[HN Gopher] Facebook's own data is not as conclusive about teens...
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Facebook's own data is not as conclusive about teens and mental
health
Author : zenmaster10665
Score : 57 points
Date : 2021-10-09 20:35 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.npr.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.npr.org)
| jsean2004 wrote:
| "Editor's note: Facebook is among NPR's financial supporters and
| since publishing her book, The Art of Screen Time, Kamenetz's
| husband took a job with Facebook. He works in an unrelated
| division."
| throwaway908 wrote:
| You can read the author's defense of herself on her Twitter:
| https://twitter.com/anya1anya/status/1446282545700691969
|
| "I've been covering kids + tech since ~2007. The Art of Screen
| Time pubbed in 2018. I've spoken on these topics at Aspen
| Ideas, Atlantic Fest, Apple, Google, SXSW. Collaborated with
| Mozilla. Adam's startup was acquired by Facebook in 2019. He
| works in hardware."
| Forbo wrote:
| Ouch. I missed this when I was reading it. Ugh, trying to
| navigate what is factually based and what is (potentially
| manufactured?) knee-jerk outrage is getting exhausting. Then
| there's the possibility that this piece is a manufactured wet
| blanket trying to douse the dumpster fire of negative reporting
| surrounding FB.
| [deleted]
| elliekelly wrote:
| How is this not a conflict of interest that would preclude this
| particular journalist from covering this particular story?
| Facebook pays a portion of her bills. She owns Facebook stock.
| Her husband's career at Facebook (and beyond) could be derailed
| by what she writes about Facebook. She has a material and
| vested interest in portraying Facebook in the best light
| possible.
|
| At the very least an editors note disclosing such a substantial
| conflict ought to be at the top of the page, not the bottom.
| This _really_ colors my opinion of NPR's editorial and ethical
| standards.
| duud wrote:
| Is it more of conflict of interest than the whistleblower
| potentially being entitled to a multi billion dollar
| commission from the SEC? Because that's barely been mentioned
| in any of the negative articles.
|
| https://www.sec.gov/whistleblower
| elliekelly wrote:
| What is the conflict? She only gets paid if her claims are
| substantiated _and_ lead to a substantial enforcement
| action. And perhaps I'm a bit too in the weeds on this sort
| of thing but when I read "whistleblower" I assume there is
| some avenue for remuneration either from the SEC or a _qui
| tam_ suit or some other private right of action. Why would
| anyone blow their whole career up to bring fraud to light
| if they're going to be financially hung out to dry?
|
| I think most people view whistleblower protections as
| _aligning_ the interests of the public and the
| whistleblower.
| JohnJamesRambo wrote:
| Wow. I thought I was safer than that believing this article,
| since it was NPR.
| wutbrodo wrote:
| IMO NPR isn't a particularly good quality source. I'd prob
| put it below even the NYT, and far below, say, The Atlantic
| Forbo wrote:
| Ad Fontes puts NPR above both of those in terms of factual
| reporting. Then again, maybe Ad Fontes has their own
| biases. I don't know. I'm not an expert in this stuff, so I
| typically try to rely on those who appear to be. Maybe I'm
| just following the wrong piper.
|
| https://adfontesmedia.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2021/02/Media-B...
| screye wrote:
| NPR takes the cake for most deteriorated one-good news
| source over NYT. It is a real shame.
| seattle_spring wrote:
| What are some better sources for news that you'd
| recommend?
| paulpauper wrote:
| Let's assume the author wrote the biggest fluff piece about
| Facebook imaginable. how much do you think it would affect the
| stock? a penny? Focusing on conflict of interest is just
| another lifehack to dismiss someone's argument without having
| to actually argue against its merits.
| Forbo wrote:
| Trying to sort through what's real and what's being spun. Even
| here on HN, the thread[0] for a related article is being
| discussed much more. Maybe it's because of the ragebait headline
| that was used for the original post, I dunno.
|
| My daughter is getting to the age where some of her friends are
| starting to get smartphones, so I'm trying to sort out what will
| actually be best for her long-term development. I don't want her
| to be socially stunted, but I also don't want her to expose her
| to something that could be detrimental to her mental well-being.
|
| In an ideal world, these kinds of networks would be based on
| open, federated platforms a la Mastodon, Pixelfed, etc. As it
| stands I don't feel comfortable trusting the advertising industry
| to determine how these things should be run.
|
| [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28812310
|
| Edit: As pointed out by another poster, FB pays NPR, even further
| muddling the waters. Aaaaaggggghhhhh
| tayo42 wrote:
| Isn't all this tech really to new to even know? Millenials are
| the first generation to really grow yo with all this and only
| just hit adult hood.
|
| I also remeber everything being bad for my well being as a
| teen. Magazines and photoshop were the big thing, now it's just
| Instagram I guess. There's no shortage of ways to mess with a
| kids self esteem. Why single out tech and social media? What
| about sats and college admissions, and sports?
