12 ms·

Facebook’s documents about Instagram and teens, published

234 points by SmkyMt 5y ago

BrianOnHN 5y ago
Nobody knows how good, or bad, they have it until they see how someone else lives. Isn't that explanation enough? Yes, the change is because of social media, and everything else that's made other peoples lives' more visible.
- DisjointedHunt 5y ago
  The argument is social media is not a neutral platform but __amplifies__ the extremes, thus reducing the "Visibility" to a rat race of envy, by design. If it were as simple as you suggest, the studies would not be pointing out the biased slant of these platforms being harmful as much as they have been.
  - sumtechguy 5y ago
    Also add in a 'revenge' and 'pettiness', for lack of a better term, style posting. I just shudder at thinking what some of my peers would have posted about me and others when I was younger. They barely kept it together normally. But sitting behind the 'safety' of a screen... It would have been awful.
- freewilly1040 5y ago
  Now apply a distortion that allows everyone to to make their life seem much better than it actually is, and it’s not difficult to believe these platforms cause mental health problems.
  - BrianOnHN 5y ago
    100. There were plenty of campaigns over the past decades to "expose the fakeness" of Hollywood actors that are portrayed as role models. For the same reasons we're discussing now. Where are these campaigns now? The ones designed to "expose the fakeness" of your BFFs insta. Policy & regulation are a dead end. I suppose Facebook et al know this, that's why our ATTENTION is there. The real change comes in the form of massive settlement to fund these PSAs and further gambling-tobacco-esque taxing to keep those campaigns funded.
- 6gvONxR4sf7o 5y ago
  It's other people's lives, plus selection bias. It doesn't make other live visible equally, because people post more of the best moments (plus photo filters to look even better).
- 908B64B197 5y ago
  That's part of what inspired the Arab Spring! "Why do they have the right to political opinions over there but here the warlord will jail me?" "Look, the local warlord just burned down this man's shop because they don't like his ethnicity" "How come westerners can just go to school and we can't?" There's a reason China, Iran and Cuba are clamping hard against the Internet...
wombosombos 5y ago
https://archive.is/I12y3 https://archive.is/I12y3
DrNed 5y ago
sigh...its like the Richard Attenborough character in Jurassic Park. "Creation Is An Act Of Sheer Will! Next Time It'll Be Flawless!"
johncena33 5y ago
As much as I don't like social media and Zuck in general, I think social media get a lot of undeserved blame. The biggest culture shock I had coming to North America, how materialistic, exhibitionistic and keeping-up-with-the-joneses the whole culture is. Sure, social media has made it worse. Before you can broadcast your fancy car to your neighbors, but cannot broadcast your fancy dinner to the whole world. With social media it's possible to broadcast not only the fancy dinner also glamorized miniscule details of your life. So, the social media has made things worse. But the culture of materialism and obsession with status was there well before social media has come into the picture.
- kingkawn 5y ago
  If it’s a choice between uptight distaste and free wheeling materialism no wonder people choose the materialism
- haswell 5y ago
  > But the culture of materialism and obsession with status was there well before social media has come into the picture. This is a pretty gross generalization of an entire country filled with diverse people, a significant number of whom do not match this description at all, now or before social media. On what are you basing this? This sounds like the kind of conclusion you might draw by using social media as a measuring stick.
  - GhettoComputers 5y ago
    The sample bias is social media itself. What is Facebook filled with? It changed the focus exponentially, wealthy countries tend to have more virtue signaling and programs that are luxuries, and broadcasting it. One of my favorite associations is of ice cream with Japanese demoralization during WW2. https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/08/ice-cream-military/535980/ https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/08/ice-cream... https://www.militarytimes.com/off-duty/military-culture/2021/07/21/that-time-the-navy-spent-a-million-dollars-on-an-ice-cream-barge/ https://www.militarytimes.com/off-duty/military-culture/2021... I remember a war memoir where a Japanese soldier was demoralized when he saw a luxury pleasure cruiser of ice cream that many Japanese POWs were made to serve the soldiers, and realized they lost the war when these existed.
