer this question, we would have to see how
| the social pressure materializes when people leave the
| network.
|
| For instance, I'm not sure becoming a social outcast is
| great for anxiety and depression issues.
| wussboy wrote:
| I have a personal grudge against anyone saying "Why don't
| the parents take some responsibility to combat a multi-
| billion dollar company who puts the resources of small
| countries in to making their children behave in detrimental
| ways."
|
| But I'll not get in to that. :)
|
| Facebook and Instagram are drug dealers. Sure, they're not
| physically distributing a substance, but the social
| interactions they provide are every bit as addictive. In
| time, society will abolish or tightly constrain them in the
| same way society has banned other highly addictive
| substances.
|
| And this is why I don't blame the users.
| skinnymuch wrote:
| What will be the crack and cocaine in this situation?
| What other untold horrors will unfold while privileged or
| naive citizens and politicians all around stay cozy
| whilst the war on drugs caused havoc and destroyed so
| many lives and communities.
|
| "We" certainly blamed the users of addictive substances
| and vilified or at least looked down on them. That is
| until it was heavily white and middle class or above
| people with opoids. Even then it was slow, but some
| things were done. Far more than what was done with other
| highly addictive substances. It's a disgrace.
|
| I shutter to think any drug banning history happen in any
| other context.
| aspaviento wrote:
| > I have a personal grudge against anyone saying (...)
|
| There is no need to have any grudge against me (I hope).
| I get it. I never said being a parent is an easy job. I
| acknowledge how hard it is but...
|
| > Facebook and Instagram are drug dealers
|
| If you teach your kids not to consume drugs, why
| Instagram should be any different?
| wussboy wrote:
| Sorry, I agree my grudge comment came off hard. No
| offence I hope?
| aspaviento wrote:
| No offence, I understood from where you came.
| afavour wrote:
| > If you teach your kids not to consume drugs, why
| Instagram should be any different?
|
| Imagine if all the other kids at school used drugs on a
| daily basis, that there was advertising plastered
| everywhere telling you that drugs are cool, that
| successful people use drugs and that your worth in this
| world can be directly tied to successful use of drugs.
|
| I don't mean to sound mean here, but are you a parent? If
| not I suspect you're not really aware of the realities of
| parenting, particularly once a child becomes teenage. You
| can only do so much. And you certainly can't win against
| a multi-billion dollar enterprise determined to make your
| rebellion-inclined teenager do something.
| aspaviento wrote:
| I don't want to use myself as an example because it's
| just my experience but when I was young people around me
| smoked, many of my teachers smoked and in TV and movies
| smoking was still accepted as something approved by
| society. But I was taught not to do it and never did it.
|
| With this I just want to say that I know it's a difficult
| task but presenting it as a lost battle/impossible seems
| to me wrong.
| triceratops wrote:
| > when I was young people around me smoked
|
| > But I was taught not to do it and never did it.
|
| So not all young people in your time were taught
| similarly. Or if they were, those teachings didn't stick.
|
| Ideally the number of minors smoking would be zero. I
| don't think that's a radical idea, and I hope it's
| something that everyone can agree on. "Teachings from
| parents" obviously didn't achieve that goal, from your
| own experience.
| OvidNaso wrote:
| Do you really think all those people aroubd you eere
| taught to smoke?
| naravara wrote:
| > With this I just want to say that I know it's a
| difficult task but presenting it as a lost
| battle/impossible seems to me wrong.
|
| The thing is, we made headway in the battle against
| smoking by disallowing people from doing all those
| things. You're not allowed to market to kids, you're not
| allowed to depict smoking in most TV that kids are likely
| to watch, you're not allowed to smoke in or near schools
| and teachers who do are frowned upon. Cigarettes
| themselves are taxed heavily specifically to price young
| people out of getting into the habit, vendors are
| required to card, and the cigarette makers are even
| required to pay into a fund that promotes anti-smoking
| messaging.
|
| So yes it is definitely not an impossible task. But the
| things that make it possible require taking it seriously
| as a danger and addressing it collectively.
| bumby wrote:
| I know you probably intuit this based on your pre-emptive
| caveat about anecdotal evidence, but a quick online
| search seems to indicate that your experience may not be
| the norm.
|
| "Peers' smoking is the strongest predictor of adolescent
| smoking."[1]
|
| [1] Geckova, A.M., Stewart, R., van Dijk, J.P., Orosova,
| O.G., Groothoff, J.W. and Post, D., 2005. Influence of
| socio-economic status, parents and peers on smoking
| behaviour of adolescents. European addiction research,
| 11(4), pp.204-209.
| jimbokun wrote:
| > Imagine if all the other kids at school used drugs on a
| daily basis
|
| In many high schools this isn't far off the truth.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| This is quite an interesting thought experiment. As noted
| by @aspaviento, they were able to resist smoking,
| regardless of surrounding influences.
|
| Do you have any comments on the tactics used by cigarette
| companies -- specifically in the United States -- before
| the 1998 "Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement"? When I
| was a kid, the amount of advertising by tobacco was
| incredible. It was unavoidable and everywhere... and any
| cool or famous seemed associated with cigarette
| companies.
|
| Even if you ignore smoking cigarettes, the topic of
| smoking marijuana will surely be a major issue for
| current and next gen parents. How would you parent around
| this issue? It is so complex.
