9 ms·

The question we’ve stopped asking about teenagers and social media

47 points by tysone 5y ago

fortran77 5y ago
> thirty-two percent of teen girls said that when they felt bad about their bodies, Instagram made them feel worse What percentage of people can do something to improve their appearance? 32% doesn’t seem like a high number to me. You’re looking at photos of well dressed, fit people. Why shouldn’t that motivate a person to do something to improve himself or herself?
- denkmoon 5y ago
  Because it's not just about clothes. It's about the photoshopped silky smooth skin, with the perfect highlights/tones/lines, and the luscious lips, and just-the-right-amount-of-body-fat thighs and abdomen, which are unachievable no matter how much you dress nice and be fit. The subreddit "instagramreality" shows just how unattainable and unrealistic images on social media can be.
- cm2012 5y ago
  And 40% said it made them feel better about their bodies in the same survey. A wash at worst.
  - tehjoker 5y ago
    Ideally technology that nearly everyone uses would mostly improve their wellbeing rather than impairing it for substantial fractions of users.
  - danrocks 5y ago
    But hey you don't get to demonize social media by sharing positive news.
- stevekemp 5y ago
  If you look at /r/Instagramreality, on reddit, you'll see that people on instagram don't just look good, they use filters and editing to change their face-shapes, body-shapes, and almost anything else. There's zero way that people can look as "good" as many of the popular instagrammers.
- tsol 5y ago
  32% is huge. If we said one in three girls have mental disorders, that would be considered rather high. Pictures on Instagram are not only often of models with eating disorders, but are then modified with apps to further 'beautify' the picture by airbrushing skin and accentuating curves. It's not motivational to see unrealistic standards that half the population can't achieve.
  - fortran77 5y ago
    > often of models with eating disorders Come on now. Don't bodyshame people are lean or fit.
bitwize 5y ago
Because it's just like the question about teenagers and sex: irrespective of whether we think they should, they're going to do it anyway. So all we can do is allow them to make informed decisions and urge them to protect themselves.
- aidenn0 5y ago
  Firstly, about half of all people in the US reach their majority without having sex; I suspect the numbers for social media use are less rosy, so assuming the two are similar, there's room for improvement. Secondly it's trivial to keep early teens off of social media, and (from my experience), the later that they start using social media, the less of an impact it has on their wellbeing.
  - emteycz 5y ago
    12+ year olds will never be successfully kept off social media. You might think your child is "safe", but you're most probably wrong and your relationship with your child is damaged. 12+ year olds are fully capable of downloading a game from torrents and applying the crack, going to Facebook or Instagram is trivial to them. You could try not to give them a phone - and they will most likely try to buy or steal one. You could try to block the network and they will look up a Youtube tutorial about VPN apps - and now some Chinese company is reading their personal data...
    - aidenn0 5y ago
      I half wish my thirteen year old had enough initiative to buy a phone. She won't bike a mile on a sunny day to buy herself a smoothie...
908B64B197 5y ago
> thirty-two percent of teen girls said that when they felt bad about their bodies, Instagram made them feel worse. Another slide offered a blunter conclusion: Teens blame Instagram for increases in the rate of anxiety and depression. This reaction was unprompted and consistent across all groups. In 2018 "obesity prevalence was [...] 21.2% among 12- to 19-year-olds." [0] according to the CDC. That's one out of 5 being obese, not just overweight. And it has more than tripled since the 70's [1]. I have to wonder if it's related. > These revelations sparked a media firestorm. Instagram Is Even Worse Than We Thought for Kids, announced a Washington Post article published in the days following the Journal's scoop. "It's Not Just Teenage Girls: Instagram Is Toxic for Everyone," claimed an op-ed in the Boston Globe. Zuckerberg's public comments about his platform's effects on mental health appear to be at odds with Facebook's internal findings, noted the New York Post. I find it interesting to see the traditional media's position here considering... Facebook effectively beats them at their own game! Advertising revenues are down for every legacy news outlet while Facebook is growing its add business year after year. So of course they are not going to be thrilled about that particular company. > In a defiant post published on his Facebook account, Mark Zuckerberg pushed back, stating that the motives of his company were "misrepresented." The very fact that Facebook was conducting this research, he wrote, implies that the company cares about the health impact of its products. Zuckerberg also pointed to data, included in the leaked slides, that showed how, in eleven out of the twelve areas of concern that were studied (such as loneliness and eating issues), more teen-age girls said that Instagram helped rather than hurt. Especially with lockdown, I can see how social media probably helped teenagers. And that's the tip of the iceberg; for LGBTQA+ youth it can literally save a life. Also, notice how Zuckerberg is "defiant" when he contradicts large media conglomerates? [0] https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/childhood.html https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/childhood.html [1] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hestat/obesity_child_15_16/obesity_child_15_16.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hestat/obesity_child_15_16/obe...
suketk 5y ago
Social media by itself isn't all bad - if used correctly, it's an amazing way to connect. The problem can be isolated to algorithmic feeds [0]. They encourage consumption over action, take you in unwanted directions and induce FOMO through overchoice and unrealistic standards. If you can eliminate them, these services magically become tools rather than escapes. [0] https://suketk.com/feeds-considered-harmful https://suketk.com/feeds-considered-harmful
- fsckboy 5y ago
  the issue with teens is not algorithmic feeds, it's social pressures, bullying, etc.
  - howie7 5y ago
    Yup. And the pressure accumulates and manifest differently. There are a lot of issues using the Like/View/Click/Upvote count as a feedback signal of what to learn, pay attention too and emulate. Also the whole imposed subscribe/follow model.
  - chalst 5y ago
    My impression is that the optimisation of social media for engagement amplifies the impact of bullying and increases social pressure.
- mgraczyk 5y ago
