7 ms·

Instagram. It is that simple, instagram is straight up cancer, well, actually most social networks but the current major cancer is Instagram. My GF is glued to

Instagram. It is that simple, instagram is straight up cancer, well, actually most social networks but the current major cancer is Instagram. My GF is glued to her phone. The amount of circle jerking that happens with women and social media is utterly crazy. Bring this up as the article mentions it seems to be higher in women and when I looked around in day to day life I see more women glued to instagram than men (Don't have stats to back it up). I wouldn't be surprised if they found a link between this and users who use social networks more as well. Edit: Maybe "circle jerk" wasn't the right phrase to use...

darawk 8y ago
Women seem uniquely vulnerable to this thing somehow. With only a few exceptions, all of the women under 45 that I know basically can't tear themselves away from IG. This is true across IQ and socioeconomic bands in my own anecdotal experience.
- polotics 8y ago
  Care to consider there may be some selection bias here?
  - darawk 8y ago
    It's certainly a possibility. Have you noticed a different pattern?
    - drb91 8y ago
      All the women and men in my life manage to quarantine their phone use to their personal time. I have a tough time imagining you spending time with a friend where they just ignore you to spend time on IG. If they do, that’s likely a reflection of you.
      - darawk 8y ago
        Sure, when people are actively spending time with me they're usually not on their phone. But you have no awareness of how people you know spend the rest of their time? I'm around my friends during lots of times where we're not actively spending time together.
      - afarrell 8y ago
        > that’s likely a reflection of you Be wary of taking this statement too seriously. 0) It wouldn’t be a direct reflection of you in any case; It might directly reflect what someone thinks of you. But just because a person thinks you are boring (or creepy or lazy or crazy) does not in fact mean you are. Its just a data point. 1) Spinning in your head about whether someone thinks you are a boring person isn’t going to help you or them. Talk to a friend and ask them for direct feedback. 2) Sometimes people do have a habit of getting on their phones and then later regretting not be being present and social. I know I do and I need to make deliberate effort to avoid it (Freedom.app is useful here) 3) Sometimes people are tired.
dragonwriter 8y ago
> The amount of circle jerking that happens with women and social media is utterly crazy Men have been describing women's social interaction in this way, varying only by the names of the popular media and mode of communication of the day, for about as long as we have documentary evidence of how men described anything (and presumably longer, though of course that cannot be documented.)
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- jlawson 8y ago
  What's your point? That men have a distinct gendered nature that makes them wrongly describe women this way? Or that women have a distinct gendered nature that makes them engage in such social interaction styles - and men have been noticing it for a long time? I'm also curious what historical comparisons you're talking about... it's not immediately clear what the 500 BC equivalent of IG social media addiction was.
  - tinco 8y ago
    Gossiping around the water well, as we men would probably describe it. In reality I think it's more likely they're assuring better social cohesion by establishing secondary communication for us more emotionally sensitive masculine types. If that social cohesion advantage transfers well to Instagram is an important question of course. I would not dismiss it out of hand.
    - jlawson 8y ago
      Interesting. You agree, then, that women gossip more than men. But you think gossip - which means talking about people behind their backs - is good for social cohesion? This really sounds like a complete inversion of reality. Straightforward communication is good; manipulating information, denying information, etc are bad. Lots of girls (and some boys) even commit suicide because of gossip campaigns against them - and nowadays it's frequently mediated by social media. I've been targeted by a female gossip campaign in my youth. The lies flowed freely and harmed me tremendously, always whispered behind my back so I couldn't correct the record. In contrast, when boys had a problem with me they threatened physically instead. Many have experienced this dichotomy. It's hard to see how one could come to your conclusion from a purely fact-finding mindset. But I'd be interested in any observations that led you to this conclusion. At this point, I think there's a good chance that you feel you're morally compelled to believe this regardless of evidence, as part of a political/moralistic project to change the world according to some grand narrative. Anyway it's testable. We can just consider: Do groups composed of all men have better or worse social cohesion than comparable groups composed of all women? I've heard from people who worked in offices of different gender mixes that there is a difference... and it doesn't support your theory. But there must be some better evidence, somewhere.
gaius 8y ago
I see more women glued to instagram than men There is certainly some evidence that women and men use social media differently; Pinterest is 81% women for example, and only 7% of posts are by men. Instagram is 68% women. I don't know of any social media that is male-dominated in the same extent. LinkedIn is 56% men, Twitter 57%.
- amarant 8y ago
  i wonder what the HN demographic looks like? it's probably hard to measure since one does not provide gender in a profile here, but it'd still be interesting to see. I for one have a heavy HN addiction, similar to what others describe their IG addiction to be like
  - kopo 8y ago
    It is addictive. But atleast they have the maxvisit, minaway, delay settings available to provide some minimal way to reduce the pull. Social networks need to have such tooling, that should automatically nudge people to take it easy when heavy usage is detected.
- gyaru 8y ago
  > I don't know of any social media that is male-dominated in the same extent. Reddit, most likely HN too.
  - gaius 8y ago
    Reddit, most likely HN too. That would be stretching my personal definition of social media, but yes Reddit does publish figures showing it's pretty much exactly as skewed towards men as Instagram is towards women, very interesting. I wonder about Strava, there seems to be no data available on that, maybe because it isn't ad-supported. The reason I'm not so sure as neither Reddit nor HN are oriented around the personal profile in the same way as the others are. HN could (probably should) go completely "anonymous coward" and it would be no less useful.
    - 8y ago
kopo 8y ago
Here is one way WhatsApp efffects mothers - https://scroll.in/magazine/834036/indian-schools-are-using-whatsapp-to-enslave-mothers-and-crush-childrens-independence https://scroll.in/magazine/834036/indian-schools-are-using-w... When the thinking is do whatever it takes to scale, the unintended effects are too numerous for people to comprehend.

