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What our research says about teen well-being and Instagram

144 points by DLay 5y ago

netfl0 5y ago
The post says the slide was missing context by stating it was only girls who already had body issues. Numerous studies show a lot of girls have body image issues. Further, in this post they don’t even indicate what the “correct” percentage might be. I don’t really get their point. What am I missing?
- PragmaticPulp 5y ago
  It's a case of "correlation does not equal causation" Neither the survey nor the slides suggested that Instagram was the root cause of the issues, but it does appear to be one of the triggers for people with these issues. Obviously, Instagram isn't the only media that aggravates those issues, as print media, television, movies, reality television, and any other source of imagery would be expected to induce similar problems in those who are susceptible. This problem existed in vulnerable populations long before social media was a thing. Normally HN is very quick to point out when sources are conflating correlation and causation, but these slides were immediately assumed to indicate causality when in reality they only showed correlation.
  - cmrdporcupine 5y ago
    I'm honestly of the opinion that the Internet in its present form is much harder on teens than what came before, and Instagram is only one of the myriad of places with potentially toxic cesspools in them. And not the worst. For our teen, it was Tumblr that was the first and the worst -- content and conversations on there went dark really quickly, and without our knowledge. Instagram is actually where things were redirected after it became clear a blanket social media ban wasn't going to work. At least on there the focus has (for her) so far mostly been on visual art and self-expression and fandoms and it's a slightly more moderated platform. I grew up with BBSs, MUDs, MOOs, IRC, etc. and figured I'd be set as a parent for moderating use of this stuff. But nope, it's been probably the worst struggle for us in parenting so far.
    - MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago
      I think social media is fine, but it should not take precedence over physically meeting and interacting with people. Not to mention legal issues where it's been argued that it's your presence on the web and can be used as a means to serve you (hasn't been truly tested yet, but has been done and upheld before). The weird thing I've noticed since growing up with the internet is that the internet used to be a destination (and still is), but it has transformed into a a place where you presently interact instead with livestreaming, discord, and whatever else along those lines. It's causing people to believe these forms of interactions can legitimately replace physical ones when that is not the case at all.
- woeirua 5y ago
  Just in case anyone else is wondering recent studies have said that up to 80% of nineteen year old women have body image issues. So maybe it’s not 1/3 of all teenage girls that are having their body image issues worsened by Instagram but it’s safe to say that it’s still a lot.
kennywinker 5y ago
“Teens say they like using instagram” doesn’t make it not toxic.
- mgraczyk 5y ago
  If you don't believe the surveyed teens, then why should we have been concerned by the original reporting in WSJ which claimed (misleadingly) that teens said they didn't like using Instagram? If 99% of teens self reported that IG helped them cope with body image issues, would you still dismiss them as not knowing what's best for themselves? Why is 60-70% so different?
krono 5y ago
Yes it's not uncommon for addicts to have a generally positive disposition towards their addiction [0]. It would actually be difficult to avoid this in an engineered platform. I'm sure FB is doing their best, though. [0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3163475/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3163475/
- netfl0 5y ago
  Not sure why this is being downvoted. What percentage of alcoholics would say alcohol makes them feel better.
  - PragmaticPulp 5y ago
    > What percentage of alcoholics would say alcohol makes them feel better. What percentage of people who drink alcohol are alcoholics? It's an interesting comparison because the vast majority of people have no trouble moderating their consumption of alcohol and I'd argue that the same goes for social media. Yet we're so focused on the subset of social media users who are addicts that many here are convinced it's not possible to use social media without being an addict. I suspect if similar rhetoric was leveled against alcohol we'd see a strong backlash from people who enjoy alcohol responsibly, or from people who simply prefer freedom to choose their own actions.
    - Barrin92 5y ago
      >What percentage of people who drink alcohol are alcoholics? In the US about ~7% or 14 million people depending on how you define alcoholism. Globally about 3 million people die every year of consequences related to drinking, or put differently, 5% of global deaths are attributable to alcohol consumption.[1]. That is about as many people as covid seems to have killed last year. You're actually right in drawing a comparison between social media and drinking, but I think you're wrong about thinking that means we should take social media less seriously, rather we should take drinking much more seriously. Certainly very few people would argue we should take a pandemic less seriously that costs hundreds of billions per year and kills millions, and that is what alcoholism does as well. As a society we are extremely negligent of threats that cause enormous social harm in the aggregate simply because they don't harm everyone they come into contact with. [1]https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/brochures-and-fact-sheets/alcohol-facts-and-statistics https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/brochures-and-fact-sh...
westoque 5y ago
> ² According to the raw unweighted data, we surveyed 1,296 teens in the US and 1,309 teens in the UK and asked them if they experienced a range of feelings or experiences in the past month ... then asked if the feeling started on Instagram I'm not a statistician but isn't 1,296 (US teens) + 1,309 (UK teens) such a small sample size to make these conclusions with? A quick Google shows: > In 2019, approximately 21.05 million young people between the ages from 15 to 19 lived in the United States. Source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/221852/number-of-youth-and-young-adult-population-in-the-us/#:~:text=In%202019%2C%20approximately%2021.05%20million,lived%20in%20the%20United%20States https://www.statista.com/statistics/221852/number-of-youth-a.... EDIT: Added link to US teen numbers. EDIT 2: Thanks for the replies and further reading it's more about confidence and margin of error.
- mgraczyk 5y ago
  No, it's plenty to measure the effect sizes reported. The larger the effect, the smaller the sample necessary to detect the effect. In this case the sample is large relative to the effect. A bigger concern would be that the results don't generalize outside the US and UK, and my guess is that they probably don't.
  - wutbrodo 5y ago
    I'd love to hear from the downvoters of this comment, of which it appears there are several. The comment reflects my understanding too, but I'm not an expert on study design/statistics and would like to know if there's something I'm missing.
    - mgraczyk 5y ago
      I worked at Facebook around the time this data was collected, and read these results internally as part of my job. I analyzed similar surveys to this one and worked on doing things like designing experiments based on predicted effect size. Maybe it's because I didn't say this originally. The sample size agrees with my intuition about how large a study should be for the sorts of questions it wants to answer. If the proportion of people giving an important answer were very small, say 0.01%, then the sample size would need to be much larger.
da39a3ee 5y ago
> What the data shows: What the study also said was Giving yourself the prompt "What the data shows" and then, instead of discussing whether or not it shows the thing, discussing the fact that it also shows another thing, is a classic tactic of two categories of people: obfuscators, and those who can't converse logically.