GhettoComputers 5y ago
https://www.apa.org/monitor/2019/03/trends-suicide https://www.apa.org/monitor/2019/03/trends-suicide > The suicide rate increased 33 percent from 1999 through 2017, from 10.5 to 14 suicides per 100,000 people (NCHS Data Brief No. 330, November 2018). Rates have increased more sharply since 2006. Suicide ranks as the fourth leading cause of death for people ages 35 to 54, and the second for 10- to 34-year-olds. It remains the 10th leading cause of death overall. >But it’s a different story in other parts of the world. Over roughly the same period, other countries have seen rates fall, including Japan, China, Russia and most of Western Europe. What is going wrong on our shores—and what lessons can we import from elsewhere? I’ve always seen social media as a very artificial environment, it depends on the online environment. But I never associated it with more benefits especially among teenagers.
- cm2012 5y ago
  Facebook is global, the fact the suicide rate only grew in the US and not worldwide is a point in its favor. Not to mention the increase in suicide rate is higher for older generations who use social media less, according to the data.
  - GhettoComputers 5y ago
    That is assuming that facebook usage is globally homogenous. Social climates, sex and age play a huge factor. Young insecure girls that are bombarded with how they should look, and what their friends are doing without them will not be affected as the boomer who only goes onto facebook marketplace to sell, talk with family, or the kind that posts trump memes. Heres some interesting data. https://www.smartinsights.com/social-media-marketing/social-media-strategy/new-global-social-media-research/ https://www.smartinsights.com/social-media-marketing/social-...
    - vadfa 5y ago
      I don't think usage of instagram is much different here in western europe and the results regarding teen suicide are not the same seemingly. So I'm not sure of what to think. Open to being proven wrong about instagram usage in the us vs europe. I haven't really looked into it. But it seems all teens and preteens here are hooked on it.
Mindwipe 5y ago
Honestly the sampling here is so tiny this doesn't mean anything, other than Facebook's own research is also rubbish.
megamix 5y ago
Facebook as a technology is inherently damaging, it's not just the users who make up the platforms. How many senate hearings do they need...lol
stadium 5y ago
What is the relationship between individualistic cultures vs collectivist cultures, and social media? US is on the extreme end of the spectrum for individualism. Is social media toxic for that culture, and more benign for collectivist cultures?
- echoradio 5y ago
  Great question! Which countries would be ideal for study, do you think?
  - stadium 5y ago
    From a Google search, https://clearlycultural.com/geert-hofstede-cultural-dimensions/individualism/ https://clearlycultural.com/geert-hofstede-cultural-dimensio...
alexfromapex 5y ago
Will these Senate hearings be theater only, like previous ones with large corporations and the government? Where is the action and what laws are improving these situations?
- DisjointedHunt 5y ago
  All Senate hearings seem like theater in the present. Personally, when i look back at archives from the past and either read the record or watch the recorded hearings from say, the 2008 financial crisis, does it show that it is a little more than that. It is a forum to voice these positions that are ideally meant for us as a society to learn from. Politics being politics, it has turned into a forum to raise issues and a sinkhole for precious legislative time.
- echoradio 5y ago
  Until society and governments considers mental health as equal to physical health (improving, but still working on it) I don’t see any government acting to curb online environments in the same way tobacco companies were dealt with. It’s easy to show a photo or X-ray of a diseased lung and see damaged caused by smoking. It’s not as easy to convey the emotional damage caused by depression, until it’s unfortunately too late.
nomdep 5y ago
TL;DR: Teens act and react in stupid ways and should not use social media. In fact, most of us shouldn’t either.
- sp332 5y ago
  Sure, and that means Facebook's plans to get more young teens to use Instagram are worrying and maybe should be regulated.
- DisjointedHunt 5y ago
  Not to discount your point, but to add on that "Platforms that greedily optimize content distribution should be regulated to prevent an unhealthy incentive structure kicking in"
