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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 s

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?
    - cybernautique 5y ago
      I'm a fan of your delivery; "Unless I'm grossly mistaken about the feature set of Instagram" gave me a hearty chuckle. Anyway, if you could spare me a moment of charity and suppose that Instagram _is_ directly responsible for teen suicides, why shouldn't we consider that equivalent to "literally killing"? I'm unsure if there's real value to be preserved in splitting these hairs. If I'm "directly responsible" for fatally hitting someone with a car, then I've "literally killed" that person.
      - grayhatter 5y ago
        What if someone pushes them infront of your car, did you still kill them? Is it still fair to say you "literally killed them"? What if they decided to kill themselves, and intentionally jumped in front of your car? Samething? Both sound more misleading than true. Technically true granted, but i don't think the bar for reasonable is should be "technically true, but misleading" What about planters nuts? Is it reasonable say they are "literally killing" children/teens/people as well?
        cybernautique 5y ago
        Well, I explicitly asked for your charity. If you're unwilling to grant me that, then we're already at an impasse. Yes, what if what if what if, a hundred times over. Imagine whatever mitigations you deem appropriate to obviate this corporation. We obviously disagree. I'm not trying to argue you into my position, but can you understand where my ire comes from? It's not that I've done the cost-benefit analyses and rationally found Facebook deficient. I'm saying that in this specific circumstance, with these specific actors, I find Facebook directly responsible for every suicide that any teenager wishes to blame on Instagram. I value Instagram and their sniveling PR bureaucrats far less than I value the absence of any harm they've wrought from their profit motive. I'm not stating that you hold the contrary opinion; I believe that there is a set of morals you can hold that allows you to not blame Facebook, while not precluding the goodness of your character. In fact, I'm willing to give you the charity of assuming that you hold some such set of morals; if I didn't think you were engaging in good faith, I wouldn't engage you at all. I believe I understand what you're saying. I don't agree with your values, such as I understand them. So I'll ask again: will you grant me the charity of assuming, just this once and solely for the purpose of my argument, that Facebook is directly responsible, without mitigation? And, under this assumption, can you relate to me what value you find in delineating between "directly responsible" and "literally killing"? If you can't grant me this charity, then that's entirely fine. I'll still believe we're engaging in good faith, with good humor; and, in fact, I'll enjoy our engagement all the same. But if you can't grant me this charity, may I ask: why?
umanwizard 5y ago
> your app is going to be responsible for a significant number of suicides. No matter how FB spins this, it’s just disgusting. It being “disgusting” may well be true, but doesn’t follow logically, and therefore needs more argumentation than what you’ve given here. It’s entirely possible for something that causes deaths to be worth it from a utilitarian perspective. Cars (and industrial development in general) are the cliché examples. Disclaimer: I worked for Facebook in the past, but my opinions are my own and haven’t changed much since before I worked there.
- woeirua 5y ago
  It’s simple math, if even 1% of the 1% who have suicidal thoughts as a result of Instagram are successful in a suicide attempt then based on the size of their user base that would mean thousands of people die from suicides at least partly caused by Instagram. 1% may not be a bad estimate. This article [1] suggests that 1/31 individuals with suicidal ideation will attempt suicide. [1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33351435/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33351435/
- bostonsre 5y ago
  > It being “disgusting” may well be true, but doesn’t follow logically, and therefore needs more argumentation than what you’ve given here Why doesn't it follow logically? Some teens are depressed, Instagram makes them even more depressed, they kill themselves, and it's disgusting that Facebook knew about it and hid it. Seems pretty logical to me.
  - tylerhou 5y ago
    I think their argument is that if IG makes the rest of their users much more happy, that happiness outweighs the cost of making a small portion of users suicidal. First of all, it's not clear that this is the case -- that Instagram makes some teenagers so much happier that it outweighs the downside. Second, any product with the capacity to make some population of their users die or harm themselves (1% suicidal maybe leads to 0.01% of people actually attempt suicide; not counting other detrimental effects like eating disorders or depression) should be regulated for safety. C.f. cars, guns, tobacco, alcohol, food, medicine, etc. Such a product should not be under the control of one private company. I.e. it should not be Facebook's choice to create winners and losers for those who use Instagram. We need regulation from some independent entity that is not motivated (or as motivated) by Facebook's profit. The best candidate would probably be some independent government agency.
jrochkind1 5y ago
Yeah, 1% actually seems shockingly high to me. Are there other products or entertainments in which 1 in 100 users have suicidal thoughts they attribute to the product? I was surprised to see Facebook bragging that "only" 1%.
- bostonsre 5y ago
  At least drug companies give you a heads up that some products may give you suicidal thoughts. Seems shitty that Facebook hid this until they were caught.
  - kevinmchugh 5y ago
    The drug companies have legal requirements to publicize side effects
    - bostonsre 5y ago
      Yea, definitely feels like there needs to be regulation around social media. Fb almost feels like the new Philip Morris. They may not give you cancer, but they have a product that affects the mental health of millions.
      - DoingIsLearning 5y ago
        Not just mental health. - Multi-level marketing ponzi schemes - Anti-vaccination - Far-right extremism - Islamic extremism - Totalitarian government political propaganda - Censorship of anti-totalitarian movements leading to incarceration and torture. All of these had an exponential growth amplification platform, all of these would have otherwise had an organic growth at best. Teen suicide is just one negative aspect that happened to be studied in more detail probably due to CYA liability more than anything else.
        mavhc 5y ago
        Stop following idiots, I don't see any of that.
jimbob45 5y ago
We can’t start living in hamster balls just because something might be dangerous. Many of us grew up with a Facebook or a FB-like and survived just fine because our parents understood that it’s the parent’s job to parent, not Facebook’s. When are we going to start pointing the finger where it belongs - the deficient parenting?
- drekipus 5y ago
  Yeah kids, listen to your dang parents, not that hip social media. "Why would anyone do drugs when they can just mow a lawn"
  - klyrs 5y ago
    Parents these days are children of the hippie generation. "Hey kids, why mow a lawn when you can tear it up and replant it with weed? You'll make a lot more money that way..."
    - Broken_Hippo 5y ago
      Are you so sure about your timeline? Don't most folks place hippies in the 60's and early 70's? That's my mother's generation. People my age are having grandchildren - I'm in my mid 40's. We dressed up as hippies from time to time, though. A lot of today's parents were born in the mid 80's to 2000, approximately (a few stragglers on either side). I really don't think this is the hippie generation. I'll add that smoking pot is much, much more widespread than anything "hippie", even if someone takes on part of hippiedom as their personality. In fact, a lot of folks look to older hippies and laugh because they were wrong about it never being legal again.