xrd 5y ago
I gave FB the benefit of the doubt and read through all the discussion without having any of the facts that they were asserting were incorrect, meaning that 11 out of 12 items helped teenage girls. Why not just say up front what those things were instead of forcing me to read their interpretation of them for a dozen paragraphs? And, then to say almost gleefully, we are releasing the "full slide" to tell the "full story" which WSJ didn't do. How about releasing the full slide deck? Did I miss that? Honestly, it feels a lot like propaganda to me and that I'm only getting the part of the story that Facebook wants me to see. I know WSJ did that too, but let's at least be honest that both sides are selling something. And, I'm not worried about my two daughters reading the WSJ. Edit: read it again, don't see a link to the full deck that contains the one slide in question. Why not release it in full?
- sk2020 5y ago
  According to a company that makes substantial profit off of a controversial product, said product is safe and effective. Science has spoken, folks, there is nothing harmful with young women trying to compete in an online beauty pageant for the entertainment of creepy strangers.
  - runawaybottle 5y ago
    How do you fight it though? Take child beauty pageants, do those still go on? To most sensible people we know it’s disgusting. Yet, as a society, we are unable to develop a consensus sensibility on social media self aggrandizement. I think we’re still at the tip of the iceberg. With over a billion people, there’s nothing stopping FB from using machine learning and identifying people that literally look like you - ‘here’s a prettier version of you’. Then we’re in real black mirror territory. Perhaps they would even look for slight variations if it triggers too much of an uncanny valley effect.
    - sk2020 5y ago
      How? We could invite the Taliban to govern the USA. Degeneracy in your home town? Start the beatings! Gambling, porn, and inebriety? Haram! They do seem to be able to manage challenging political situations much better than the US in Afghanistan. Think about it :)
YorickPeterse 5y ago
In the early 90s there was an advertisement on Dutch TV. It was about a company's toilet cleaning product, and during the ad some "scientists" said (literally translated) "We from Toilet Duck recommend Toilet Duck" (https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wij_van_Wc-eend_adviseren_Wc-eend https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wij_van_Wc-eend_adviseren_Wc-e...). The slogan ended up being synonymous with organizations recommending their own products. This article reminds me of that. Facebook will never admit their services are harmful, as that would be in direct conflict with their business. And because of that I would treat any claim they make about how good their services are as nothing more than just bullshit.
- hn_throwaway_99 5y ago
  Exactly - corporations pretty much by definition will never do anything that challenges their core revenue generators. I mean, just look at how Facebook fought tooth and nail against Apple's anti-tracking changes. Facebook still knows an absolute boatload about you, they can still show you extremely targeted ads on Facebook, but they treated a removal of their ability to track you on pretty much every site or app you visit (and not even a removal - just a question on whether you, the consumer, want this) as the end of the world. Their ads claiming how they were just sticking up for small business owners were nauseating and gross. Since it's clear Facebook would never release a study, even if true, that said "Gosh, you know, we looked over this unbiased study that says that Instagram is extremely damaging to children and teens, so we're just going to prohibit access to Instagram for those under 18." then any communication Facebook releases on the subject can be summarily ignored.
- edoceo 5y ago
  Facebook as Toilet Duck - the analogy is nearly perfect.
- blub 5y ago
  If those were quacky scientists in toilet duck lab coats it would make it quite endearing. Facebook should also show scientists in company uniforms, with fluffy hair and fake moustaches to announce their research while holding test tubes with smoke swirling out of them. It would give their research the kind of grandeur it deserves: We the scientists from Facebook recommend: Instagram.
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pope_meat 5y ago
After a thorough investigation in to ourselves, we found ourselves to be the bees knees, now return to the feed, and feed on all these positive stories [1] [1] https://www.thewrap.com/facebook-is-using-news-feed-to-promote-favorable-stories-about-itself-nyt-reports/ https://www.thewrap.com/facebook-is-using-news-feed-to-promo...
partiallysorted 5y ago
The lady doth protest too much, methinks
woeirua 5y ago
If 1% of the users of your app start having suicidal thoughts as a direct result of using your app, then guess what: your app is going to be responsible for a significant number of suicides. No matter how FB spins this, it’s just disgusting. Instagram is literally killing thousands of kids a year. FTA: “What the data shows: When we take a step back and look at the full data set, about 1% of the entire group of teens who took the survey said they had suicidal thoughts that they felt started on Instagram.² Of course, even one person who feels this started on Instagram is one too many. That is why we have invested so heavily in support, resources and interventions for people using our services. In addition, some of the same research cited by the Journal in the slide above shows that 38% of teenage girls who said they struggled with suicidal thoughts and self harm said Instagram made these issues better for them, and 49% said it has no impact.”
- grayhatter 5y ago
  > Instagram is literally killing thousands of kids a year. Even if I accepted your premise (which I don't). I don't think those words mean what you think they mean.
  - woeirua 5y ago
    This is the same argument that people who have bullied others into committing suicide have used to try and avoid responsibility. The courts disagree with you.
    - grayhatter 5y ago
      my issue was more over the phrase, "literally killing". Unless I'm grossly mistaken about the feature set of Instagram, I'm pretty sure the best you could charitably get is "directly responsible for" and I'd still need a lot of convincing to get me past "could be and indirect or contributing factor". About said court decisions, without knowing what court cases you mean specifically I'm left assuming that they were able to prove malicious intent where as I don't think you get that from software. Can you?
1vuio0pswjnm7 5y ago
Its like Big Tobacco telling us about studies they have done on the damage caused by smoking.
pizza 5y ago
Surprising they decided to include those bar charts because don't they suggest that not only is social media bad for 22% of teen girl's body image, but that it's even worse for loneliness and sadness and social comparison and fomo! For some things, more than 50% of respondents said worse. That, paired with the title (which comes off as a bit sardonic, over text) "But, we make body issues worse for 1 in 3 teen girls", as if FB is pointing to some slight positive sentiments as counterbalancing the negative things. edit: ah I might be misreading this; apparently it's a measure of e.g. of the people who felt sadness to begin with, IG made it more/less/no different.
mbStavola 5y ago
Reading this, all I see is the tech equivalent of "Cigarette companies find no link between smoking cigarettes and lung cancer."
- jaimex2 5y ago
  Well put. Thank you for smoking came to mind as well.
bsder 5y ago
How about the fact that Facebook is doing psychological research on people with no oversight? This ... is ... evil. Doubly so when children are involved. This is the core problem with the social networks that promote "engagement". They are carrying out psychological research with no oversight whatsoever. See: Stanford Prison Experiment for the kind of problems this creates.
jijji 5y ago
the fact that facebook even employs a person with the job title "Global Head of Safety" is telling. Sounds like they have a lot of unsafe stuff going on.
cduzz 5y ago