freewilly1040 5y ago
I see a lot defending the researchers involved, talking about how great they are and how none of Facebook’s misdeeds are their fault. At some point though, when data is consistently not shared, and any findings not favorable to the company are buried, what these people do is not “research”. It’s propaganda. They serve to give Facebook the appearance of valuing neutral judgement on the impact of their platform, and to provide credible sounding findings that can be spun to the benefit of the company. None of this should surprise, of course. They are a for profit company after all. But at some point these “researchers” are complicit in the scheme.
- bawolff 5y ago
  That describes how a lot of research gets done. Its not just fb, oil companies are notorious for that sort of thing as well.
  - RNCTX 5y ago
    An apt comparison, considering Steven Donziger is in court again this week, after having basically endured a corporate-funded prosecution that has drawn on for almost three years, for the crime of winning a civil pollution suit against Chevron. The children of every fed-level elected and appointed official in his jurisdiction and/or related to the case (house of reps member, both senators, judge, prosecutor) work for the law firm representing Chevron. No one forced any of these judges, politicians, and prosecutors to be complicit in a malicious/fraudulent prosecution. They chose complicity.
    - asdff 5y ago
      It happens in all forms of government everywhere, large city or small. Especially in southern california I find local city halls to be rife with corruption. The FBI has been probing Los Angeles city hall and has already arrested two former councilmen, Huizar was arrested while in office, for racketeering. In Huizars case hollywood couldn't have written a cheesier plot, it was literally cash in brown paper bags and hookers in vegas from developers. quid pro quo. That good old fashioned cronyism stuff has never left, because literally so many people are doing this stuff. Sanitation department. Water and Power. Building and Safety. LASD. Rife with open, overt corruption, and I honestly believe the press is scared to go after these agencies harder than they have with their union lawyers.
guilhas 5y ago
They are a private company...
- sophacles 5y ago
  ... and?
  - guilhas 5y ago
    It is just the running theme on HN A company does something wrong, bad company Does something wrong to a group I dislike, it's just a private company
swebs 5y ago
Someone already posted the archive of the WSJ article. But also the actual leaked documents don't seem to be paywalled. https://s.wsj.net/public/resources/documents/teen-girls-body-image-and-social-comparison-on-instagram.pdf https://s.wsj.net/public/resources/documents/teen-girls-body... https://s.wsj.net/public/resources/documents/teen-mental-health-deep-dive.pdf https://s.wsj.net/public/resources/documents/teen-mental-hea... https://s.wsj.net/public/resources/documents/appearance-based-social-comparison-on-instagram.pdf https://s.wsj.net/public/resources/documents/appearance-base... https://s.wsj.net/public/resources/documents/social-comparison-topics-celebrities-like-counts-selfies.pdf https://s.wsj.net/public/resources/documents/social-comparis... https://s.wsj.net/public/resources/documents/mental-health-findings.pdf https://s.wsj.net/public/resources/documents/mental-health-f... https://s.wsj.net/public/resources/documents/teens-young-adults-on-ig-and-facebook.pdf https://s.wsj.net/public/resources/documents/teens-young-adu...
- mch82 5y ago
  This collection of links to the actual decks is quite helpful. Thank you.
  - disgruntledphd2 5y ago
    That's literally the entire purpose of the OP. Great that they're not paywalled though.
fungiblecog 5y ago
As a person looking in from the outside, I observe that there are many worse things going on in American society than Facebook that could cause rising despair and suicide. I’m not saying it’s blameless but the overall picture there is not of a healthy society.
carbine 5y ago
Any woman with an instagram account could have told you this. Doesn’t matter how confident or healthy you are at a baseline, spend enough time on IG and you will start to feel like shit about yourself. I refuse to use these godforsaken products and it’s painful to watch my beautiful, smart friends (even in their 30s) worry so much about how every facet of their lives appears on social media.
- carbine 5y ago
  Worse: they all want botox and filler because it’s so heavily promoted on IG. A f@*king travesty.