      - klyrs 5y ago
        Meh, I'm in my 40s and have a young kid, and my parents were hippie-adjacent. Some people breed faster; generations are a horrible measure of time.
mgraczyk 5y ago
What you're saying is not true. If your product causes 1% of people to have suicidal thoughts, and causes 2% or people not to have suicidal thoughts who otherwise would have, your product has prevented suicides overall. In this case, the data is closer to the latter case. Given the sample size of the survey and background prevalence of suicide, the result should not be considered significant either way.
- woeirua 5y ago
  First the article directly contradicts you on the number of people sampled: “ 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. Of those teens that self-reported struggling with suicidal thoughts, the survey then asked if the feeling started on Instagram. A very small percentage of the total number of teens surveyed (~1%) said they had these feelings and felt they started on Instagram.” Second the CDC directly refutes you on the teenage suicide rate: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr69/NVSR-69-11-508.pdf https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr69/NVSR-69-11-508.pdf Suicides amongst adolescents have increased over 50% since 2005, which coincides perfectly with the rise of social media.
  - bryan_w 5y ago
    But teens weren't allowed to use Facebook until 2007 and Instagram wasn't popular until 2010 so by your own data the increase in adolescent suicide couldn't be caused by FB
rektide 5y ago
> Of course, even one person who feels this started on Instagram is one too many. If we only accept risk-free things into the world, and claim that everything made is fully responsible for all that it begets, we are going to have to shut down, remove, bury a huge amount of the world. Risk is a part of nature, and one of the best parts of being human. Good things have their shadows. We all become entailed into the world, into the things we care about, and our hopes for these things rarely fully materializes as we'd hoped. That is distressing, but it's a part of maturing, growing, aging, and learning to cope, being able to cope, with the vast great reality out there: that's life, that's living. Social media is interesting, in that it exposes us to each other in a much more raw, lower-context form. We don't have socialization cues, we don't really witness the repercussions on other people of the actions we take. This is a very wild, very difficult field to navigate. Even though social media is, I agree, dangerous, I reject the core premise. One person is not too many. That is absolutism. It doesn't try to see or understand, it doesn't accept the reality of the situation, doesn't consider potential: it simply dictates terms of discussion to the world, based off a maxim you personally hold. I cannot accept your starting position.
- woeirua 5y ago
  You are replying to a direct quote from FBs article. I don’t personally think that 1 person is too many, but clearly 1% of their user base is a lot of people.
jtsiskin 5y ago
“If 1% of the people who go to college start having suicidal thoughts as a direct result of going to college, then guess what: higher education is going to be responsible for a significant number of suicides. No matter how educators spins this, it’s just disgusting. College is literally killing thousands of kids a year.”
- Sebb767 5y ago
  And that would be absolutely true as well. If colleges were/are so horrible that 1% of people contemplate suicide, it is quite obvious that something needs to change.
  - yunohn 5y ago
    I’m quite sure that this is already the case, and the numbers are higher than 1%. Modern society has a lot of pitfalls which we are blaming on FB/Insta instead.
    - nielsbot 5y ago
      These are additional suicides attributed to FB/Insta, right? We can and should blame FB/Insta for those.
      - yunohn 5y ago
        The feelings are invoked by the other humans posting content on FB/Insta. Again, this is a societal ill, and nobody wants to acknowledge it. A similar example is when newspapers report on a high-profile suicide, and you have multiple copycat suicides occur afterwards. You wanna ban news reporting too?
  - rodonn 5y ago
    When Berkeley surveyed their graduate students, 47% were depressed and 10% had considered suicide... https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/04/22/berkeley-study-finds-high-levels-depression-among-graduate-students https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/04/22/berkeley-stud... Now I agree with your conclusion that "it is quite obvious that something needs to change" with our graduate education system.
jdavis703 5y ago
I’m curious how they define suicidal thoughts. Almost all of us think about suicide. What matters (and what’ll get one sent to a psychiatric hospital) is thoughts that are actively planning a suicide like time and place. Are these users engaged in suicidal ideation? Or are they an active danger to themselves? I would assume not, because product research on actively suicidal people would likely exceed the scope of human subject review board parameters.
- watwut 5y ago
  > Almost all of us think about suicide. Really? Almost all?
  - gambiting 5y ago
    Like, I've never ever considered commiting suicide, but sure, I have wondered what it would be like, just like I have wondered what it would be like to fly to the moon or to do heroin - does that count as a "suicidal thought"? I'd hope not.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
throwawaylinux 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. I'm not defending facebook, but even if starting to have suicidal thoughts does cause some suicides (and I'm not suggesting it doesn't), I don't agree it's quite that simple. Internet browsers are not responsible for suicidal thoughts beginning with internet browsing, nor email clients for thoughts beginning with email. Nor with instant messaging, SMS, or telephone. For example if one of the causes was due to bullying on the platform, it's possible other platforms (or the real world) would have been used for bullying instead. I wouldn't be surprised if 1% of children said they started having suicidal thoughts as a direct result of school, so you could also say the education system is literally killing thousands of kids a year (not that schools can't be improved in that regard or in instances a school may be culpable due to negligence or incompetence of staff). It's important to try to really understand and be clear about what the issues are and not be overwhelmed by emotions. If parents get scared by ban it without understanding the issues, their child can become isolated and marginalized, or it can encourage their child to be dishonest with them. It's not necessarily the best approach to take.
- sodality2 5y ago
  >Internet browsers are not responsible for suicidal thoughts beginning with internet browsing, nor email clients for thoughts beginning with email Except browsers aren't "curating" content specifically designed to keep you obsessed and checking it constantly, which commonly includes things that will make users feel self-conscious (which teens will OF COURSE be susceptible to).
  - throwawaylinux 5y ago
    I'm just stating that those things are not necessarily responsible for suicidal thoughts. Not trying to claim they are exactly the same as instagram. Good point that all my examples are somewhat more passive though, I could add some others: Making or curating content people like to consume does not necessarily make something responsible for those thoughts. Television stations, Hacker News, video games, magazines, books, movies, whatever. I'm not saying instagram can't be criticized or improved, I'm saying it's not as simple as just assigning complete blame of all suicides to the place or thing where suicidal thoughts first arose. It's simplistic and I don't see how it is helpful or will lead to actual improvements.