How is it that nobody's noticed that facebook (and google)'s motto is basically: "To Serve Man" Spoiler alert -- it's a cookbook.
TedShiller 5y ago
They would NEVER say that their research shows Instagram is bad for teens.
- over_bridge 5y ago
  Exactly. If you are going to ask a company to review its own products you could save yourself some time and write the glowing review yourself. Even if its a lie, they'll still say 'our product good'. If they don't, that spokesperson is fired and replaced by someone who will say the thing correctly, after redacting the earlier statement.
DSingularity 5y ago
Sad, these people have no morality. Teen suicide rates have been on the uptick since the introduction of FB and has only accelerated. One day we will look down on all the programmers who built these applications.
blackoil 5y ago
Facebook/Instagram launched across geography at different times. Is there any study of launch/popularity of FB and suicide/attempt rate in the geography?
risedotmoe 5y ago
While I agree that Facebook is lying, how come we want to hold Facebook accountable when it’s the parents who are being negligent? Giving your children privacy is important but that doesn’t mean you have to let them use social media or have no idea who they’re talking to. Talk to any kid on the internet today and they will tell you they encounter pedophiles, groomers, psychological torture, and bullying. Talk to the schools and they tell you all their issues (fights, bullying) arise from Facebook. You can control what apps your children use, technology is getting easier than ever and if you can afford their iphone, you can afford robust parental controls or at least time out of your day.
- nwah1 5y ago
  We can't expect kids to win in a fight against trillion dollar conglomerates who want to create psychological addiction to their products, and we can't expect parents to effectively control their children at all waking moments. This is a proper domain for governmental regulation.
- rootsudo 5y ago
  The parents are also addicted too, it's the same story as cigarettes. There's a reason why advertising is the same whether it'd be for Coca-Cola, Cigarettes or Social media. They don't know any better.
  - risedotmoe 5y ago
    I agree with this.
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RobLach 5y ago
"Our products increase suicidal ideation for at least 200,000 teenagers in the United States, which we believe is not bad enough to worry about considering the revenue we will generate putting advertising in front of this demographic."
- deleted 5y ago
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Sebb767 5y ago
I wonder how much problems Instagram creates and how much it just tunnels. Mobbing has always been a problem and kids can be truly cruel; if Instagram is the platform kids use to talk and brag, it simply becomes the (literal) messenger. That's not to defend FB/IG or to say that this study does not have glaring conflicts (in fact, it's shocking how bad it is despite the polish it surely got), but squashing IG might not make all of that go away.
abemiller 5y ago
Great discussion here already. I want to bring attention to a bit of additional research relevant here which I found to be a good read and was conveniently not mentioned by Facebook: a 10 year, 500 participant longitudinal study on social media use and suicide in teens. Published Feb 2021. link: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10964-020-01389-6 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10964-020-01389... Even if we take fb word for it that the WSJ's interpretation of data from fbs study was not generous, I would like them to respond to the critical external research too. Fbs study has 40 participants who were directly asked their opinion about the causality of using Instagram and their well-being (no chance that a harmful addiction would be coloring their perception on that!). So, let's look at the longitudinal data also, fb.
- Kiro 5y ago
  Hardly a great discussion. It's the expected hateful and one-sided comments lacking any nuance. At least the actual scientists in this field acknowledge social media's positive impact on teenagers while still talking about the problems. Here, it's all binary. Big Tech bad and evil. Period. https://mind.se/wp-content/uploads/mind-do-young-people-feel-worse-in-a-digital-world.pdf https://mind.se/wp-content/uploads/mind-do-young-people-feel...
PostOnce 5y ago
"More Doctors smoke Camels than any other cigarette." https://www.history.com/.image/t_share/MTU4NDI2ODU5NTc3NTUwMTgw/camels_doctors_whiteshirt.jpg https://www.history.com/.image/t_share/MTU4NDI2ODU5NTc3NTUwM...
- MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago
  This is a hilarious comparison because it really feels that way. Why would you as a company need to defend yourself of accusations like this if they aren't true? Why not sue WSJ for libel? It's not like Facebook doesn't have the cash to do so. Oh wait, that would mean that they have to prove damages and have the spotlight shown further. So they don't do it. Responding to the allegations is almost worse than remaining silent. It shows they are aware it's a problem and the government stepping in is the only way it'll stop.
  - cybernautique 5y ago
    > Why would you as a company need to defend yourself of accusations like this if they aren't true? I'm wildly against Kafka traps like this. However, after reading the rest of your comment, I fully agree with the spirit of your post. I feel that this rhetorical question is superfluous and weakens the strength of your following rhetoric. I _only_ mention this _because_ I like your rhetoric (in fact, I plan to steal much of it); my apologies if it seems as tone policing, which is the opposite of my intention.
    - MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago
      I'm used to most of HN downvoting my stuff or arguing with me even though it generates a major discussion in the thread. It's almost worse than reddit but on a more anal nitpicking "how dare you condemn WSJ!" version of it.
annadane 5y ago
Current controversy aside can Instagram please be less like Facebook in its quest to dominate everything under the sun and give people back their chronological timeline (I can maybe understand this with Facebook, because they have to put ads in the feed) and also not require people to log in to view public photos?
X6S1x6Okd1st 5y ago
My take away is that there probably isn't much signal from this particular dataset. What we want to know as a society is what is the treatment effect for IG or FB usage. This doesn't really tell us much, self report of impression is important to FB because it's how their users see them, but outside of that it's pretty meh
Pmop 5y ago
I quit FB after they admitted they intentionally manipulated user's emotions for research purposes (how convenient).
dustinmoris 5y ago
Facebook having to write a whole blog post on trying to convince us that Facebook and Instagram are not harmful to the mental wellbeing of teens is proof that they are immensely harmful. Delete Facebook. Case closed.
paunthony 5y ago
They will probably never say that their products are harming teens. Some factors are not presented in their data visualization.
concinds 5y ago