| triceratops wrote:
| > Do you have any comments on the tactics used by
| cigarette companies -- specifically in the United States
| -- before the 1998 "Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement"?
|
| The tactics worked? Rates of smoking used to be way
| higher in the past.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| 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 is a
| seriously terrible habit for your health and well-being.
| I feel much less so about vaping (e-cigarettes), as the
| health effects of nicotine addiction are still far lower
| than traditional cigarette smoke inhaled into the lungs.
| short_sells_poo wrote:
| > 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 people's throat and that billions
| should be spent on studying the ways people can be more
| encouraged to become drug users.
|
| And this is what Facebook et al are doing. They are
| spending untold resources on devising the most efficient
| ways of making people addicted and ensuring that no other
| way exist of satisfying the cravings. They create echo
| chambers and push specifically topics that get the most
| response out of people.
|
| And this is completely legal (currently). Facebook,
| Instagram, Tiktok etc... are allowed to be cool, hip,
| desirable and consumed in ways that the tobacco industry
| couldn't imagine in their wildest dreams during their
| heydays.
|
| These companies can tap into the deepest secrets and
| desires of vast swathes of people in ways that is
| unprecedented.
|
| I feel that the vices of the old world, like drugs, are
| chickenshit compared to the power that the new vices can
| wield over their captives.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| > the social interactions they provide are every bit as
| addictive.
|
| I'm not familiar with actual research in this space, but
| i would imagine that its similarly addictive to being
| with friends IRL?
|
| (To me) social media is a great tool to connect with
| friends and stay present even after we move away and work
| and pandemic quarantine. Its a suppliment for IRL
| relationships. I used to live with friends in college,
| and i used to go out and get food or drinks or whatever
| almost daily to get my "fix" of socialization.
|
| Are social networks really that different? I recognize
| that some (teen girl?) people might wish they looked like
| a supermodel on social media or get jealousy of the lives
| of influences, but is that different from old magazine
| and movie stars? Is the mixture of "social" and
| "influences" to one news feed detrimental? Is there more
| exposure? What makes social networking more "addictive"
| (and therefore dangerous) than actual socialization?
| smithza wrote:
| 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 road your opinion
| will likely inform their reflections and help guide their
| future actions.
|
| _getting off soapbox_
| bongoman37 wrote:
| 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.
| LanceH wrote:
| Have you ever met a teen? Maybe Instagram isn't the party
| bringing the toxicity.
| bumby wrote:
| > _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.
| true_religion wrote:
| Sure but in the long run parents can _choose_ the peer
| group for children.
| bumby wrote:
| 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.
| true_religion wrote:
| 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 people on Instagram per se.
| I'd guess a study on the issue would say that a peer
| group they associate with on daily basis like in school
| would have more of an effect on their choices than
| Instagram influencers.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Not true in educational outcome. Almost all educational
| outcome is correlated with parent situations, effect of
| the school is within the noise.
| bumby wrote:
| Fair point. Most of the studies I came across were
| focused on aberrant behavior.
| spoonjim wrote:
| This is true, and people with highly involved parents, on
| the average, destroy their lives with drugs less
| frequently than those with absentee or abusive parents.
| We still throw heroin dealers in jail.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| While parents may or may not be the "most" influential
| people in a child's life, I think it is certainly
| possible that the influence of parents/family/tribe can
| decrease in relation to the influence of the broader
| world due to changes outside of the parents' control.
|
| I certainly think the internet gave me access to many
| more humans, ideas, and tribes than my parents'
| generation had access to, and it would be hard for me to
| see how it would have been possible for my parents to
| have as much influence on me as their parents had on
| them.
|
| I would even say it is indisputable there are forces
| beyond parents' control unless the parents opt to live an
| Amish lifestyle, such as using devices connected to the
| internet and various social networks. If you do not give
| it to your kid, someone at school will, and even more,
| you probably need to teach your kid how to play the game
| rather than have them start it blind while the other
| players have experience.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| There are different levels of influence, though. Yes,
| parents can assert a lot of control over their children,
| but at a certain age they start looking at their peers
| and being influenced by them to a tremendous degree.
|
| And not all parents realize, or can realize, everything
| that goes on in their childrens' lives.
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| Parental control cannot and can never be used as a
| singular or even more influential factor to societal
| level problems. Parents can have all the best intentions
| in the world but if the society they're trying to raise
| children in is broken, they can't protect those children
| forever.
| smithza wrote:
| 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.
| tnzm wrote:
| 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
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| "culture encourages people to have children..."
|
| That's not true in any western country :)
| tremon wrote:
| _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 for
| a lot of things -- their brains are in the process of
| rewiring themselves for more personal responsibility and
| less parental oversight. So they're actively seeking to
| avoid parental control, but haven't yet learned to
| correctly weigh and assess long-term effects of their
| decisions.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| You can't decouple the entire growth process from 0-teen
| though...
| pempem wrote:
| 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.
| fsflover wrote:
| > Facebook and Instagram are drug dealers.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24579498
| atonalfreerider wrote:
| Ditto for online pornography. And unlike chemical drugs
| that have to be transported and administered, these
| images and videos fly through the wires into childrens'
| bedrooms.
|
| I know, because like most children, I was exposed to
| online porn at a young age and was addicted to it well
| into my adult life. These companies need regulation,
| because they are bad actors.
| voidnullnil wrote:
| >[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 blocking issue for instance, nothing that has
| ads actually matters. Your "solutions" like Brave are
| pure garbage.