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?
  - cybernautique 5y ago
    I'm a fan of your delivery; "Unless I'm grossly mistaken about the feature set of Instagram" gave me a hearty chuckle. Anyway, if you could spare me a moment of charity and suppose that Instagram _is_ directly responsible for teen suicides, why shouldn't we consider that equivalent to "literally killing"? I'm unsure if there's real value to be preserved in splitting these hairs. If I'm "directly responsible" for fatally hitting someone with a car, then I've "literally killed" that person.
    - grayhatter 5y ago
      What if someone pushes them infront of your car, did you still kill them? Is it still fair to say you "literally killed them"? What if they decided to kill themselves, and intentionally jumped in front of your car? Samething? Both sound more misleading than true. Technically true granted, but i don't think the bar for reasonable is should be "technically true, but misleading" What about planters nuts? Is it reasonable say they are "literally killing" children/teens/people as well?
      - cybernautique 5y ago
        Well, I explicitly asked for your charity. If you're unwilling to grant me that, then we're already at an impasse. Yes, what if what if what if, a hundred times over. Imagine whatever mitigations you deem appropriate to obviate this corporation. We obviously disagree. I'm not trying to argue you into my position, but can you understand where my ire comes from? It's not that I've done the cost-benefit analyses and rationally found Facebook deficient. I'm saying that in this specific circumstance, with these specific actors, I find Facebook directly responsible for every suicide that any teenager wishes to blame on Instagram. I value Instagram and their sniveling PR bureaucrats far less than I value the absence of any harm they've wrought from their profit motive. I'm not stating that you hold the contrary opinion; I believe that there is a set of morals you can hold that allows you to not blame Facebook, while not precluding the goodness of your character. In fact, I'm willing to give you the charity of assuming that you hold some such set of morals; if I didn't think you were engaging in good faith, I wouldn't engage you at all. I believe I understand what you're saying. I don't agree with your values, such as I understand them. So I'll ask again: will you grant me the charity of assuming, just this once and solely for the purpose of my argument, that Facebook is directly responsible, without mitigation? And, under this assumption, can you relate to me what value you find in delineating between "directly responsible" and "literally killing"? If you can't grant me this charity, then that's entirely fine. I'll still believe we're engaging in good faith, with good humor; and, in fact, I'll enjoy our engagement all the same. But if you can't grant me this charity, may I ask: why?