People who blame "algorithms" are completely besides the point. Facebook/IG make some people feel bad, because they open the website and see people having fun, people out partying, people looking more attractive, and they feel "worse". You can't blame Facebook for that! Those people will exist regardless, and the "social competition" will happen regardless, simply through other formats. And by blaming Facebook, you're really blaming these "happy" people for making [you/others] feel worse by comparison. You will never be better than everyone alive at everything, and comparing yourself to others will always be pathological, leading to either a superiority or inferiority complex. The point people miss: it is simply impossible to have a website where a billion people post pictures of themselves, that doesn't "make people feel bad". You can argue the human brain isn't meant for that, but it's clearly non-pathological for the otherwhelming majority of people, except those with preexisting low self-esteem and anxieties. People with inferiority complexes "externalise" their feelings onto Instagram when the core problem is their inability to deal with the awareness of other people's lives. Seeing a YouTube video of someone backstage at a fancy private concert would have the exact same impact. Look at any social media websites without these "evil" algorithms: Mastodon, Gab, Parler. All equally toxic, though for very different reasons. First, you can't moderate at 1-billion-users-scale without moderation algorithms. Second, specifically, "discovery/recommendation algorithms" don't create toxicity; the toxicity is caused by flawed, sometimes-pathological humans, and amplified not by algorithms, but by the social dynamics among these flawed humans. Fixing that requires more "manipulative algorithms", not less! The Facebook problem is clearly not, as millions believe, that Facebook creates toxicity from the top-down, and makes people feel bad. The core (and only) problem is other people. i.e.: their moderation needs to improve. Algorithms will inevitably recommend eating-disorder content based on common interests, the solution is to ban such content. Simple. Same with the heavily edited IG modelling photos. Some people like that look, some people hate it. They should require disclosure when a photo is heavily edited, but the overwhelming majority of people will never feel insecure from that, maybe pity at most. Your own psychological makeup determines how you react, not any Facebook policy, and any such policy categorically cannot solve the core problem, which (I say this with respect and sympathy) is that a large amount of people have emotional wounds and need help. People are throwing the baby with the bathwater, believing that mass-scale social media is fundamentally nefarious. It only is, for the same reason that large corporations become less innovative, or that any large social group becomes less cohesive: people's emotional problems get amplified the more complex a social group/organization is. Entropy sets in, and the social dynamics become too complex; conflict increases. The core problem, that everyone misses, is that this cannot be addressed by the organization, at best mitigated. The root cause is in individuals. Society is blaming Facebook for its own defects, at great cost to its worst-off members.
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helsinkiandrew 5y ago
> ... more teenage girls who said they struggled with that issue also said that Instagram made those difficult times better rather than worse It's not good enough for more than 50% to feel better than worse. There are hundreds of millions of teenage girls on Instagram, even if Instagram made a tiny minority worse in difficult times than better that's an awful lot.
- np_tedious 5y ago
  Try that again with "cars". Clear positive to most people's lives, very very bad for some. Your end point may or may not be right, but the logic here pretty clearly doesn't hold
  - helsinkiandrew 5y ago
    Cars have advantages that a clear majority of drivers, wannabe drivers, and economists would tell you about - driving to work, for pleasure, shopping, giving freedom etc. Motoring deaths per US inhabitant per year is 0.01% It's very hard to claim that Instagram has anything close to same number of advantage as motoring
chillage 5y ago
I'm concerned that WSJ cherry picked only the worst bits of information from the slides and did not give a balanced discussion or quote the more positive results. They intentionally only included the most negative results and intentionally avoided publishing the root slides so as not to show their hand that there were also mitigating stats as well. In my view this kind of cherry picking of information from the source material, then hiding the source material in order to spin the result in a specific way, is a breach of journalistic integrity.
- ramraj07 5y ago
  That might be true but in the end the study itself is a load of B, I mean you asked 40 kids if they like instagram and many said yes so this trillion dollar company is justified in their evil deeds?
- hwillis 5y ago
  1. Totally disagree- these slides should be treated like a hostile witness. This is one of the largest companies in the world on the back of advertiser and investment faith. Facebooks public image is paramount to its continued success and data like this should come from a third party. The points that are good for FB should be treated with heavy skepticism, and the points that are bad for FB should be treated as the absolute floor of the negative impact. 2. Facebook themselves are cherry picking: > WSJ said: “Among teens who reported suicidal thoughts, 13% of British users and 6% of American users traced the desire to kill themselves to Instagram" > What the data shows: When we take a step back and look at the full data set, about 1% of the entire group of teens who took the survey said they had suicidal thoughts that they felt started on Instagram. Suicide is the second leading cause of death from 13-19. 6-13% of teens saying instagram made them suicidal is a huge deal. Trying to detract from that delta by showcasing that not that 99% of teens don't want to kill themselves is repulsive and dishonest.
  - chillage 5y ago
    It's absolutely fair that this type of data is better off coming from a third party, peer reviewed, and with a larger sample size. However, the slides here were never intended as any sort of definitive review, or especially not for PR consumption, they're kind of like an internal memo looked over by a few internal teams. So their data is not cherry picked - it shows the good and the bad uncovered about Instagram's effects, intended for internal discussion. Where I feel WSJ was dishonest is that it did not show all of the data uncovered in these slides, but only the most negative points, in order to get clicks and provide a nice loud framing for their article. Any large scale phenomenon like Instagram or Reddit or pizza or video games has both upsides and downsides. So I don't think it's fair that just because we've uncovered links to heart disease for pizza or depression/anxiety/social withdrawal/suicide to excessive video gaming or suicide to Instagram, that we should ban any of these things. They all have extremely positive effects as well. I love pizza. If we only harp on negative aspects of every large scale phenomenon we're going to think everything is terrible, ban everything, then live in a box. That is the sensationalist vibe which WSJ intentionally curated for their article by intentionally hiding any positive information found in Facebook's memos and selectively exposing only the bits which make people go "WOW NO" and make for nice clickbait. If they had included both positive and negative results contained in Facebook's slides, then I don't believe there would be a problem. I personally did not expect this kind of spin from WSJ and am disappointed.
stevespang 5y ago
Instagram propaganda from Instagram . . .
go13 5y ago
While I don't doubt Instagram can derail young girl's emotional reward system and skrew hew life long term, I believe IG derails young boys feeling of their position in the world and make them feel miserable. Corporate world and media freak out when hearing even a hint that men can have their problems too.
giarc 5y ago
"The research actually demonstrated that many teens we heard from feel that using Instagram helps them when they are struggling with the kinds of hard moments and issues teenagers have always faced." This is research 101. Of course kids that "Instagram hears from" are going to have positive reviews of the app. The is convenience sampling from your own users. Additionally, they interviewed kids 13+, do they really have the ability to identify the source of issues they are experiencing?
- mrxd 5y ago
  That may be true, but the WSJ headline was Facebook ignored its own research that Instagram is harmful. This blog post is intended to contest what the research said. Whether the research was good or not is a different issue.
ramoz 5y ago
Theyre not well, I have millennial friends still making bizarre posts; as someone not on social media / will get a wind of a post here and there. The captions, the poses. Just doesn't seem normal.
PerkinWarwick 5y ago
'What our research says about gambler well-being and slot machines' from your friends at Bally.
wly_cdgr 5y ago
Really reassuring to see every party to the dispute displaying so much integrity and good faith