|
| The "privacy" issue doesn't exist because if we were
| using sane tech instead of webshit, there wouldn't be any
| tracking since it wouldn't be conceptually possible. Why
| the hell can tech even track you in the first place for
| reading static documents? This is a poor analog that
| cannot even compete with paper newspapers (which are also
| much more legible because they are not on LCDs).
|
| Net neutrality doesn't matter because nobody can ELI5 why
| I should care about it. Since the internet is all
| garbage, it shouldn't be an issue that it's expensive.
| Just don't use it. Make a free replacement. Cuban
| citizens have already done it.
|
| Now let me try and list CURRENT_YEAR.addictions:
|
| - Games
|
| - Working out
|
| - Porn
|
| - Social media
|
| - TV (youtube or whatever you use now)
|
| - HN (muh dunning kruger syndrome, imposter, et al)
|
| - Eating
|
| - Lotto tickets
|
| - Stock market
|
| - Programming
|
| - Working
|
| - Drugs
|
| - Things that are sort of drugs but not
|
| - Any substance what so ever
|
| - Benchmarking
|
| - Politics
|
| - Literally any hobby
|
| Oh look guys, HN needs to be regulated because I can come
| up with a person who has problems because of it.
|
| Guys we need to regulate fat and high calorie food. Oh
| wait it grows on trees.
|
| People who see a problem and immediately go "we need
| regulation to solve this" (and even proceed to come up
| with some ad-hoc hypothesis of how it solves the problem
| after it's proven that it doesn't solve it in a
| substantial way) are morons. There is actually something
| wrong with their brain. They hold back progress. Every
| new law is a potential stumbling block for progress and
| thus why new legislation should be avoided at all costs.
| See MECHANISM NOT POLICY article on wikipedia to see how
| people already knew about this 70 years ago in tech.
| atonalfreerider wrote:
| > 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 and the government?
| Yes we would. This is an extreme example but it
| illustrates a point. You can say the same thing about
| websites that prey on children, or the elderly.
|
| I'm not advocating for the banning of pornography
| altogether. I am making the simple proposition that it be
| better regulated. People who distribute porn know full
| well that their content is seen by minors. Having a child
| check a box that says that they are over 18 is not good
| enough. If I hadn't seen porn as a minor, I might have
| had a better chance of avoiding the extremely negative
| impacts that it can carry with it. Don't believe me?
| Visit a support page like r/NoFap and read the hundreds
| of thousands of stories there.
|
| I'm not going to touch any of the other subjects you
| raised because I'm not arguing for any of the things you
| listed.
| voidnullnil wrote:
| Look pal, the internet is a tool for exchanging
| information. Just like the air is a medium for talking in
| real life. Any sort of legislation like "oh no, you need
| a XCORP(R) CERTIFIED CHECKBOX(TM)" is just getting in the
| way and forcing us to use some moron's garbage tech, much
| like a website requiring SMS pins to log in. When I was
| 13 and got porn it was by p2p programs. I sure as hell
| don't want to go back in time and have them already
| banned and gimped in 2000.
|
| > This is a hyperbolic statement. Even if you are just
| talking about internet regulation.
|
| It was intended hyperbole, but it's also mostly right.
| Rules are for fools.
|
| > This is an extreme example but it illustrates a point.
|
| An extreme imaginary example is needed because the
| internet is harmless.
|
| > You can say the same thing about websites that prey on
| children, or the elderly.
|
| There's no such thing. That is an American myth. They are
| a bunch of muppets who tell stories to each other about
| how a new type of monster ate their cookies. I'm not even
| exaggerating. It's an American passtime to think up new
| "injustices" to be solved.
|
| I watch porn too, staring at 13, and never had a problem
| because I've always been healthy in general. Sex feels
| good even alone. It's not likely to cause physical health
| problems any more than any other physical activity. All
| those people on NoFap are losers coping by blaming their
| problems on some specific thing. Society is full of
| losers, it's not hard to find thousands of them to go on
| a dedicated forum to circlejerk each other.
|
| > I'm not going to touch any of the other subjects you
| raised because I'm not arguing for any of the things you
| listed.
|
| It was targeted toward HN in general anyway. I'm really
| sick of this place full of corporate drones trying to
| appeal to "the people".
| [deleted]
| lizkm wrote:
| 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.
| atonalfreerider wrote:
| > Pornography does not cause you to go into spasms and
| die though.
|
| I didn't say it did.
|
| > You being unable to control yourself does not justify
| undue restrictions on other people.
|
| I'm not talking about myself, I'm talking about minors.
| Protecting children from products that require an adult
| brain to ascertain harm is a positive function of
| government.
|
| > The internet should not be ceded to nanny staters and
| morality police.
|
| This is not about morality. Please don't read intentions
| where there are none.
| voidnullnil wrote:
| Please tell us a concrete plan on how to "protect
| children" (a moral appeal) from porn. Name one set of
| rules that would satisfy your legal appetite.
| Animats wrote:
| _Ditto for online pornography._
|
| Nah. That's been studied heavily. Here's an overview from
| the National Institutes of Health.[1] Wikipedia has an
| overview.[2] The overall conclusion is that most of the
| research is of terrible quality and there's no big
| measurable effect.