umanwizard 5y ago

> your app is going to be responsible for a significant number of suicides. No matter how FB spins this, it’s just disgusting. It being “disgusting” may well be true, but doesn’t follow logically, and therefore needs more argumentation than what you’ve given here. It’s entirely possible for something that causes deaths to be worth it from a utilitarian perspective. Cars (and industrial development in general) are the cliché examples. Disclaimer: I worked for Facebook in the past, but my opinions are my own and haven’t changed much since before I worked there.

woeirua 5y ago
It’s simple math, if even 1% of the 1% who have suicidal thoughts as a result of Instagram are successful in a suicide attempt then based on the size of their user base that would mean thousands of people die from suicides at least partly caused by Instagram. 1% may not be a bad estimate. This article [1] suggests that 1/31 individuals with suicidal ideation will attempt suicide. [1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33351435/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33351435/
bostonsre 5y ago
> It being “disgusting” may well be true, but doesn’t follow logically, and therefore needs more argumentation than what you’ve given here Why doesn't it follow logically? Some teens are depressed, Instagram makes them even more depressed, they kill themselves, and it's disgusting that Facebook knew about it and hid it. Seems pretty logical to me.
- tylerhou 5y ago
  I think their argument is that if IG makes the rest of their users much more happy, that happiness outweighs the cost of making a small portion of users suicidal. First of all, it's not clear that this is the case -- that Instagram makes some teenagers so much happier that it outweighs the downside. Second, any product with the capacity to make some population of their users die or harm themselves (1% suicidal maybe leads to 0.01% of people actually attempt suicide; not counting other detrimental effects like eating disorders or depression) should be regulated for safety. C.f. cars, guns, tobacco, alcohol, food, medicine, etc. Such a product should not be under the control of one private company. I.e. it should not be Facebook's choice to create winners and losers for those who use Instagram. We need regulation from some independent entity that is not motivated (or as motivated) by Facebook's profit. The best candidate would probably be some independent government agency.