144 points by DLay 5y ago

The post says the slide was missing context by stating it was only girls who already had body issues. Numerous studies show a lot of girls have body image issues. Further, in this post they don’t even indicate what the “correct” percentage might be. I don’t really get their point. What am I missing?

PragmaticPulp 5y ago
It's a case of "correlation does not equal causation" Neither the survey nor the slides suggested that Instagram was the root cause of the issues, but it does appear to be one of the triggers for people with these issues. Obviously, Instagram isn't the only media that aggravates those issues, as print media, television, movies, reality television, and any other source of imagery would be expected to induce similar problems in those who are susceptible. This problem existed in vulnerable populations long before social media was a thing. Normally HN is very quick to point out when sources are conflating correlation and causation, but these slides were immediately assumed to indicate causality when in reality they only showed correlation.
- cmrdporcupine 5y ago
  I'm honestly of the opinion that the Internet in its present form is much harder on teens than what came before, and Instagram is only one of the myriad of places with potentially toxic cesspools in them. And not the worst. For our teen, it was Tumblr that was the first and the worst -- content and conversations on there went dark really quickly, and without our knowledge. Instagram is actually where things were redirected after it became clear a blanket social media ban wasn't going to work. At least on there the focus has (for her) so far mostly been on visual art and self-expression and fandoms and it's a slightly more moderated platform. I grew up with BBSs, MUDs, MOOs, IRC, etc. and figured I'd be set as a parent for moderating use of this stuff. But nope, it's been probably the worst struggle for us in parenting so far.
  - MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago
    I think social media is fine, but it should not take precedence over physically meeting and interacting with people. Not to mention legal issues where it's been argued that it's your presence on the web and can be used as a means to serve you (hasn't been truly tested yet, but has been done and upheld before). The weird thing I've noticed since growing up with the internet is that the internet used to be a destination (and still is), but it has transformed into a a place where you presently interact instead with livestreaming, discord, and whatever else along those lines. It's causing people to believe these forms of interactions can legitimately replace physical ones when that is not the case at all.
woeirua 5y ago
Just in case anyone else is wondering recent studies have said that up to 80% of nineteen year old women have body image issues. So maybe it’s not 1/3 of all teenage girls that are having their body image issues worsened by Instagram but it’s safe to say that it’s still a lot.

kennywinker 5y ago

“Teens say they like using instagram” doesn’t make it not toxic.

mgraczyk 5y ago
If you don't believe the surveyed teens, then why should we have been concerned by the original reporting in WSJ which claimed (misleadingly) that teens said they didn't like using Instagram? If 99% of teens self reported that IG helped them cope with body image issues, would you still dismiss them as not knowing what's best for themselves? Why is 60-70% so different?

krono 5y ago

Yes it's not uncommon for addicts to have a generally positive disposition towards their addiction [0]. It would actually be difficult to avoid this in an engineered platform. I'm sure FB is doing their best, though. [0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3163475/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3163475/

netfl0 5y ago
Not sure why this is being downvoted. What percentage of alcoholics would say alcohol makes them feel better.
- PragmaticPulp 5y ago
  > What percentage of alcoholics would say alcohol makes them feel better. What percentage of people who drink alcohol are alcoholics? It's an interesting comparison because the vast majority of people have no trouble moderating their consumption of alcohol and I'd argue that the same goes for social media. Yet we're so focused on the subset of social media users who are addicts that many here are convinced it's not possible to use social media without being an addict. I suspect if similar rhetoric was leveled against alcohol we'd see a strong backlash from people who enjoy alcohol responsibly, or from people who simply prefer freedom to choose their own actions.
  - Barrin92 5y ago
    >What percentage of people who drink alcohol are alcoholics? In the US about ~7% or 14 million people depending on how you define alcoholism. Globally about 3 million people die every year of consequences related to drinking, or put differently, 5% of global deaths are attributable to alcohol consumption.[1]. That is about as many people as covid seems to have killed last year. You're actually right in drawing a comparison between social media and drinking, but I think you're wrong about thinking that means we should take social media less seriously, rather we should take drinking much more seriously. Certainly very few people would argue we should take a pandemic less seriously that costs hundreds of billions per year and kills millions, and that is what alcoholism does as well. As a society we are extremely negligent of threats that cause enormous social harm in the aggregate simply because they don't harm everyone they come into contact with. [1]https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/brochures-and-fact-sheets/alcohol-facts-and-statistics https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/brochures-and-fact-sh...

westoque 5y ago

> ² According to the raw unweighted data, we surveyed 1,296 teens in the US and 1,309 teens in the UK and asked them if they experienced a range of feelings or experiences in the past month ... then asked if the feeling started on Instagram I'm not a statistician but isn't 1,296 (US teens) + 1,309 (UK teens) such a small sample size to make these conclusions with? A quick Google shows: > In 2019, approximately 21.05 million young people between the ages from 15 to 19 lived in the United States. Source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/221852/number-of-youth-and-young-adult-population-in-the-us/#:~:text=In%202019%2C%20approximately%2021.05%20million,lived%20in%20the%20United%20States https://www.statista.com/statistics/221852/number-of-youth-a.... EDIT: Added link to US teen numbers. EDIT 2: Thanks for the replies and further reading it's more about confidence and margin of error.

mgraczyk 5y ago
No, it's plenty to measure the effect sizes reported. The larger the effect, the smaller the sample necessary to detect the effect. In this case the sample is large relative to the effect. A bigger concern would be that the results don't generalize outside the US and UK, and my guess is that they probably don't.
- wutbrodo 5y ago
  I'd love to hear from the downvoters of this comment, of which it appears there are several. The comment reflects my understanding too, but I'm not an expert on study design/statistics and would like to know if there's something I'm missing.
  - mgraczyk 5y ago
    I worked at Facebook around the time this data was collected, and read these results internally as part of my job. I analyzed similar surveys to this one and worked on doing things like designing experiments based on predicted effect size. Maybe it's because I didn't say this originally. The sample size agrees with my intuition about how large a study should be for the sorts of questions it wants to answer. If the proportion of people giving an important answer were very small, say 0.01%, then the sample size would need to be much larger.

da39a3ee 5y ago

> What the data shows: What the study also said was Giving yourself the prompt "What the data shows" and then, instead of discussing whether or not it shows the thing, discussing the fact that it also shows another thing, is a classic tactic of two categories of people: obfuscators, and those who can't converse logically.