|
| [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6352245/
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_pornography
| atonalfreerider wrote:
| Here is strong evidence to the contrary from the NIH:
|
| >The proposed DSM-5, slated to publish in May of 2014,
| contains in this new addition the diagnosis of
| Hypersexual Disorder, which includes problematic,
| compulsive pornography use. Bostwick and Bucci, in their
| report out of the Mayo Clinic on treating Internet
| pornography addiction with naltrexone, wrote "...cellular
| adaptations in the (pornography) addict's PFC result in
| increased salience of drug-associated stimuli, decreased
| salience of non-drug stimuli, and decreased interest in
| pursuing goal-directed activities central to survival."
|
| Source:
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3050060/
| syshum wrote:
| >>In time, society will abolish or tightly constrain them
| in the same way society has banned other highly addictive
| substances.
|
| I hope not, the War on Drugs is one of the biggest
| disasters in modern history, directly linked to untold
| problems in society
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| You've now got me picturing a guy holding tablets in a
| trench coat in a dark alley with asking some teenagers
| passing buy if they wanna buy some time on social media.
|
| "I got it all, buddy. Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook...I
| can hook you up."
| hilbert42 wrote:
| The term I've used for years is _electronic heroin._ It
| 's apt methinks.
| bserge wrote:
| > And this is why I don't blame the users.
|
| Not even a little? Users aren't brainless, as much as
| they'd want to make you believe.
| strken wrote:
| The difference is scope. On a personal level, yes,
| individuals should stop using Instagram if it's harming
| them. When we're discussing systems thinking and trying to
| understand trends that affect entire states, entire
| nations, or the whole world, we look at the impact of
| systemic interventions.
|
| Unless telling people to take responsibility for themselves
| is an effective systemic intervention (it might be!) then
| it's not very useful, except as a PR strategy to deflect
| blame from Facebook.
| bserge wrote:
| I just said the same thing ha.
|
| Yeah, it is difficult for people to admit they're at fault.
|
| Blame is justified only when someone is forcing you to do
| something or keeping you from something.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| How about when a person is deceived into doing something?
| As a general matter, rather in the context of this
| specific news story.
| hetspookjee wrote:
| I don't get how you can end up in this line of thought? Can
| you ask these same questions about the abusers of opioids?
| Or Tobacco? Don't you have any bad habits you have
| difficulty shaking off? Genuinely surprised.
| fossuser wrote:
| We're apes that compete for status to attract mates.
|
| There's always going to be some of this kind of thing in
| everything. I'd accept the concentration of it in social
| media (TikTok is probably the worst of them) is not healthy,
| but the issues themselves are independent of the medium of
| the time imo.
| spockz wrote:
| This shows how a statement can be factually true and completely
| disingenuous at the same time.
|
| Yes 1/3 are effected badly but we just say that it _can_ have
| positive effects. Just omitting the fact that it often has a
| detrimental effect...
| [deleted]
| pnutjam wrote:
| Yup, if a gang of 7 beats and robs somebody; you can
| accurately say 7 out of 8 people improved their situation.
| everdrive wrote:
| It sounds like this is part of the point you're making, but
| this sort of statement should only be considered a lie. Some
| philosophers might correctly call this "bullshit," however
| colloquially it's the same as a lie: it intends to deceive.
| Loughla wrote:
| Honestly, though, when did 'technically correct' become the
| baseline for messaging? If you say what's 'technically
| correct' even if you ignore the entire mountain of steaming
| horse shit right behind it, you get a pass anymore.
|
| Why? Why is this socially acceptable? Is this different
| from the past, or are we just more aware of it?
| ysavir wrote:
| Whenever I hear people say "technically correct is the
| best kind of correct", I inform them that that's
| technically incorrect.
| __s wrote:
| It isn't different from the past; see tobacco
| lmkg wrote:
| First, it's possible to do worse and be factually
| incorrect. This was, and still is, common.
|
| Second, it's possible to _objective_ demonstrate whether
| a factual statement is correct or not. But whether a
| statement is disingenuous or misleading cannot be
| _proven_ with the same level of certainty (absent
| evidence of intent). So bad-faith actors can always
| guarantee that disputing that contention will end in an
| "agree to disagree" draw at worst.
| spockz wrote:
| It was. I was so disgusted with how this way of saying
| "technically true" things is used and accepted. As the
| other comment stated.
| pulse7 wrote:
| They are "bending the truth" which is per definition "to say
| something that is not true or that misleads people but that
| is usually not regarded as a serious or harmful lie"...
| mgh2 wrote:
| A half truth: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Half-truth
| dmix wrote:
| A 2/3rds truth
| gilbetron wrote:
| Yes, a nuclear bomb explosion can be bad, but there is a case
| where someone had a tree knocked down that they were going to
| have to pay to get cut down, so nuclear bombs can have
| positive effects!
| addingnumbers wrote:
| Just read that 1946 New Yorker article on the first bombing
| that made HNs front page a week back. This passage is
| probably the one Zuckerberg would use:
|
| > Over everything--up through the wreckage of the city, in
| gutters, along the riverbanks, tangled among tiles and tin
| roofing, climbing on charred tree trunks--was a blanket of
| fresh, vivid, lush, optimistic green; the verdancy rose
| even from the foundations of ruined houses. Weeds already
| hid the ashes, and wild flowers were in bloom among the
| city's bones. The bomb had not only left the underground
| organs of plants intact; it had stimulated them. Everywhere
| were bluets and Spanish bayonets, goosefoot, morning
| glories and day lilies, the hairy-fruited bean, purslane
| and clotbur and sesame and panic grass and feverfew.