jrochkind1 5y ago

Yeah, 1% actually seems shockingly high to me. Are there other products or entertainments in which 1 in 100 users have suicidal thoughts they attribute to the product? I was surprised to see Facebook bragging that "only" 1%.

bostonsre 5y ago
At least drug companies give you a heads up that some products may give you suicidal thoughts. Seems shitty that Facebook hid this until they were caught.
- kevinmchugh 5y ago
  The drug companies have legal requirements to publicize side effects
  - bostonsre 5y ago
    Yea, definitely feels like there needs to be regulation around social media. Fb almost feels like the new Philip Morris. They may not give you cancer, but they have a product that affects the mental health of millions.
    - DoingIsLearning 5y ago
      Not just mental health. - Multi-level marketing ponzi schemes - Anti-vaccination - Far-right extremism - Islamic extremism - Totalitarian government political propaganda - Censorship of anti-totalitarian movements leading to incarceration and torture. All of these had an exponential growth amplification platform, all of these would have otherwise had an organic growth at best. Teen suicide is just one negative aspect that happened to be studied in more detail probably due to CYA liability more than anything else.
      - mavhc 5y ago
        Stop following idiots, I don't see any of that.

jimbob45 5y ago

We can’t start living in hamster balls just because something might be dangerous. Many of us grew up with a Facebook or a FB-like and survived just fine because our parents understood that it’s the parent’s job to parent, not Facebook’s. When are we going to start pointing the finger where it belongs - the deficient parenting?

drekipus 5y ago
Yeah kids, listen to your dang parents, not that hip social media. "Why would anyone do drugs when they can just mow a lawn"
- klyrs 5y ago
  Parents these days are children of the hippie generation. "Hey kids, why mow a lawn when you can tear it up and replant it with weed? You'll make a lot more money that way..."
  - Broken_Hippo 5y ago
    Are you so sure about your timeline? Don't most folks place hippies in the 60's and early 70's? That's my mother's generation. People my age are having grandchildren - I'm in my mid 40's. We dressed up as hippies from time to time, though. A lot of today's parents were born in the mid 80's to 2000, approximately (a few stragglers on either side). I really don't think this is the hippie generation. I'll add that smoking pot is much, much more widespread than anything "hippie", even if someone takes on part of hippiedom as their personality. In fact, a lot of folks look to older hippies and laugh because they were wrong about it never being legal again.
    - klyrs 5y ago
      Meh, I'm in my 40s and have a young kid, and my parents were hippie-adjacent. Some people breed faster; generations are a horrible measure of time.

mgraczyk 5y ago

What you're saying is not true. If your product causes 1% of people to have suicidal thoughts, and causes 2% or people not to have suicidal thoughts who otherwise would have, your product has prevented suicides overall. In this case, the data is closer to the latter case. Given the sample size of the survey and background prevalence of suicide, the result should not be considered significant either way.

woeirua 5y ago
First the article directly contradicts you on the number of people sampled: “ 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. Of those teens that self-reported struggling with suicidal thoughts, the survey then asked if the feeling started on Instagram. A very small percentage of the total number of teens surveyed (~1%) said they had these feelings and felt they started on Instagram.” Second the CDC directly refutes you on the teenage suicide rate: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr69/NVSR-69-11-508.pdf https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr69/NVSR-69-11-508.pdf Suicides amongst adolescents have increased over 50% since 2005, which coincides perfectly with the rise of social media.
- bryan_w 5y ago
  But teens weren't allowed to use Facebook until 2007 and Instagram wasn't popular until 2010 so by your own data the increase in adolescent suicide couldn't be caused by FB

rektide 5y ago

> Of course, even one person who feels this started on Instagram is one too many. If we only accept risk-free things into the world, and claim that everything made is fully responsible for all that it begets, we are going to have to shut down, remove, bury a huge amount of the world. Risk is a part of nature, and one of the best parts of being human. Good things have their shadows. We all become entailed into the world, into the things we care about, and our hopes for these things rarely fully materializes as we'd hoped. That is distressing, but it's a part of maturing, growing, aging, and learning to cope, being able to cope, with the vast great reality out there: that's life, that's living. Social media is interesting, in that it exposes us to each other in a much more raw, lower-context form. We don't have socialization cues, we don't really witness the repercussions on other people of the actions we take. This is a very wild, very difficult field to navigate. Even though social media is, I agree, dangerous, I reject the core premise. One person is not too many. That is absolutism. It doesn't try to see or understand, it doesn't accept the reality of the situation, doesn't consider potential: it simply dictates terms of discussion to the world, based off a maxim you personally hold. I cannot accept your starting position.

