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Lawmakers Ask Zuck to Drop 'Instagram for Kids' Since App Made Kids Suicidal
- mrkramer 5y agoWasn't Zuck's idea quite the opposite to make Instagram for Kids safer for children by filtering predatory, malicious and disturbing content that might affect them at that young age.
- hhansen 5y agoThe provocation of suicidal thoughts of grown-ups often comes from feeling stuck in a shitty life situation while watching the never ending photo-streams falsely portraying happy lives, beautiful products and experiences you cannot afford, the partners you will never have participating in staged social occasions that you will never attend while dining your depression meds. and feeling numb, lifeless and without energy. So even if Facebook succeeds in removing all predatory, malicious and disturbing content, are they going to eliminate all of the above from Zuck's kiddy-insta? I see absolutely no reason why kids should be any different than grown-ups in this regard. Quite the opposite. Kids are absolutely obsessed with comparing themselves to other kids, and Zuck's Kiddy-insta is an absolute recipe for disaster.
- mrkramer 5y agoI personally stopped using Facebook 10 years ago and will probably never come back. At the time when I used it I only used it to connect with friends and family and I saw no disturbing content or content that would incite jealousy, greed or lust. I think the trend of hyper self-centric content begun with Instagram indeed. For example Photo Models and Body Builders sharing photos of their bodies for no apparent reason besides to glorify and/or sell themselves. Photos of food make no sense to me, photos of pets I can somehow understand and yes I can understand how looking at happy lives and happy experiences can make you feel miserable but then again Facebook or Instagram don't really know your mental health and state you are in and can not magically remove "sensitive" content that would disturb you. Best thing would be to stop using social media altogether or use it only to inform yourself about the world around you but in the form of text or perhaps audio/voice only.
- mc32 5y agoGet some laws governing social media. Don't dilly dally about it like everything else. If you let them, they will act like drug dealers and will not be a nice drug dealer and say, hey, you shot up enough now, come back tomorrow...
- egypturnash 5y agoI am looking at this headline and I do not want to click on the story for further details. How do I get out of this shitty, shitty cyberpunk dystopia I live in.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- LurkingPenguin 5y agoWell, not directed to you specifically, but for anyone who works for companies that are creating this shitty dystopia and don't like it: stop. One of the reasons I left Silicon Valley was that over the years I came to see that people even among the people who were uncomfortable with or knew that the things they worked out were a net negative to society, fewer and fewer were willing to leave, usually because of money. It's Upton Sinclair's "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it."
- mathgladiator 5y agoI've come to view the ills of technology as an inevitably... this is how I sleep at night. I have new fangled ideas for server less infrastructure, but I know it has a hidden cost as it would be used for all sorts of evil.
- TaylorAlexander 5y agoI have a friend who works in big tech. We worked together before. I moved to a new gig where I work fewer hours and earn a lot less money but I have a huge amount of freedom. From our conversations I gather that he would love to do what I am doing, but he has a house payment and a wife and kids. It seems like people get comfortable for a while with their big tech gig, and then get real used to the cash flow. After a while they can’t make a change because they’re so embedded.
- ripsawridge 5y agoKeep in touch with your friend. A lot of times, they are wracking their brains to find a way. The weird thing about stepping away, is that the sacrifice of supposed "needs" turns out to be the sweetest benefit.
- jasonhansel 5y agoLess letter-writing, more legislating. U.S. senators don't need to politely ask Zuckerberg to stop this app--if they want to put a stop to it, they should be willing to actually make a law against it.
- tibbetts 5y agoI’m sure Markey would be happy to legislate against it. But thanks to the filibuster he would need to get 49 Democrats and another 10 Republicans on board before that would accomplish anything.
- staticautomatic 5y agoThe filibuster sucks but it doesn’t obviate the responsibility to try.
- b0tzzzzzzman 5y agoWell.. Because you asked nice. We will get started on revealing our new parental controls system we made a while back. Sends you emails and status reports about your childrens mood and emotional changes. We call it Instaface parent.
- brootstrap 5y agoYour child scored a lower than average score today on instaface. Maybe you should reach out to your child and show them proper usage of the instaface user interface (user in-yer-face?)
- b0tzzzzzzman 5y agoWe have detected very slow input speeds as well. Have you considered teaching them to use speech to text? Get started here.
- andrei_says_ 5y agoBut what if it is also profitable? And what if profitability can be measured with hard numbers and “suicidal” is somewhat open to interpretation? And what if the people making the decisions also share the profit? I’m sure we can reach some kind of middle ground. /s
- rfrey 5y agoMaybe they can set up some kind of affiliate program with parents to further increase engagement.
- mathgladiator 5y agoThe real question is how many dead kids matter until shareholder value growth is limited. The thing I seriously wonder if there is a new evolutionary pressure unfolding, and whether or not we should fight it. Or, will it take care of itself?
- kaptain 5y agoAre we assuming that parents have no oversight over their children’s devices? This seems like a social problem (ie family relations/management) rather than a technology/legal one.
- InDemoVeritas 5y agoThe assumption is correct. Have you met children?