| Especially in a circle at the center, sickle senna grew in
| extraordinary regeneration, not only standing among the
| charred remnants of the same plant but pushing up in new
| places, among bricks and through cracks in the asphalt. It
| actually seemed as if a load of sickle-senna seed had been
| dropped along with the bomb.
|
| Never mind that the rest of the article will probably
| elicit a few spontaneous sobs from an empathetic reader.
| franga2000 wrote:
| This is also disingenuous, since they could've gotten the
| tree cut down without the nuke and so the nuke has no
| "exclusive" positive value. Social networks have some
| positive value that _is_ exclusive to them, like the
| ability for people to connect with friends as well as
| diverse groups of strangers - both things that would
| otherwise be much harder if not impossible for many.
| syshum wrote:
| Usenet, IRC, Forums all connected friends and diverse
| groups over the internet before "social media", and IMO
| they did not have the same negative effects because they
| did not "gamify" the system with a reward feedback loop
| like the current social media systems do
| franga2000 wrote:
| None of them had nearly the same reach and
| discoverability as Facebook does. Good luck finding your
| childhood friend whose name you barely remember through
| thousands of web forums with primarily pseudonymous
| users. Meanwhile, Facebook's recommendation engine will
| just throw their name at you out of nowhere.
| pnutjam wrote:
| Not true. I was an army brat. It finds nobody in my
| childhood even though I've tried.
| syshum wrote:
| People would have a better chance of finding me via one
| of my various pseudonym's online than they would by my
| IRL name.
|
| I do not have any accounts in my real name, and I had no
| problems finding others via our pseudonym's when I wanted
| to share them with people in the physical world.
| ysavir wrote:
| Exclusive to social networks... And restaurants, bars,
| parks, meetup groups, local events, email lists, chat
| servers (eg Discord), and generally taking the time to
| meet your friends and family in person rather than on the
| web.
|
| It's only "much harder if not impossible" for lack of
| trying. And while yes, there are some out there that
| simply don't have such options, we also have people that
| need to cut down a tree but can't afford the work, and so
| simply hope it won't fall on their house the next time it
| gets windy.
| franga2000 wrote:
| Because in reality, all friends and family totally live
| withing reasonable travel distance of each other and
| interesting people will always pop into your local bar at
| the exact time you're there and wear a shirt outlining
| why you should spend your time trying to meet them as
| opposed to literally anyone else in the bar.
|
| Email lists and chat servers are just Facebook with extra
| steps. The only difference ends up being the fact that
| Facebook-like social networks suggest you people and
| content you might like from a giant pool, whereas the
| alternatives have rather limited pools and the signal to
| noise ratio is pathetic because you get literally
| everything that is posted and have to filter through it
| manually.
|
| Don't get me wrong, I hate Facebook and only use it on
| maybe a handful of occasions per year, but you can't tell
| me that it didn't enable things that weren't possible for
| many before it was invented.
| finfinfin wrote:
| You state that these qualities are exclusive to social
| networks in the same sentence where you say that other
| means could be used but are much harder. So... not
| exclusive?
| franga2000 wrote:
| "Travel to Australia is possible exclusively by plane or
| boat" is a sentence very few people would have a problem
| with, although you could also technically and with great
| effort get there by swimming, blimp or hanging from a
| million helium baloons and hoping the wind blows the
| right way.
|
| In all discussions I've heard that mention "exclusive
| value" or a similar concept, the agreed-upon definition
| was always something like "where all others are orders of
| magnitude worse".
| bthrn wrote:
| Mark's use of the word "can" is what makes it technically not
| perjury.
| kwertyoowiyop wrote:
| And Frosted Sugar Bombs _can_ be part of a nutritious
| breakfast.
| rlewkov wrote:
| I like a bowl of Frosted Sugar Bombs along with an egg
| white omelet and fat free no-sugar yogurt :-)
| keville wrote:
| "I won't eat any cereal that doesn't turn the milk purple."
| tw04 wrote:
| It's also why he looked like he was taking a shower the whole
| time. He knew he was lying through his teeth but he had to
| ensure he used wording that would make his statements
| _technically_ accurate. I 'm guessing he spent a month with
| his lawyers preparing what words he could and couldn't use in
| his responses.
| [deleted]
| jefftk wrote:
| On the other hand, teens blaming Instagram does not mean
| Instagram actually has that effect.
| Tarsul wrote:
| there was this absolutely devastating graphic about rising
| suicide rates of teen girls which coincided with mobiles and
| especially instagram. Sorry can't find it right now.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| If we're going to correlate, we can do it with with obesity
| as well.
|
| In 2018 "obesity prevalence was [...] 21.2% among 12- to
| 19-year-olds." [0] according to the CDC. That's one out of
| 5 being obese, not overweight. And it has more than tripled
| since the 70's [1].
|
| And then we start blaming the "evil screens" for people not
| finding themselves attractive.
|
| [0] https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/childhood.html
|
| [1] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hestat/obesity_child_15_1
| 6/obe...
| maccolgan wrote:
| Correlation isn't causation, society is shifting massively,
| regardless of Facebook and Instagram.
| deepfriedrice wrote:
| The cdc [1] has some figures that show a remarkably clear
| trend upward after ~2007. But IIRC it's pretty even across
| gender.
|
| [1] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db352-h.pdf
| sangnoir wrote:
| So, around the same time as the Great Recession?
| Tarsul wrote:
| thanks for picking up my slack. Another CDC study/poll is
| shows even worse data than I imagined[1]: e.g. ~8% of
| high schoolers try to kill themselves every year (I know,
| sounds unbelievable. Please, everyone, check yourself and
| correct me if possible). The numbers for girls are higher
| than for boys but the rises over the years (and the
| influence through instagram) not necessarily, see the
| diagrams.
|
| [1]https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/su/su6901a6.htm?s_
| cid=su...