woeirua 5y ago
You are replying to a direct quote from FBs article. I don’t personally think that 1 person is too many, but clearly 1% of their user base is a lot of people.

jtsiskin 5y ago

“If 1% of the people who go to college start having suicidal thoughts as a direct result of going to college, then guess what: higher education is going to be responsible for a significant number of suicides. No matter how educators spins this, it’s just disgusting. College is literally killing thousands of kids a year.”

Sebb767 5y ago
And that would be absolutely true as well. If colleges were/are so horrible that 1% of people contemplate suicide, it is quite obvious that something needs to change.
- yunohn 5y ago
  I’m quite sure that this is already the case, and the numbers are higher than 1%. Modern society has a lot of pitfalls which we are blaming on FB/Insta instead.
  - nielsbot 5y ago
    These are additional suicides attributed to FB/Insta, right? We can and should blame FB/Insta for those.
    - yunohn 5y ago
      The feelings are invoked by the other humans posting content on FB/Insta. Again, this is a societal ill, and nobody wants to acknowledge it. A similar example is when newspapers report on a high-profile suicide, and you have multiple copycat suicides occur afterwards. You wanna ban news reporting too?
- rodonn 5y ago
  When Berkeley surveyed their graduate students, 47% were depressed and 10% had considered suicide... https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/04/22/berkeley-study-finds-high-levels-depression-among-graduate-students https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/04/22/berkeley-stud... Now I agree with your conclusion that "it is quite obvious that something needs to change" with our graduate education system.

jdavis703 5y ago

I’m curious how they define suicidal thoughts. Almost all of us think about suicide. What matters (and what’ll get one sent to a psychiatric hospital) is thoughts that are actively planning a suicide like time and place. Are these users engaged in suicidal ideation? Or are they an active danger to themselves? I would assume not, because product research on actively suicidal people would likely exceed the scope of human subject review board parameters.

watwut 5y ago
> Almost all of us think about suicide. Really? Almost all?
- gambiting 5y ago
  Like, I've never ever considered commiting suicide, but sure, I have wondered what it would be like, just like I have wondered what it would be like to fly to the moon or to do heroin - does that count as a "suicidal thought"? I'd hope not.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

throwawaylinux 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. I'm not defending facebook, but even if starting to have suicidal thoughts does cause some suicides (and I'm not suggesting it doesn't), I don't agree it's quite that simple. Internet browsers are not responsible for suicidal thoughts beginning with internet browsing, nor email clients for thoughts beginning with email. Nor with instant messaging, SMS, or telephone. For example if one of the causes was due to bullying on the platform, it's possible other platforms (or the real world) would have been used for bullying instead. I wouldn't be surprised if 1% of children said they started having suicidal thoughts as a direct result of school, so you could also say the education system is literally killing thousands of kids a year (not that schools can't be improved in that regard or in instances a school may be culpable due to negligence or incompetence of staff). It's important to try to really understand and be clear about what the issues are and not be overwhelmed by emotions. If parents get scared by ban it without understanding the issues, their child can become isolated and marginalized, or it can encourage their child to be dishonest with them. It's not necessarily the best approach to take.

sodality2 5y ago
>Internet browsers are not responsible for suicidal thoughts beginning with internet browsing, nor email clients for thoughts beginning with email Except browsers aren't "curating" content specifically designed to keep you obsessed and checking it constantly, which commonly includes things that will make users feel self-conscious (which teens will OF COURSE be susceptible to).
- throwawaylinux 5y ago
  I'm just stating that those things are not necessarily responsible for suicidal thoughts. Not trying to claim they are exactly the same as instagram. Good point that all my examples are somewhat more passive though, I could add some others: Making or curating content people like to consume does not necessarily make something responsible for those thoughts. Television stations, Hacker News, video games, magazines, books, movies, whatever. I'm not saying instagram can't be criticized or improved, I'm saying it's not as simple as just assigning complete blame of all suicides to the place or thing where suicidal thoughts first arose. It's simplistic and I don't see how it is helpful or will lead to actual improvements.