234 points by SmkyMt 5y ago

Nobody knows how good, or bad, they have it until they see how someone else lives. Isn't that explanation enough? Yes, the change is because of social media, and everything else that's made other peoples lives' more visible.

DisjointedHunt 5y ago
The argument is social media is not a neutral platform but __amplifies__ the extremes, thus reducing the "Visibility" to a rat race of envy, by design. If it were as simple as you suggest, the studies would not be pointing out the biased slant of these platforms being harmful as much as they have been.
- sumtechguy 5y ago
  Also add in a 'revenge' and 'pettiness', for lack of a better term, style posting. I just shudder at thinking what some of my peers would have posted about me and others when I was younger. They barely kept it together normally. But sitting behind the 'safety' of a screen... It would have been awful.
freewilly1040 5y ago
Now apply a distortion that allows everyone to to make their life seem much better than it actually is, and it’s not difficult to believe these platforms cause mental health problems.
- BrianOnHN 5y ago
  100. There were plenty of campaigns over the past decades to "expose the fakeness" of Hollywood actors that are portrayed as role models. For the same reasons we're discussing now. Where are these campaigns now? The ones designed to "expose the fakeness" of your BFFs insta. Policy & regulation are a dead end. I suppose Facebook et al know this, that's why our ATTENTION is there. The real change comes in the form of massive settlement to fund these PSAs and further gambling-tobacco-esque taxing to keep those campaigns funded.
6gvONxR4sf7o 5y ago
It's other people's lives, plus selection bias. It doesn't make other live visible equally, because people post more of the best moments (plus photo filters to look even better).
908B64B197 5y ago
That's part of what inspired the Arab Spring! "Why do they have the right to political opinions over there but here the warlord will jail me?" "Look, the local warlord just burned down this man's shop because they don't like his ethnicity" "How come westerners can just go to school and we can't?" There's a reason China, Iran and Cuba are clamping hard against the Internet...

wombosombos 5y ago

https://archive.is/I12y3 https://archive.is/I12y3

DrNed 5y ago

sigh...its like the Richard Attenborough character in Jurassic Park. "Creation Is An Act Of Sheer Will! Next Time It'll Be Flawless!"

johncena33 5y ago

As much as I don't like social media and Zuck in general, I think social media get a lot of undeserved blame. The biggest culture shock I had coming to North America, how materialistic, exhibitionistic and keeping-up-with-the-joneses the whole culture is. Sure, social media has made it worse. Before you can broadcast your fancy car to your neighbors, but cannot broadcast your fancy dinner to the whole world. With social media it's possible to broadcast not only the fancy dinner also glamorized miniscule details of your life. So, the social media has made things worse. But the culture of materialism and obsession with status was there well before social media has come into the picture.

kingkawn 5y ago
If it’s a choice between uptight distaste and free wheeling materialism no wonder people choose the materialism
haswell 5y ago
> But the culture of materialism and obsession with status was there well before social media has come into the picture. This is a pretty gross generalization of an entire country filled with diverse people, a significant number of whom do not match this description at all, now or before social media. On what are you basing this? This sounds like the kind of conclusion you might draw by using social media as a measuring stick.
- GhettoComputers 5y ago
  The sample bias is social media itself. What is Facebook filled with? It changed the focus exponentially, wealthy countries tend to have more virtue signaling and programs that are luxuries, and broadcasting it. One of my favorite associations is of ice cream with Japanese demoralization during WW2. https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/08/ice-cream-military/535980/ https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/08/ice-cream... https://www.militarytimes.com/off-duty/military-culture/2021/07/21/that-time-the-navy-spent-a-million-dollars-on-an-ice-cream-barge/ https://www.militarytimes.com/off-duty/military-culture/2021... I remember a war memoir where a Japanese soldier was demoralized when he saw a luxury pleasure cruiser of ice cream that many Japanese POWs were made to serve the soldiers, and realized they lost the war when these existed.