| xvector wrote:
| > but I also don't want her to expose her to something that
| could be detrimental to her mental well-being.
|
| IMO there's not much you can do here. If all her friends are
| using Insta and she wants to too, she'll have one whether you
| like it or not.
|
| The only difference is whether you'll know about it, but even
| that is up for question because many teens create secondary
| Insta accounts explicitly for the purpose of avoiding their
| parents' watchful eyes.
| zenmaster10665 wrote:
| Who is responsible for policing content on Mastodon or other
| similar decentralised social media platforms?
|
| Like it or not some entity or group need to be responsible for
| handling illegal and dangerous content.
|
| As to the article, yeah NPR receives money from a lot of
| places. Is anyone asking about the motivation of NYT, WSJ, etc?
| Just trying to remain open minded about motives on all sides!
| quotemstr wrote:
| > Trying to sort through what's real and what's being spun.
|
| Public opinion is important to various interests. Don't you
| think they'd try to manipulate it? Don't you think that
| astroturf campaigns on social media would be effective in
| driving narratives? Tons and tons and tons of internet
| sentiment these days is one influence op or another, and it's
| immediately obvious when you find a community where sentiment
| is organic: the difference is night and day, like between Bud
| Light and a great craft beer.
| ravenstine wrote:
| To be honest, I don't really care about studies, let alone
| _Facebook 's_ own studies. I've seen enough.
|
| Life immediately became less depressing after leaving social
| media for good. Because my family, especially my cousins, use
| Facebook and Instagram for communication I'm still forced to use
| them to a minimal extent. When I do use them, I don't see a lot
| of happy people. In fact I see a lot of signs of mental
| instability in the profiles that these two sites want me to see
| and friend/follow. Lots of narcissism.
| zenmaster10665 wrote:
| So you prefer to use anecdotes to decide how technology is
| affecting society, rather than data?
| pelagicAustral wrote:
| I appreciate the importance of sharing these articles, but beyond
| that, I'm really starting to feel Facebook-fatigue lately (as a
| non FB user).
|
| At one point, escaping the negativity of it was enough, these
| days you're plastered with its toxicity even when not being a
| part it.
|
| 'no such thing as bad publicity' I guess.
| 0des wrote:
| Perhaps there is a browser extension that an HN power-user has
| created to weed out topics by keyword. I had a similar
| extension filtering out animal abuse content on Reddit in the
| past, so something like that could easily weed out undesired
| topics.
| pelagicAustral wrote:
| Sure thing. Except that its not just on HN, its on regular
| media, blogs, colleagues, etc.
|
| I used to believe that rhetoric like 'permeates the fabric of
| society' was so cheesy used when used to refer to the outward
| damage generated by social media, and yet here we are today
| when even when not being a part of it you are made to be a
| part of it.
|
| You even see it everywhere, ads, media, recruitment agencies
| asking you for social profiles, etc... I dont know a single
| person [IRL] that does not have a Facebook account, not a
| single one. And everybody acts like they actually depend on
| them... How sad is that?
| zenmaster10665 wrote:
| Is it social media as a technology that you feel is
| sad/negative? What is the negative or damage that you feel
| is caused to people who participate?
| pelagicAustral wrote:
| Not social media, I've been around for the last 20 years
| on all kinds of scenes. I created my Facebook account on
| 2006 and closed it in 2014.
|
| I used to enjoy web forums a lot, back in the PHP
| dominated era (MyBB, PHPBB, SMF, vBulletin, Invision,
| etc). I was an active part of that culture... Had
| Fotolog, MySpace, DeviantArt, and the like for ages...
| Grew up as social media evolved and enjoyed Facebook as
| much as the next guy at a time... I even evangelized for
| it when other social networks were leading... matter of
| fact, I reported a XSS vulnerability to them back in
| 2006, never got thanked for it...
|
| But it changed... It became dark, negative... I felt
| worse after logging in, and became antagonized by it...
| So I figured it was me, and maybe I was just too old for
| it, just like that old pub I used to go, 'its all kids
| these days'... So I quit... And now more people are
| realizing the same... Maybe its an age thing... A lot of
| people go with 'but that's the way I reach my loved
| ones', bullshit... I live half way across the world and
| got no problem reaching my fam through Telegram or
| whatever...
|
| I grew out of Facebook, I guess...
| 0des wrote:
| You are not alone, I followed almost this same path to
| leaving around the same time. Have a good weekend!
| 0des wrote:
| That's pretty sad. I'm sorry it affects you this way. I
| dont know if it is any consolation, but I can say that not
| having a phone, as well as not having social networks (in
| my case I'm on HN) helped immensely by weeding these people
| out of my life.