- black6 5y agoThey do have oversight, they just elect not to use it because the devices are pacifiers and their individual lives are more important than that of their family.
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- kaptain 5y agoI have children. Their access and usage of devices is my responsibility.
- simonh 5y agoThe fact that you have parental responsibilities does not absolve anyone else of their responsibilities. That would be a non sequitur. But anyway, it’s not reasonable to expect parents to know if this or that app is more likely to increase the risk of suicide. Fortunately I have a government that I pay for that can research this and help me with that.
- GoblinSlayer 5y agoThey can assume all apps increase the risk of suicide.
- jackson1442 5y ago
- c54 5y agoHere in the US we think that freedom from government oversight is the only kind of freedom. We make the mistake thinking this means that the free market is actually the antidote to government, and as long as we have the free market we will be free. In reality, companies operating within a market is perfectly capable of imposing intrusive and arbitrary power on citizens, and collective action / government intervention is needed in order to protect our freedoms. As others have pointed out, we don't need to 'ask', we need to legislate. Congress will have a hard time passing legislation against this not only because of the filibuster (which encourages minority rule), but because of this fundamental confusion. Why would a Senator or Congressperson who believes only in the first type of free market freedom and is blind to the second type of freedom make moves against a corporation? Anyways I just started reading this great book called Freedom From the Market, points are 100% lifted from there: https://thenewpress.com/books/freedom-from-market https://thenewpress.com/books/freedom-from-market
- bmitc 5y agoThank you for saying this, and saying it well. It’s really scary that all these “freedom” drum beaters and free market worshippers don’t consider this at all. What’s worse is that government at least have a tacit reason to keep the people’s best interest in mind, although that does seem to be eroding, but corporations have zero incentive to care about anything other than the gain of capital and more power. Also, thanks for the book reference.
- c54 5y agoIt is scary, especially since there are very invested powers interested in keeping it that way. "Corporations good, government bad" they'll say to their people, all the way to the bank
- PragmaticPulp 5y ago> As others have pointed out, we don't need to 'ask', we need to legislate. Legislate what, specifically? I always see calls for more legislation around social media, but I rarely see any actionable suggestions. Frankly, I’m kind of shocked at the degree that tech communities are rushing for legislation on this topic. When I was growing up I remember the big issue being violence in video games. Politicians went on crusades to demonize video games and demand that we pass legislation to protect the kids from any exposure to violent video games, lest the video games turn them into school shooters. With video games, the online tech communities rallied against any legislation and wrote volumes about how kids were smart enough to manage themselves and not let violent video games influence their thinking. With social media, tech communities are doing the opposite: Writing volumes about how kids are incapable of managing themselves and will succumb to social media destroying their mental health. The major difference between the two is that tech people (on average) like video games but they don’t like social media. So video games get a pass, but social media must be attacked with everything we’ve got. The secondary subtext buried in most of these articles is that young girls, specifically, are most vulnerable to social media issues, whereas violent video games were largely an issue for young boys. Apparently we’re okay letting young boys handle difficult content but we don’t give the same credit to young girls. The more I watch all of this play out, the more hypocritical it all feels. I also suspect that if anti-social-media politicians see success that we’ll see a revival of the anti-violent-game politicians. After all, we need to regulate what the kids consume, right?
- Animats 5y agoThe US has only 546 suicides in a year in the 5-14 age group. Age 15-24 is 10x greater.[1] Risk of suicide increases with age, peaking at age 45-54.[2] Under-13s, the target group for Instagram for Kids, is not at high risk. [1] https://www.kidsdata.org/topic/211/suicides-age/table#fmt=123&loc=1&tf=124&ch=1309,446,1308,787&sortColumnId=0&sortType=asc https://www.kidsdata.org/topic/211/suicides-age/table#fmt=12... [2] https://www.sprc.org/scope/age https://www.sprc.org/scope/age
- hanniabu 5y ago> Under-13s, the target group for Instagram for Kids, is not at high risk. Until now it seems
- rutherblood 5y agoYour argument is ridiculous for two simple reasons: 1. Do understand it is the same group of 5-14 who go on to transition to becoming 15-24 & so after having their life experiences all of which contribute to suicide 2. Low rates among 5-14 might precisely be because they are currently sheltered from the shitstorm that is the world & wider implications of losing that innocence. Mass adoption of social media by that age group might directly accelerate that & atleast may cause a rise in suicide rates. Even a single life lost to such bullshit is devastating. Please stop advocating for bs like social media that is really never required in our lives much less kids' lives.
- vmurthy 5y ago[0] Under-13s, the target group for Instagram for Kids, is not at high risk Genuinely curious : I'd like to know the benefits (not to FB but to society) of Instagram for kids in order to even contemplate the risk benefit analysis. Do you have any sources at hand for this?
- bryan_w 5y agoMainly to completely segment off their content (like YT kids) so that while they can have an "Instagram" account, they can't have creepyperson69 sliding into their DMs. It would be similar to what they did with messenger kids.