GhettoComputers 5y ago

https://www.apa.org/monitor/2019/03/trends-suicide https://www.apa.org/monitor/2019/03/trends-suicide > The suicide rate increased 33 percent from 1999 through 2017, from 10.5 to 14 suicides per 100,000 people (NCHS Data Brief No. 330, November 2018). Rates have increased more sharply since 2006. Suicide ranks as the fourth leading cause of death for people ages 35 to 54, and the second for 10- to 34-year-olds. It remains the 10th leading cause of death overall. >But it’s a different story in other parts of the world. Over roughly the same period, other countries have seen rates fall, including Japan, China, Russia and most of Western Europe. What is going wrong on our shores—and what lessons can we import from elsewhere? I’ve always seen social media as a very artificial environment, it depends on the online environment. But I never associated it with more benefits especially among teenagers.

cm2012 5y ago
Facebook is global, the fact the suicide rate only grew in the US and not worldwide is a point in its favor. Not to mention the increase in suicide rate is higher for older generations who use social media less, according to the data.
- GhettoComputers 5y ago
  That is assuming that facebook usage is globally homogenous. Social climates, sex and age play a huge factor. Young insecure girls that are bombarded with how they should look, and what their friends are doing without them will not be affected as the boomer who only goes onto facebook marketplace to sell, talk with family, or the kind that posts trump memes. Heres some interesting data. https://www.smartinsights.com/social-media-marketing/social-media-strategy/new-global-social-media-research/ https://www.smartinsights.com/social-media-marketing/social-...
  - vadfa 5y ago
    I don't think usage of instagram is much different here in western europe and the results regarding teen suicide are not the same seemingly. So I'm not sure of what to think. Open to being proven wrong about instagram usage in the us vs europe. I haven't really looked into it. But it seems all teens and preteens here are hooked on it.

Mindwipe 5y ago

Honestly the sampling here is so tiny this doesn't mean anything, other than Facebook's own research is also rubbish.

megamix 5y ago

Facebook as a technology is inherently damaging, it's not just the users who make up the platforms. How many senate hearings do they need...lol

stadium 5y ago

What is the relationship between individualistic cultures vs collectivist cultures, and social media? US is on the extreme end of the spectrum for individualism. Is social media toxic for that culture, and more benign for collectivist cultures?

echoradio 5y ago
Great question! Which countries would be ideal for study, do you think?
- stadium 5y ago
  From a Google search, https://clearlycultural.com/geert-hofstede-cultural-dimensions/individualism/ https://clearlycultural.com/geert-hofstede-cultural-dimensio...

alexfromapex 5y ago

Will these Senate hearings be theater only, like previous ones with large corporations and the government? Where is the action and what laws are improving these situations?

DisjointedHunt 5y ago
All Senate hearings seem like theater in the present. Personally, when i look back at archives from the past and either read the record or watch the recorded hearings from say, the 2008 financial crisis, does it show that it is a little more than that. It is a forum to voice these positions that are ideally meant for us as a society to learn from. Politics being politics, it has turned into a forum to raise issues and a sinkhole for precious legislative time.
echoradio 5y ago
Until society and governments considers mental health as equal to physical health (improving, but still working on it) I don’t see any government acting to curb online environments in the same way tobacco companies were dealt with. It’s easy to show a photo or X-ray of a diseased lung and see damaged caused by smoking. It’s not as easy to convey the emotional damage caused by depression, until it’s unfortunately too late.

nomdep 5y ago

TL;DR: Teens act and react in stupid ways and should not use social media. In fact, most of us shouldn’t either.