xrd 5y ago

I gave FB the benefit of the doubt and read through all the discussion without having any of the facts that they were asserting were incorrect, meaning that 11 out of 12 items helped teenage girls. Why not just say up front what those things were instead of forcing me to read their interpretation of them for a dozen paragraphs? And, then to say almost gleefully, we are releasing the "full slide" to tell the "full story" which WSJ didn't do. How about releasing the full slide deck? Did I miss that? Honestly, it feels a lot like propaganda to me and that I'm only getting the part of the story that Facebook wants me to see. I know WSJ did that too, but let's at least be honest that both sides are selling something. And, I'm not worried about my two daughters reading the WSJ. Edit: read it again, don't see a link to the full deck that contains the one slide in question. Why not release it in full?

sk2020 5y ago
According to a company that makes substantial profit off of a controversial product, said product is safe and effective. Science has spoken, folks, there is nothing harmful with young women trying to compete in an online beauty pageant for the entertainment of creepy strangers.
- runawaybottle 5y ago
  How do you fight it though? Take child beauty pageants, do those still go on? To most sensible people we know it’s disgusting. Yet, as a society, we are unable to develop a consensus sensibility on social media self aggrandizement. I think we’re still at the tip of the iceberg. With over a billion people, there’s nothing stopping FB from using machine learning and identifying people that literally look like you - ‘here’s a prettier version of you’. Then we’re in real black mirror territory. Perhaps they would even look for slight variations if it triggers too much of an uncanny valley effect.
  - sk2020 5y ago
    How? We could invite the Taliban to govern the USA. Degeneracy in your home town? Start the beatings! Gambling, porn, and inebriety? Haram! They do seem to be able to manage challenging political situations much better than the US in Afghanistan. Think about it :)

YorickPeterse 5y ago

In the early 90s there was an advertisement on Dutch TV. It was about a company's toilet cleaning product, and during the ad some "scientists" said (literally translated) "We from Toilet Duck recommend Toilet Duck" (https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wij_van_Wc-eend_adviseren_Wc-eend https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wij_van_Wc-eend_adviseren_Wc-e...). The slogan ended up being synonymous with organizations recommending their own products. This article reminds me of that. Facebook will never admit their services are harmful, as that would be in direct conflict with their business. And because of that I would treat any claim they make about how good their services are as nothing more than just bullshit.

hn_throwaway_99 5y ago
Exactly - corporations pretty much by definition will never do anything that challenges their core revenue generators. I mean, just look at how Facebook fought tooth and nail against Apple's anti-tracking changes. Facebook still knows an absolute boatload about you, they can still show you extremely targeted ads on Facebook, but they treated a removal of their ability to track you on pretty much every site or app you visit (and not even a removal - just a question on whether you, the consumer, want this) as the end of the world. Their ads claiming how they were just sticking up for small business owners were nauseating and gross. Since it's clear Facebook would never release a study, even if true, that said "Gosh, you know, we looked over this unbiased study that says that Instagram is extremely damaging to children and teens, so we're just going to prohibit access to Instagram for those under 18." then any communication Facebook releases on the subject can be summarily ignored.
edoceo 5y ago
Facebook as Toilet Duck - the analogy is nearly perfect.
blub 5y ago
If those were quacky scientists in toilet duck lab coats it would make it quite endearing. Facebook should also show scientists in company uniforms, with fluffy hair and fake moustaches to announce their research while holding test tubes with smoke swirling out of them. It would give their research the kind of grandeur it deserves: We the scientists from Facebook recommend: Instagram.

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pope_meat 5y ago

After a thorough investigation in to ourselves, we found ourselves to be the bees knees, now return to the feed, and feed on all these positive stories [1] [1] https://www.thewrap.com/facebook-is-using-news-feed-to-promote-favorable-stories-about-itself-nyt-reports/ https://www.thewrap.com/facebook-is-using-news-feed-to-promo...

partiallysorted 5y ago

The lady doth protest too much, methinks

woeirua 5y ago

If 1% of the users of your app start having suicidal thoughts as a direct result of using your app, then guess what: your app is going to be responsible for a significant number of suicides. No matter how FB spins this, it’s just disgusting. Instagram is literally killing thousands of kids a year. FTA: “What the data shows: When we take a step back and look at the full data set, about 1% of the entire group of teens who took the survey said they had suicidal thoughts that they felt started on Instagram.² Of course, even one person who feels this started on Instagram is one too many. That is why we have invested so heavily in support, resources and interventions for people using our services. In addition, some of the same research cited by the Journal in the slide above shows that 38% of teenage girls who said they struggled with suicidal thoughts and self harm said Instagram made these issues better for them, and 49% said it has no impact.”

grayhatter 5y ago
> Instagram is literally killing thousands of kids a year. Even if I accepted your premise (which I don't). I don't think those words mean what you think they mean.
- woeirua 5y ago
  This is the same argument that people who have bullied others into committing suicide have used to try and avoid responsibility. The courts disagree with you.
  - grayhatter 5y ago
    my issue was more over the phrase, "literally killing". Unless I'm grossly mistaken about the feature set of Instagram, I'm pretty sure the best you could charitably get is "directly responsible for" and I'd still need a lot of convincing to get me past "could be and indirect or contributing factor". About said court decisions, without knowing what court cases you mean specifically I'm left assuming that they were able to prove malicious intent where as I don't think you get that from software. Can you?

1vuio0pswjnm7 5y ago

Its like Big Tobacco telling us about studies they have done on the damage caused by smoking.

pizza 5y ago

Surprising they decided to include those bar charts because don't they suggest that not only is social media bad for 22% of teen girl's body image, but that it's even worse for loneliness and sadness and social comparison and fomo! For some things, more than 50% of respondents said worse. That, paired with the title (which comes off as a bit sardonic, over text) "But, we make body issues worse for 1 in 3 teen girls", as if FB is pointing to some slight positive sentiments as counterbalancing the negative things. edit: ah I might be misreading this; apparently it's a measure of e.g. of the people who felt sadness to begin with, IG made it more/less/no different.

mbStavola 5y ago

Reading this, all I see is the tech equivalent of "Cigarette companies find no link between smoking cigarettes and lung cancer."

jaimex2 5y ago
Well put. Thank you for smoking came to mind as well.

bsder 5y ago

How about the fact that Facebook is doing psychological research on people with no oversight? This ... is ... evil. Doubly so when children are involved. This is the core problem with the social networks that promote "engagement". They are carrying out psychological research with no oversight whatsoever. See: Stanford Prison Experiment for the kind of problems this creates.

jijji 5y ago

the fact that facebook even employs a person with the job title "Global Head of Safety" is telling. Sounds like they have a lot of unsafe stuff going on.

cduzz 5y ago

How is it that nobody's noticed that facebook (and google)'s motto is basically: "To Serve Man" Spoiler alert -- it's a cookbook.