|
| I'd like to reference a past comment I made on this issue:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28314603
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > At one point, escaping the negativity of it was enough, these
| days you're plastered with its toxicity even when not being a
| part it.
|
| Most people I know have Facebook accounts and use sparingly to
| keep up with friends, family, and hobby groups. For the
| majority of users, the realities of Facebook are relatively
| boring. Nothing like the hyper-dramatic portrayal of social
| media as a "threat to our democracy" or an incurable, society-
| destroying addiction.
|
| I think traditional media is overplaying their hand by cherry-
| picking the most problematic Facebook users and trying to tell
| everyone that those rare edge cases are actually the norm on
| Facebook. These stories are extremely popular with people who
| don't use Facebook because they validate their decision in an
| almost self-congratulatory manner. Everyone likes being told
| they made the right decision, so reading stories that Facebook
| is evil is some nice validation for someone who happens to fall
| into the non-Facebook camp.
|
| Meanwhile, I think the general public is going to tire of these
| hyper-dramatic Facebook stories. The anti-Facebook news stories
| are starting to feel like an exaggerated moral panic relative
| to the boring realities of the average person's Facebook
| experience.
|
| I am, however, concerned about the second-order effects of this
| new anti-Facebook culture war. What, exactly, do people expect
| to come of all of these calls for more regulation of speech on
| the internet? It's starting to feel like the tech communities
| are being tricked into rallying behind calls for more
| government intervention and censorship of speech on the
| internet, which is not something I would have predicted a
| decade ago.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| dominik-2020 wrote:
| I like Facebook. Always have. Ways will - I stay in touch with
| friends I'd have a hard time otherwise. If you're unhappy,
| don't use it.
| pelagicAustral wrote:
| I don't use it.
| sdoering wrote:
| OP doesn't use it. That was exactly the point. Even if one
| doesn't use it one can't escape Zuck's empire.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| I don't. Unfortunately teenagers and everyone at Jan 6 does.
| smoldesu wrote:
| There's an unfortunate "us vs them" rhetoric that I feel is
| going to bite a lot of people in the butt. It all begins with
| this misconception that Facebook is a common carrier: they're
| large and valuable, but much like Microsoft Teams, iMessage and
| AWS, they're still private entities. There's an EULA, clear as
| day that states who's right and who's wrong here, and they've
| got your digital signature to corroborate it. It's not like the
| US government has any interest in giving up these invaluable
| domestic data sources, so they'll happily turn a blind eye to
| every complaint you can draft. It's a catch 22, a total
| stalemate where your only option is to spin your wheels.
| Without any practical way forwards, it seems like most people
| just default to complaining online as a way to vent their
| frustration towards Facebook's oblique victory.
| rickspencer3 wrote:
| That's the problem with the downsides of social media. Even if
| you don't use Facebook, Twitter, and the like, their negative
| impacts still reach you through the people around and the rest
| of society. I suppose it's a bit like second hand smoke now
| that I think about it.
|
| That said, the article makes what I think is an important
| point, that social media is not universally negative, it has
| some positive effects for some people. I usually use the word
| "cancer" to describe my attitude to Facebook and Twitter, and
| why I won't use it, but that is intentional hyperbole to stop
| further discussion.
| StingyJelly wrote:
| Not buying that point at all... Fill the missing word(s) in
| the following statement. "43% of respondents said using
| _________ usually makes them feel better"
| tvanantwerp wrote:
| > That reliance on self-reporting -- the teens' own opinions --
| as a single indicator of harm is a problem, says Candice Odgers,
| a psychologist who studies adolescence at University of
| California, Irvine and Duke University. That's because teenagers
| are already primed by media coverage, and the disapproval of
| adults, to believe that social media is bad for them.
|
| And since when do teens care about the disapproval of adults?
| When I was a kid, video games were the terrible thing. I didn't
| know any kids who bought into that narrative--we knew they were
| harmless fun and kept playing.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| _And since when do teens care about the disapproval of adults?_
|
| This is kind of argument by stereotype. Of course teens are
| impact by media.
| Forbo wrote:
| I often would internalize the idea that I was "wasting" time by
| enjoying video games when I was growing up. I can trace my
| entire career back to gaming sparking my interest in computing.
| However, having experienced childhood trauma and lifelong
| depression, even though what I was doing was perfectly
| acceptable behavior, I would spin it into evidence that my
| negative self-perception was accurate.
|
| I still struggle with this idea, and have been working to
| overcome feeling immense guilt when I take some time to blow
| off steam playing a game for a few hours.
| savanaly wrote:
| Oh, I definitely bought into all sorts of notions my parent
| consciously or unconsciously tried to instill in me about video
| games, reading, etc. It's not all powerful but it is powerful.
| I'm fully ready to believe there are some segments of kids that
| don't feel that effect but for me and my immediate peers it
| existed.
| [deleted]
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(page generated 2021-10-09 23:01 UTC)