darawk 8y ago

Women seem uniquely vulnerable to this thing somehow. With only a few exceptions, all of the women under 45 that I know basically can't tear themselves away from IG. This is true across IQ and socioeconomic bands in my own anecdotal experience.

polotics 8y ago
Care to consider there may be some selection bias here?
- darawk 8y ago
  It's certainly a possibility. Have you noticed a different pattern?
  - drb91 8y ago
    All the women and men in my life manage to quarantine their phone use to their personal time. I have a tough time imagining you spending time with a friend where they just ignore you to spend time on IG. If they do, that’s likely a reflection of you.
    - darawk 8y ago
      Sure, when people are actively spending time with me they're usually not on their phone. But you have no awareness of how people you know spend the rest of their time? I'm around my friends during lots of times where we're not actively spending time together.
    - afarrell 8y ago
      > that’s likely a reflection of you Be wary of taking this statement too seriously. 0) It wouldn’t be a direct reflection of you in any case; It might directly reflect what someone thinks of you. But just because a person thinks you are boring (or creepy or lazy or crazy) does not in fact mean you are. Its just a data point. 1) Spinning in your head about whether someone thinks you are a boring person isn’t going to help you or them. Talk to a friend and ask them for direct feedback. 2) Sometimes people do have a habit of getting on their phones and then later regretting not be being present and social. I know I do and I need to make deliberate effort to avoid it (Freedom.app is useful here) 3) Sometimes people are tired.

dragonwriter 8y ago

> The amount of circle jerking that happens with women and social media is utterly crazy Men have been describing women's social interaction in this way, varying only by the names of the popular media and mode of communication of the day, for about as long as we have documentary evidence of how men described anything (and presumably longer, though of course that cannot be documented.)

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
jlawson 8y ago
What's your point? That men have a distinct gendered nature that makes them wrongly describe women this way? Or that women have a distinct gendered nature that makes them engage in such social interaction styles - and men have been noticing it for a long time? I'm also curious what historical comparisons you're talking about... it's not immediately clear what the 500 BC equivalent of IG social media addiction was.
- tinco 8y ago
  Gossiping around the water well, as we men would probably describe it. In reality I think it's more likely they're assuring better social cohesion by establishing secondary communication for us more emotionally sensitive masculine types. If that social cohesion advantage transfers well to Instagram is an important question of course. I would not dismiss it out of hand.
  - jlawson 8y ago
    Interesting. You agree, then, that women gossip more than men. But you think gossip - which means talking about people behind their backs - is good for social cohesion? This really sounds like a complete inversion of reality. Straightforward communication is good; manipulating information, denying information, etc are bad. Lots of girls (and some boys) even commit suicide because of gossip campaigns against them - and nowadays it's frequently mediated by social media. I've been targeted by a female gossip campaign in my youth. The lies flowed freely and harmed me tremendously, always whispered behind my back so I couldn't correct the record. In contrast, when boys had a problem with me they threatened physically instead. Many have experienced this dichotomy. It's hard to see how one could come to your conclusion from a purely fact-finding mindset. But I'd be interested in any observations that led you to this conclusion. At this point, I think there's a good chance that you feel you're morally compelled to believe this regardless of evidence, as part of a political/moralistic project to change the world according to some grand narrative. Anyway it's testable. We can just consider: Do groups composed of all men have better or worse social cohesion than comparable groups composed of all women? I've heard from people who worked in offices of different gender mixes that there is a difference... and it doesn't support your theory. But there must be some better evidence, somewhere.

gaius 8y ago

I see more women glued to instagram than men There is certainly some evidence that women and men use social media differently; Pinterest is 81% women for example, and only 7% of posts are by men. Instagram is 68% women. I don't know of any social media that is male-dominated in the same extent. LinkedIn is 56% men, Twitter 57%.

amarant 8y ago
i wonder what the HN demographic looks like? it's probably hard to measure since one does not provide gender in a profile here, but it'd still be interesting to see. I for one have a heavy HN addiction, similar to what others describe their IG addiction to be like
- kopo 8y ago
  It is addictive. But atleast they have the maxvisit, minaway, delay settings available to provide some minimal way to reduce the pull. Social networks need to have such tooling, that should automatically nudge people to take it easy when heavy usage is detected.
gyaru 8y ago
> I don't know of any social media that is male-dominated in the same extent. Reddit, most likely HN too.
- gaius 8y ago
  Reddit, most likely HN too. That would be stretching my personal definition of social media, but yes Reddit does publish figures showing it's pretty much exactly as skewed towards men as Instagram is towards women, very interesting. I wonder about Strava, there seems to be no data available on that, maybe because it isn't ad-supported. The reason I'm not so sure as neither Reddit nor HN are oriented around the personal profile in the same way as the others are. HN could (probably should) go completely "anonymous coward" and it would be no less useful.
  - 8y ago

kopo 8y ago

Here is one way WhatsApp efffects mothers - https://scroll.in/magazine/834036/indian-schools-are-using-whatsapp-to-enslave-mothers-and-crush-childrens-independence https://scroll.in/magazine/834036/indian-schools-are-using-w... When the thinking is do whatever it takes to scale, the unintended effects are too numerous for people to comprehend.