TedShiller 5y ago

They would NEVER say that their research shows Instagram is bad for teens.

over_bridge 5y ago
Exactly. If you are going to ask a company to review its own products you could save yourself some time and write the glowing review yourself. Even if its a lie, they'll still say 'our product good'. If they don't, that spokesperson is fired and replaced by someone who will say the thing correctly, after redacting the earlier statement.

DSingularity 5y ago

Sad, these people have no morality. Teen suicide rates have been on the uptick since the introduction of FB and has only accelerated. One day we will look down on all the programmers who built these applications.

blackoil 5y ago

Facebook/Instagram launched across geography at different times. Is there any study of launch/popularity of FB and suicide/attempt rate in the geography?

risedotmoe 5y ago

While I agree that Facebook is lying, how come we want to hold Facebook accountable when it’s the parents who are being negligent? Giving your children privacy is important but that doesn’t mean you have to let them use social media or have no idea who they’re talking to. Talk to any kid on the internet today and they will tell you they encounter pedophiles, groomers, psychological torture, and bullying. Talk to the schools and they tell you all their issues (fights, bullying) arise from Facebook. You can control what apps your children use, technology is getting easier than ever and if you can afford their iphone, you can afford robust parental controls or at least time out of your day.

nwah1 5y ago
We can't expect kids to win in a fight against trillion dollar conglomerates who want to create psychological addiction to their products, and we can't expect parents to effectively control their children at all waking moments. This is a proper domain for governmental regulation.
rootsudo 5y ago
The parents are also addicted too, it's the same story as cigarettes. There's a reason why advertising is the same whether it'd be for Coca-Cola, Cigarettes or Social media. They don't know any better.
- risedotmoe 5y ago
  I agree with this.

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RobLach 5y ago

"Our products increase suicidal ideation for at least 200,000 teenagers in the United States, which we believe is not bad enough to worry about considering the revenue we will generate putting advertising in front of this demographic."

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Sebb767 5y ago

I wonder how much problems Instagram creates and how much it just tunnels. Mobbing has always been a problem and kids can be truly cruel; if Instagram is the platform kids use to talk and brag, it simply becomes the (literal) messenger. That's not to defend FB/IG or to say that this study does not have glaring conflicts (in fact, it's shocking how bad it is despite the polish it surely got), but squashing IG might not make all of that go away.

abemiller 5y ago

Great discussion here already. I want to bring attention to a bit of additional research relevant here which I found to be a good read and was conveniently not mentioned by Facebook: a 10 year, 500 participant longitudinal study on social media use and suicide in teens. Published Feb 2021. link: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10964-020-01389-6 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10964-020-01389... Even if we take fb word for it that the WSJ's interpretation of data from fbs study was not generous, I would like them to respond to the critical external research too. Fbs study has 40 participants who were directly asked their opinion about the causality of using Instagram and their well-being (no chance that a harmful addiction would be coloring their perception on that!). So, let's look at the longitudinal data also, fb.

Kiro 5y ago
Hardly a great discussion. It's the expected hateful and one-sided comments lacking any nuance. At least the actual scientists in this field acknowledge social media's positive impact on teenagers while still talking about the problems. Here, it's all binary. Big Tech bad and evil. Period. https://mind.se/wp-content/uploads/mind-do-young-people-feel-worse-in-a-digital-world.pdf https://mind.se/wp-content/uploads/mind-do-young-people-feel...

PostOnce 5y ago

"More Doctors smoke Camels than any other cigarette." https://www.history.com/.image/t_share/MTU4NDI2ODU5NTc3NTUwMTgw/camels_doctors_whiteshirt.jpg https://www.history.com/.image/t_share/MTU4NDI2ODU5NTc3NTUwM...

MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago
This is a hilarious comparison because it really feels that way. Why would you as a company need to defend yourself of accusations like this if they aren't true? Why not sue WSJ for libel? It's not like Facebook doesn't have the cash to do so. Oh wait, that would mean that they have to prove damages and have the spotlight shown further. So they don't do it. Responding to the allegations is almost worse than remaining silent. It shows they are aware it's a problem and the government stepping in is the only way it'll stop.
- cybernautique 5y ago
  > Why would you as a company need to defend yourself of accusations like this if they aren't true? I'm wildly against Kafka traps like this. However, after reading the rest of your comment, I fully agree with the spirit of your post. I feel that this rhetorical question is superfluous and weakens the strength of your following rhetoric. I _only_ mention this _because_ I like your rhetoric (in fact, I plan to steal much of it); my apologies if it seems as tone policing, which is the opposite of my intention.
  - MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago
    I'm used to most of HN downvoting my stuff or arguing with me even though it generates a major discussion in the thread. It's almost worse than reddit but on a more anal nitpicking "how dare you condemn WSJ!" version of it.

annadane 5y ago

Current controversy aside can Instagram please be less like Facebook in its quest to dominate everything under the sun and give people back their chronological timeline (I can maybe understand this with Facebook, because they have to put ads in the feed) and also not require people to log in to view public photos?

X6S1x6Okd1st 5y ago

My take away is that there probably isn't much signal from this particular dataset. What we want to know as a society is what is the treatment effect for IG or FB usage. This doesn't really tell us much, self report of impression is important to FB because it's how their users see them, but outside of that it's pretty meh

Pmop 5y ago

I quit FB after they admitted they intentionally manipulated user's emotions for research purposes (how convenient).

dustinmoris 5y ago

Facebook having to write a whole blog post on trying to convince us that Facebook and Instagram are not harmful to the mental wellbeing of teens is proof that they are immensely harmful. Delete Facebook. Case closed.

paunthony 5y ago

They will probably never say that their products are harming teens. Some factors are not presented in their data visualization.