sp332 5y ago
Sure, and that means Facebook's plans to get more young teens to use Instagram are worrying and maybe should be regulated.
DisjointedHunt 5y ago
Not to discount your point, but to add on that "Platforms that greedily optimize content distribution should be regulated to prevent an unhealthy incentive structure kicking in"

freewilly1040 5y ago

I see a lot defending the researchers involved, talking about how great they are and how none of Facebook’s misdeeds are their fault. At some point though, when data is consistently not shared, and any findings not favorable to the company are buried, what these people do is not “research”. It’s propaganda. They serve to give Facebook the appearance of valuing neutral judgement on the impact of their platform, and to provide credible sounding findings that can be spun to the benefit of the company. None of this should surprise, of course. They are a for profit company after all. But at some point these “researchers” are complicit in the scheme.

bawolff 5y ago
That describes how a lot of research gets done. Its not just fb, oil companies are notorious for that sort of thing as well.
- RNCTX 5y ago
  An apt comparison, considering Steven Donziger is in court again this week, after having basically endured a corporate-funded prosecution that has drawn on for almost three years, for the crime of winning a civil pollution suit against Chevron. The children of every fed-level elected and appointed official in his jurisdiction and/or related to the case (house of reps member, both senators, judge, prosecutor) work for the law firm representing Chevron. No one forced any of these judges, politicians, and prosecutors to be complicit in a malicious/fraudulent prosecution. They chose complicity.
  - asdff 5y ago
    It happens in all forms of government everywhere, large city or small. Especially in southern california I find local city halls to be rife with corruption. The FBI has been probing Los Angeles city hall and has already arrested two former councilmen, Huizar was arrested while in office, for racketeering. In Huizars case hollywood couldn't have written a cheesier plot, it was literally cash in brown paper bags and hookers in vegas from developers. quid pro quo. That good old fashioned cronyism stuff has never left, because literally so many people are doing this stuff. Sanitation department. Water and Power. Building and Safety. LASD. Rife with open, overt corruption, and I honestly believe the press is scared to go after these agencies harder than they have with their union lawyers.

guilhas 5y ago

They are a private company...

sophacles 5y ago
... and?
- guilhas 5y ago
  It is just the running theme on HN A company does something wrong, bad company Does something wrong to a group I dislike, it's just a private company

swebs 5y ago

Someone already posted the archive of the WSJ article. But also the actual leaked documents don't seem to be paywalled. https://s.wsj.net/public/resources/documents/teen-girls-body-image-and-social-comparison-on-instagram.pdf https://s.wsj.net/public/resources/documents/teen-girls-body... https://s.wsj.net/public/resources/documents/teen-mental-health-deep-dive.pdf https://s.wsj.net/public/resources/documents/teen-mental-hea... https://s.wsj.net/public/resources/documents/appearance-based-social-comparison-on-instagram.pdf https://s.wsj.net/public/resources/documents/appearance-base... https://s.wsj.net/public/resources/documents/social-comparison-topics-celebrities-like-counts-selfies.pdf https://s.wsj.net/public/resources/documents/social-comparis... https://s.wsj.net/public/resources/documents/mental-health-findings.pdf https://s.wsj.net/public/resources/documents/mental-health-f... https://s.wsj.net/public/resources/documents/teens-young-adults-on-ig-and-facebook.pdf https://s.wsj.net/public/resources/documents/teens-young-adu...

mch82 5y ago
This collection of links to the actual decks is quite helpful. Thank you.
- disgruntledphd2 5y ago
  That's literally the entire purpose of the OP. Great that they're not paywalled though.

fungiblecog 5y ago

As a person looking in from the outside, I observe that there are many worse things going on in American society than Facebook that could cause rising despair and suicide. I’m not saying it’s blameless but the overall picture there is not of a healthy society.

carbine 5y ago

Any woman with an instagram account could have told you this. Doesn’t matter how confident or healthy you are at a baseline, spend enough time on IG and you will start to feel like shit about yourself. I refuse to use these godforsaken products and it’s painful to watch my beautiful, smart friends (even in their 30s) worry so much about how every facet of their lives appears on social media.

carbine 5y ago
Worse: they all want botox and filler because it’s so heavily promoted on IG. A f@*king travesty.