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| There's rising competitiveness for everything else, not
| just body issues.
|
| https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/12/the-
| sil...
| [deleted]
| malfist wrote:
| Facebook might be asking girls where their body image
| issues came from, but boys/men are not much different.
|
| It's reasonable that if one gender is developing self
| esteem issue from a social network, then the other gender
| _probably_ is too.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| I wonder, though, if body image issues tend to manifest
| differently in boys and girls. I suspect that we're
| somewhat better at spotting girls' issues than we are at
| boys'.
| Dma54rhs wrote:
| No one cares about the boy issues and while maturing they
| find out about it very quick.
| ruined wrote:
| you don't think people can identify something that hurts
| them?
| filoleg wrote:
| People can identify things hurting them, but not always
| correctly. But people also can blame personal failings on
| external sources easily as well.
|
| It's like asking why studies using self-reported survey
| numbers on penis sizes cannot be treated as the ultimate
| truth, despite adults surely being able to use a
| measurement tape or a ruler. There is a reason for why the
| average numbers on all those studies using self-reported
| numbers are always at least one standard deviation larger
| than the average numbers obtained from a study that wasn't
| just a self-reported survey.
| wussboy wrote:
| I'm not on any side in this particular argument, but there
| are thousands of things we do/eat/experience every day
| which hurt us and we have no idea.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| The long term, creeping effects of _medium_ (not very
| heavy) air pollution are incredible. They sneak up on you
| so slowly, few rational people can understand when it
| begins to affect your health in measurable ways.
| ruined wrote:
| this clearly meets the threshold, though. i don't know a
| single person who has used social media that considers it
| not-harmful overall, mostly it's a justified use of "i
| need it for x so i have to put up with the downsides"
|
| it just seems really silly to me to walk into this thread
| about how Facebook internally believes they're doing
| harm, and reply to a statement about how the harmed
| demographic feels they're being harmed, in the context of
| well-documented ways that harm occurs and what kind of
| effects it has, with a statement doubting the harm
| actually exists and questioning the self-reported
| experience of harm
| [deleted]
| kwertyoowiyop wrote:
| At some point I just wish Zuckerberg would _give one single
| fuck_.
| lancesells wrote:
| I think it's that the worst of us usually come out "ahead".
| 20after4 wrote:
| Because underhanded tactics are winning tactics.
| andrewingram wrote:
| I often think of Facebook/Zuckerberg as the perfect example
| of why having a mission statement (something something
| connecting all the people) that seems perfectly non-
| controversial in a vacuum, often leads to a willing delusion
| that this must mean it's always a good thing and justifies
| any means.
|
| They reach a point where they're fundamentally unable to
| honestly ask themselves whether their "good thing" is
| actually good. I have a fairly respectable social graph on
| Facebook and Twitter, but far fewer actual friends than I did
| in the pre-social network days. A row in a database isn't
| connection, and it isn't good.
| wussboy wrote:
| This is a very interesting point. As someone who wants to
| start an organization with a very strong mission statement,
| it brings a sense of caution.
|
| Is it the mission statement itself which is dangerous? Or
| is it possible to come up with a "good" one?
| 20after4 wrote:
| It's the investor-profit-driven corporation which is
| dangerous. There isn't a powerful mission statement that
| will change the fact that corporations serve their
| investors above all else and the mission statement is
| almost entirely meaningless.
| wussboy wrote:
| I hear you.
| ff317 wrote:
| IMHO, there's nothing inherently wrong with having a
| mission statement.
|
| The fix here is that you must balance that mission
| statement with a well-defined set of Values as well. The
| mission is what you want to accomplish in the world, and
| the Values are the principles you plan to adhere to while
| doing so. The values can't just be some afterthought
| "check the box" exercise - they have to have significant
| decision-making weight in practice.
|
| A set of (imperfect, I'm sure!) examples from the
| Wikimedia Foundation:
|
| Mission: https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/mission/
| Values: https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/values/
| Torwald wrote:
| Michael Hyatt in his "Vision driven leader" book makes a
| good distinction between vision an mission, which I think
| is helpful to you. I recommend you read the book, it is
| right on your avenue.
| wussboy wrote:
| It's on Audible. I'll give it a listen. Thanks!