- mgraczyk 5y agoI worked at Instagram for over a year and snooped very heavily while I was there on all the data related to teen well being and even suicides. The interesting thing about all this is that the #1 competitive advantage of Instagram in the US that prevented it from completely losing the teen demographic to Snapchat was that teens felt less bullied and more safe on IG. I read literally dozens of surveys and studies that specifically asked about wellbeing and choices to use one platform over the other. Because of an intense and intentional push from FB leadership, Instagram was comfortably the safest destination for US teens. Also there's certainly no evidence that Instagram usage has affected teen suicides in a significant way. The total number of teen suicides in the US per year is far too small for any statistically significant measurement claim. Any extrapolation or anecdote-based claim has to explain why IG doesn't seem to cause any decrease in self-reported wellbeing.
- bryan_w 5y agoAlso it would be quite bad for businesses if their future most profitable demographic kept killing themselves before getting to their income generating years
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- Apocryphon 5y agoSo the data said that Snapchat was worse in terms of safety and sanity? Any details?
- Causality1 5y agoI often lament the loss of the ideal of the internet persona. Much of my growth as a preteen and teen came from online communities where it was easy to simply assume a new identity after learning from your mistakes. I would find it terrifying to grow up now, when your real identity follows you everywhere.
- ketzu 5y agoShouldn't, ideally, a mistake you learn from not require a new persona? Seems like the old system created part of the problem: Removing people that make mistakes, until the community consists of only participants that have always been perfect!
- dncornholio 5y agoKids do stupid stuff all the time. It's nice to not be chased by your previous mistakes for your whole life. Especially the mistakes you did when u was a kid.
- crtasm 5y agoThat ideal leans heavily on the other community members being able to recognise and accept that you have learned and changed. Especially when the community = everyone on the internet that's a problem.
- PragmaticPulp 5y agoAre these leaked slides available anywhere? Or were they only shared with journalists? The article buries the actual data in a paragraph toward the end of the article: > According to one slide, 32 percent of teen girls said the app made them feel worse about their bodies. Of those who’d experienced suicidal thoughts, “13% of British users and 6% of American users traced the desire to kill themselves to Instagram,” the Journal reported, citing another presentation. We really need to see the survey questions and the data to understand what’s going on here. 6% or 13% of respondents reporting suicidal thoughts is worth investigating, but I’m really curious what the other 94% of self-reported contributors were.
- travoc 5y agoThe Wall Street Journal published many of the slides in 3 stories this week (and I presume there are more to come.)
- christophilus 5y agoNot to sound callous, but we really need a control group. Magazines, movies, TV, advertising… everything targeted at women pushes an image that would make non-models feel worse about their bodies. I don't see how Instagram is unique in this respect, other than how addicting it seems to be. I say this as someone who uses no Facebook properties, simply on principle.
- 8eye 5y agoi wonder how youtube has an affect on children?
- inthisthread 5y agoHN has had daily FB front page posts for years now. What has any outrage or “this can’t be tolerated” rhetoric done? FB just keeps growing. As a community, rethink your strategy.
- rndmind 5y agoThe law should not govern or restrict younger people ( age 18 or below ) from using a website.... instead, it should explicitly prohibit a website from TARGETING or allowing an 18 or younger to use it. The Onus is on the website, not the user.
- mkl95 5y ago'Instagram for Kids', because nothing could go wrong with a Facebook product targeted at kids.
- krrw 5y agoI don't think it's fair to compare video games to social media. The former is intended for entertainment, regardless of its violent content. Players and their parents are aware of its fictional nature. Social media tackles about real life issues and dubious things that claim to be real. It influences people's view of reality and how they act with their life. So that's why it needs legislation. Meanwhile, playing as a thief or a gangster in GTA does not make you a real gangster or that there is any evidence that GTA players become gangsters, for example.
- snicker7 5y agoSuicide rates for children are onthe rise. There is a clear and obvious solution: repeal section 230. It is time big social media face the consequences of their destructive rent seeking of our collective minds space.
- aaroninsf 5y agoWork for them? Quit. Use them? Don't. They and their ecosystem are individually toxic and societally destructive; they are bad for innovation, bad for the marketplace, and most of all, bad for the humans caught in their sociopathic pursuit of money via "engagement" at all and every cost. This week alone the number of truly damning stories is infuriating, yet these are now some continual and commonplace, that it is hard to keep track of the myriad flavors of abuse, deceit, deception, double-dealing, and outright lies, including to putative oversight e.g. the US Congress. If you work for or with them, you should take a hard look at the real costs and consequences, and see if you find your soul in order. Abuse and parasitism at the expense of the common good and of individual lives and wellbeing is real, literal evil; and you don't need to believe in the divine to know that doing evil has a cost. Get off the ecosystem and work against it.
- mikkergp 5y agoHave we ever collectively put the car back into the bag? Is there a realistic version of the world where kids are using social media less(and not because they’ve gone on to adopt something worse).
- tomtimtall 5y agoEvery now and again I look into this “x causes rise in suicide rate in young females” nd every time it ends up being only visible in the US. Last time i looked into it, people where blaming snapchat, but snapchat is available outside the us, so why do we only see the rise in the us? So I’m curious if this was also seen outside of US? The root cause might not be social media itself, but just the fact that these apps allow amplification of unrelated damaging cultural aspects of youth as a female in the US.