concinds 5y ago

People who blame "algorithms" are completely besides the point. Facebook/IG make some people feel bad, because they open the website and see people having fun, people out partying, people looking more attractive, and they feel "worse". You can't blame Facebook for that! Those people will exist regardless, and the "social competition" will happen regardless, simply through other formats. And by blaming Facebook, you're really blaming these "happy" people for making [you/others] feel worse by comparison. You will never be better than everyone alive at everything, and comparing yourself to others will always be pathological, leading to either a superiority or inferiority complex. The point people miss: it is simply impossible to have a website where a billion people post pictures of themselves, that doesn't "make people feel bad". You can argue the human brain isn't meant for that, but it's clearly non-pathological for the otherwhelming majority of people, except those with preexisting low self-esteem and anxieties. People with inferiority complexes "externalise" their feelings onto Instagram when the core problem is their inability to deal with the awareness of other people's lives. Seeing a YouTube video of someone backstage at a fancy private concert would have the exact same impact. Look at any social media websites without these "evil" algorithms: Mastodon, Gab, Parler. All equally toxic, though for very different reasons. First, you can't moderate at 1-billion-users-scale without moderation algorithms. Second, specifically, "discovery/recommendation algorithms" don't create toxicity; the toxicity is caused by flawed, sometimes-pathological humans, and amplified not by algorithms, but by the social dynamics among these flawed humans. Fixing that requires more "manipulative algorithms", not less! The Facebook problem is clearly not, as millions believe, that Facebook creates toxicity from the top-down, and makes people feel bad. The core (and only) problem is other people. i.e.: their moderation needs to improve. Algorithms will inevitably recommend eating-disorder content based on common interests, the solution is to ban such content. Simple. Same with the heavily edited IG modelling photos. Some people like that look, some people hate it. They should require disclosure when a photo is heavily edited, but the overwhelming majority of people will never feel insecure from that, maybe pity at most. Your own psychological makeup determines how you react, not any Facebook policy, and any such policy categorically cannot solve the core problem, which (I say this with respect and sympathy) is that a large amount of people have emotional wounds and need help. People are throwing the baby with the bathwater, believing that mass-scale social media is fundamentally nefarious. It only is, for the same reason that large corporations become less innovative, or that any large social group becomes less cohesive: people's emotional problems get amplified the more complex a social group/organization is. Entropy sets in, and the social dynamics become too complex; conflict increases. The core problem, that everyone misses, is that this cannot be addressed by the organization, at best mitigated. The root cause is in individuals. Society is blaming Facebook for its own defects, at great cost to its worst-off members.

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helsinkiandrew 5y ago

> ... more teenage girls who said they struggled with that issue also said that Instagram made those difficult times better rather than worse It's not good enough for more than 50% to feel better than worse. There are hundreds of millions of teenage girls on Instagram, even if Instagram made a tiny minority worse in difficult times than better that's an awful lot.

np_tedious 5y ago
Try that again with "cars". Clear positive to most people's lives, very very bad for some. Your end point may or may not be right, but the logic here pretty clearly doesn't hold
- helsinkiandrew 5y ago
  Cars have advantages that a clear majority of drivers, wannabe drivers, and economists would tell you about - driving to work, for pleasure, shopping, giving freedom etc. Motoring deaths per US inhabitant per year is 0.01% It's very hard to claim that Instagram has anything close to same number of advantage as motoring

chillage 5y ago

I'm concerned that WSJ cherry picked only the worst bits of information from the slides and did not give a balanced discussion or quote the more positive results. They intentionally only included the most negative results and intentionally avoided publishing the root slides so as not to show their hand that there were also mitigating stats as well. In my view this kind of cherry picking of information from the source material, then hiding the source material in order to spin the result in a specific way, is a breach of journalistic integrity.

ramraj07 5y ago
That might be true but in the end the study itself is a load of B, I mean you asked 40 kids if they like instagram and many said yes so this trillion dollar company is justified in their evil deeds?
hwillis 5y ago
1. Totally disagree- these slides should be treated like a hostile witness. This is one of the largest companies in the world on the back of advertiser and investment faith. Facebooks public image is paramount to its continued success and data like this should come from a third party. The points that are good for FB should be treated with heavy skepticism, and the points that are bad for FB should be treated as the absolute floor of the negative impact. 2. Facebook themselves are cherry picking: > WSJ said: “Among teens who reported suicidal thoughts, 13% of British users and 6% of American users traced the desire to kill themselves to Instagram" > What the data shows: When we take a step back and look at the full data set, about 1% of the entire group of teens who took the survey said they had suicidal thoughts that they felt started on Instagram. Suicide is the second leading cause of death from 13-19. 6-13% of teens saying instagram made them suicidal is a huge deal. Trying to detract from that delta by showcasing that not that 99% of teens don't want to kill themselves is repulsive and dishonest.
- chillage 5y ago
  It's absolutely fair that this type of data is better off coming from a third party, peer reviewed, and with a larger sample size. However, the slides here were never intended as any sort of definitive review, or especially not for PR consumption, they're kind of like an internal memo looked over by a few internal teams. So their data is not cherry picked - it shows the good and the bad uncovered about Instagram's effects, intended for internal discussion. Where I feel WSJ was dishonest is that it did not show all of the data uncovered in these slides, but only the most negative points, in order to get clicks and provide a nice loud framing for their article. Any large scale phenomenon like Instagram or Reddit or pizza or video games has both upsides and downsides. So I don't think it's fair that just because we've uncovered links to heart disease for pizza or depression/anxiety/social withdrawal/suicide to excessive video gaming or suicide to Instagram, that we should ban any of these things. They all have extremely positive effects as well. I love pizza. If we only harp on negative aspects of every large scale phenomenon we're going to think everything is terrible, ban everything, then live in a box. That is the sensationalist vibe which WSJ intentionally curated for their article by intentionally hiding any positive information found in Facebook's memos and selectively exposing only the bits which make people go "WOW NO" and make for nice clickbait. If they had included both positive and negative results contained in Facebook's slides, then I don't believe there would be a problem. I personally did not expect this kind of spin from WSJ and am disappointed.

stevespang 5y ago

Instagram propaganda from Instagram . . .

go13 5y ago

While I don't doubt Instagram can derail young girl's emotional reward system and skrew hew life long term, I believe IG derails young boys feeling of their position in the world and make them feel miserable. Corporate world and media freak out when hearing even a hint that men can have their problems too.

giarc 5y ago

"The research actually demonstrated that many teens we heard from feel that using Instagram helps them when they are struggling with the kinds of hard moments and issues teenagers have always faced." This is research 101. Of course kids that "Instagram hears from" are going to have positive reviews of the app. The is convenience sampling from your own users. Additionally, they interviewed kids 13+, do they really have the ability to identify the source of issues they are experiencing?

mrxd 5y ago
That may be true, but the WSJ headline was Facebook ignored its own research that Instagram is harmful. This blog post is intended to contest what the research said. Whether the research was good or not is a different issue.

ramoz 5y ago

Theyre not well, I have millennial friends still making bizarre posts; as someone not on social media / will get a wind of a post here and there. The captions, the poses. Just doesn't seem normal.

PerkinWarwick 5y ago

'What our research says about gambler well-being and slot machines' from your friends at Bally.

wly_cdgr 5y ago

Really reassuring to see every party to the dispute displaying so much integrity and good faith