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Mission statement: WWJD
|
| (I was joking with the comment, but I'm not so sure now.)
| imilk wrote:
| What would jeffrey dahmer do?
| yann2 wrote:
| Facebook will collapse the same way Lehmann and the Afghan
| army did. Just a few more nudges. And it all falls down.
| guerrilla wrote:
| Why do you believe this?
| aerosmile wrote:
| Sorry for hijacking this thread, but whoever posted this
| information in an internal message board was keen on finding a
| method to force the company to act on this. Was it the right
| thing to do? Yes. Was it meant to be leaked? 100%.
|
| Running a company in today's environment feels very different
| than 20 years ago, and to make it clear - it's better for the
| world this way. Any employee - no matter how low or high
| ranking - has the ability to erase a significant amount of
| enterprise value from any business, no matter how large or
| small. This is driven by improved moral standards, but also
| extreme connectivity that we have in terms of obtaining
| information internally (slack, notion, google drive and
| thousands of other software solutions that have increased
| everyone's access to documents) and sharing it with the outside
| world (social media, easy access to journalists, readers'
| interest in holding companies accountable).
|
| I would be surprised if we don't experience some type of a push
| back from the companies. At the very least, I imagine access to
| info will be reduced (already happened at Google), and also
| that we'll increasingly start seeing new ways of how employees
| are connected with each other (both in terms of policy as well
| as actual barriers that will prohibit anyone from reaching too
| many people). I imagine that companies will also start
| researching new candidates' propensity for activism by
| analyzing their social media content. For example, if you post
| "tax the rich!" on Facebook, I imagine that in the not so
| distant future that will have a negative impact on your market
| value.
|
| If there's one thing that I've learned, it's that every action
| triggers a reaction (which is time-delayed in the sense that it
| arrives late and also overshoots the original target), and the
| constant yo-yoing between those two forces is what explains
| much of the irrational behavior in the world.
| sbierwagen wrote:
| >I would be surprised if we don't experience some type of a
| push back from the companies.
|
| One thing could be to hire fewer people. Oddly large software
| companies is an evergreen topic on HN. Every middle manager
| wants to empire-build, but if each new hire is a potential
| leak, then that could be a brake on Google's relentless goal
| of hitting 1M employees by 2030: https://image.cnbcfm.com/api
| /v1/image/106318886-157800431271...
| pfortuny wrote:
| "Using social apps to connect with other people can have
| positive mental-health benefits"
|
| That statement _cannot be false_ because it is devoid of any
| content, being a mere hypothetical. The fact that it is
| surrounded by "research" is meaningless as well, as the
| aforementioned sentence is like saying "the elements of the
| empty set fulfil all properties"...
|
| So no, they are not contradicting themselves. They are simply
| and wantonly misleading people.
| Frost1x wrote:
| Most corporate PR statements are crafted this way. They often
| give the illusion of saying something because all the key
| words of saying something are there, but they're often
| crafted in a way that if read carefully, say almost nothing
| at all or have a giant disclaimer in small font that
| essentially says _*none of this maybe true and is subject to
| change_.
|
| A lot of pharmaceutical advertisements do this to: _this
| might help you, it might also kill you, you choose(!) but
| please ask your doctor about us anyways and throw us some
| money_.
| jxramos wrote:
| 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.
| dweekly wrote:
| "Foods containing sugar have been found to save lives in a
| number of studies."
|
| "Regular smoking use is associated with lower BMI, which is
| shown to correlate with improved heart health and lower
| mortality rates."
|
| "Use of fossil fuels powers a number of ecology-preserving
| tasks, allowing us to care for the environment in a way we
| could not without this amazing source of Earth-loving
| fuel."
| gerry_shaw wrote:
| You are far too good at crafting these passages.
| dgs_sgd wrote:
| It's fairly easy if you understand the meaning of "can be
| true". There can be countless instances where it's not
| true but if you find just _one_ instance where it's true,
| then your "can be true" statement must be true.
| pmarreck wrote:
| Love it.
|
| It still needs a name. Here let me try:
|
| Disproportionate benefit insinuation error: Implying
| (without explicitly stating that it has more benefits
| than disadvantages because that would be a disprovable
| lie) that because something has some benefit, it is
| overall helpful.
|
| Or just "plausible deniability"- factually stating the
| existence of a beneficial tree, but omitting mention of
| the harmful forest
|
| Or just "cherry-picking"
|
| Or to cover cases where a harm is insinuated/emphasized
| in the same way in order to discredit something (see:
| literally all the antivax data, antiscience,
| antimedicine... "trust doctors, you mean like the ones
| who prescribed thalidomide?")... "Misrepresenting the
| forest"
| [deleted]
| jxramos wrote:
| maybe a good contraction would be a _disbeni_
| hikerclimber1 wrote:
| Everything is subjective. Especially laws. So everyone
| should revolt and over throw the us government.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| This is called creating a narrative by cherry picking
| facts. This is what the media does, and is why so many
| people (most Americans per Pew) distrust them.
| javajosh wrote:
| It has a name, its called "sophistry", and the
| practitioners "sophists". [1]
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophist
| jahnu wrote:
| Nice short episode on them here for those who are
| interested
|
| https://historyofphilosophy.net/sophists
| treis wrote:
| 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.
| stickfigure wrote:
| 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...
| pempem wrote:
| 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
| vagrantJin wrote:
| > _Your note that the world is sexist and many things
| make women, teens and girls continously negatively
| evaluate themselves_
|
| How did you pull this from a rather benign statement
| about high school prom and magazines?
| staplers wrote:
| Without data, these are biased assumptions.
| popcorncowboy wrote:
| I've come up with a new sports drink. X% of people say it
| makes them feel good! WOOO! Y% don't feel anything. About
| one in Z people will absolutely feel worse. If you have
| suicidal thoughts, about one in ten of those will be able
| to attribute their suicidal thinking to my drink. When
| interviewed about my drink, teenagers will unprompted blame
| the drink on increasing rates of anxiety and and
| depression. If you feel unattractive, odds are about even
| you started feeling that way when you started drinking my
| drink. Teens regularly report wanting to drink less of my
| drink but lack the self control to do so. In part this is
| because they report feeling like they have to be seen
| drinking my drink. I know all this because I employ
| researchers who say they can't get people in my sports
| drink company to take their findings seriously because
| those researchers are "standing directly between people and
| their bonuses". So my execs don't use our internal
| research, but cite instead other studies (by orgs that I
| donate to) that highlight the positives.
|
| I make $BILLIONS from this drink.
|
| (fill in whatever value of X, Y and Z makes this all ok)
| dgs_sgd wrote:
| It's a true statement. Surely connecting via social apps has
| had positive mental health benefits on _at least one_ person.
| That alone would make it true.
|
| I think the problem is most people probably read the
| statement and don't realize just how weak the evidence
| required to make it true is.
| zo1 wrote:
| I would interpret it as "connecting via social apps has a
| greater than absolute 0 probability of giving positive
| mental health benefits".
| dgs_sgd wrote:
| 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".
| annoyingnoob wrote:
| This is pretty much how something like a JD Power survey works,
| they find the one thing that you might be number 1 at and
| promote it - while ignoring anything that could detract. That
| one thing might be true but it does not change or eliminate
| other things.
| dont__panic wrote:
| Just like smoking cigarettes _can_ have the positive side-
| effect of reducing your chance of catching covid!
| agumonkey wrote:
| 1/3, if confirmed, is sadly insane
| thewarrior wrote:
| I find it interesting that Instagram promoting celebrity
| culture has provoked such a backlash but the Chinese
| governments attempts to tackle the same on their streaming
| platforms is seen as misguided.
| ptr2voidStar wrote:
| How dare you shine a torch on our blindspot!
| Grustaf wrote:
| Since everyone else in the world knows it, it's not surprising
| they do as well.
| nemo44x wrote:
| Most everyone socialized fine for thousands of years. Some people
| who didn't socialize well, essentially nerds, invented social
| media and for some reason everyone decided to begin socializing
| this way - the way nerds imagined it would be best. It's no
| wonder everyone is a neurotic, anxious mess.
| rmah wrote:
| LOL, that's funny because it's (sorta) true!
| streamofdigits wrote:
| Kinda refreshing to see WSJ suddenly care about negative societal
| outcomes that the "market" is unwilling to address
| https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/28/22554502/facebook-1-trill...
| [deleted]
| andrewla wrote:
| 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.
| ElectricMind wrote:
| Stop blaming random companies. Control your daughters maybe.
| Facebook has no moral obligation to 'protect' your teen girls.
| Funny how people wine about "others" rather than controlling what
| they can.
| [deleted]
| voidnullnil wrote:
| 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.
| decremental wrote:
| There should be a term for things we know on an instinctive level
| that we can use to guide our decision making.
| EamonnMR wrote:
| The term is 'gut' ask in 'I know it in my gut' or 'gut check.'
| sasaf5 wrote:
| Morals. Dearly lacking these days.
| johnwheeler wrote:
| Intuition
|
| " a thing that one knows or considers likely from instinctive
| feeling rather than conscious reasoning."
| nineplay wrote:
| "Delusions"
|
| Things we know instinctively are frequently wrong. It leads to
| us discarding any information that goes against our intuitive
| beliefs. It leads to use thinking that anyone who disagrees
| with us is mentally deficient.
|
| Guard against this whenever possible.
| tristor wrote:
| There is, it's called intuition. Unfortunately the new mantra
| in big tech is "data driven decision making", which is supposed
| to mean that you do research and collect data prior to making
| decisions, not that you A/B test everything to a local maxima
| ignoring intuition and the holistic bigger picture, but
| companies have taken it to mean the former. Intuition is the
| basis of taste-making and aesthetic and is one of the most
| important things to develop if you're doing product design, and
| it's absolutely something that can be learned, it's not innate.
| All intuition is, is your mind making inferences and
| extrapolations from prior knowledge to the current situation
| before you, which you can't adequately explain or don't follow
| the strict rules of formal logic / rationality.
|
| Part of wisdom is being able to apply knowledge in new
| situations, and this is the basis of intuition. Intuition is
| wisdom in action, and we ignore our intuitions as people and as
| societies at our peril, both in our personal lives and in
| business.
| [deleted]
| willcipriano wrote:
| Common sense is what Aristotle called it.
| SavantIdiot wrote:
| Instagram filters creep me the hell out. Can you imagine posting
| altered pictures of yourself all day long, and then looking in a
| real mirror and not seeing what you have acclimated to? Talk
| about technologically augmented body dysphoria. Maybe getting rid
| of in-app face-tuning filters would be a start.
| futureproofd wrote:
| What are the rules / law for identifying an instagram post as an
| ad? If this isn't enforceable then young people don't stand a
| chance against the insidious nature of marketing.
|
| In the 90's, "cool-hunters" would hire street promoters to hype
| brands one-on-one, directly to the consumer. These promoters were
| often friends of the consumers, who essentially became walking
| adverts for <insert big brand here>. Sounds a bit like the
| company "Influenceter". It's always been a goal of advertising to
| capture the minds of the youth culture. Facebook just does it to
| scale.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-09-14 23:01 UTC)