  > They encourage consumption over action Unless "action" excludes things like "liking", commenting, and posting, this isn't true. Most feeds start out by trying to encourage "like" interactions because that's generally the easiest thing to directly optimize for. Next they encourage things like getting the viewer to post their own content, or leave a comment, or share the post. I'd be happy to write more about how these algorithms work if you're interested.
  - Jcowell 5y ago
    I would be interested .
missinfo 5y ago
> in eleven out of the twelve areas of concern that were studied (such as loneliness and eating issues), more teen-age girls said that Instagram helped rather than hurt. That's a data point that seems to have gotten lost in most of the coverage. Although you might argue that data based on what teenagers report is dubious at best anyway.
- jl6 5y ago
  How did the study compensate for the incentive for participants to give the answers that are least likely to result in them having their Instagram taken away?
armchairhacker 5y ago
> Should they be using these services at all? Title should be changed.
notacoward 5y ago
“How did we ever let Instagram and TikTok become a large part of the lives of so many eleven-year-olds?” And yet again, YouTube somehow escapes scrutiny. Funny how that always seems to happen.
- fartcannon 5y ago
  I think it's that YouTube can be a nutritious meal (even though its frequently not), where as Instagram and Tiktok are both almost always McDonald's (with a few exceptions). Either that, or YouTube runs a better PR campaign, I guess.
  - throwawayboise 5y ago
    There is definitely good, educational content on YouTube. A lot of garbage as well, so... I've never used Instagram or Tiktok so can't comment.
  - selwynii 5y ago
    I hazard a guess it's the PR campaign. YouTube Kids does not look like it's anywhere near successful as it should be yet they didn't get article after article yelling at them like Instagram did.
  - Larrikin 5y ago
    I think it's more that the adults that are complaining know about nutritional content on YouTube and don't know about it on the newer platforms. I'm sure there were people complaining about YouTube being nothing but trash when the easiest things to find on the platform were car accident videos and pirated Family Guy clips and you had to spend more than a few minutes on the platform to find the interesting content.
- ok123456 5y ago
  it's weird how many people's parents have been radicalized by youtube, yet tiktok is the problem.
  - deleted 5y ago
ng12 5y ago
Should we be using them at all? Yes, probably. Being able to connect with my friends and peers digitally was a mindblowing experience in high school. The problem is social media has pivoted away from social connection and been entirely re-focused on media consumption. Honestly, at this point I want Myspace back.
- irrational 5y ago
  Wait, you are old enough to remember MySpace, but young enough to have had social media in high school (I assume on a smartphone)? I didn’t realize that those two things overlapped.
  - throaway46546 5y ago
    We mainly used desktop computers.
  - anchpop 5y ago
    I had a myspace in 1st grade (as did all my friends), and I graduated highschool in ‘17
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - monkeybutton 5y ago
    Not on smart phones because iPhone came out in 2007 but I remember when Facebook opened to the general public in 2006. I was in high school at the time and we were all still on Myspace when our older friends had graduated, gone to university, and were able to sign up for Facebook with their school emails. The FOMO at the time was real.
    - Talanes 5y ago
      My Facebook is on a separate e-mail because I first signed up during the period you had to have your high school network verify you. I had transferred into the school, so the first try through no one recognized me.
yumraj 5y ago
I think that this is incorrect framing, or at least incomplete framing. The question we should be asking is why are so many parents letting their young kids use these platforms. In fact, why are kids before high school getting cellphones? And even if they do, why are they being allowed to use these apps? I’m not saying the responsibility does not lie with these companies, but for some reason parents’ role seems to be entirely missing in all these narratives.
- dartharva 5y ago
  That devolves into the age-old debate of restriction vs regulation. What devices should children have access to, and what devices are a problem? A laptop can just as well be used as badly as a cellphone in this context. Video games on home consoles can have just as much of a psychological effect as hate-mongering social media. I have had similar opinions (even reflected them in a past comment), but upon some feedback and introspection I've come to realize that forbidding kids from accessing something as ubiquitous as cellphones can't be viable. There is no set standard where you can draw a line that an individual is mature enough to handle social media, and there's no set consensus about when and how harmful it is that it would warrant bans. A handful of researches and surveys show that a section of children may face self-esteem issues from Instagram, but that's really not much to go on. btw, I share the same bewilderment for children participating unrestricted in social media. I just don't have an answer to a practical standard of restriction. It seems like this generation's children will grow up having social media as a natural, integral part of society. So what it should boil down to, in my opinion, is to make social media spaces as safe, civil and habitable with laws, as you make the open world that children are exposed to. Regulate these platforms stringently, with constant supervision from public bodies, just as the police monitors real-life public spaces.
  - yumraj 5y ago
    > It seems like this generation's children will grow up having social media as a natural, integral part of society. So, perhaps the same argument should apply to unfettered access to online porn as well, yes? If not, why not? Perhaps we should allow kids unfettered open access to porn as well. I fully understand that the above is a provocative argument and am not suggesting we do that, but IMHO there is only a very fine line between the two since both are very addictive and at a young age can result in psychological harm.
habosa 5y ago
Talking to friends is great and it’s normal for the medium we use to do that to evolve. Talking to strangers and to brands is pure poison. It’s the common thread between all of the problems on all of these platforms. Imagine social media where every account is private by default, there are no brand accounts, and a user can only have ~1000 “friends”. The feed would be a purely chronological list of their updates, no algorithm. Then it’s closer to a digital version of real life. Not an endless stream of ads and arguments.

47 points by tysone 5y ago

> thirty-two percent of teen girls said that when they felt bad about their bodies, Instagram made them feel worse What percentage of people can do something to improve their appearance? 32% doesn’t seem like a high number to me. You’re looking at photos of well dressed, fit people. Why shouldn’t that motivate a person to do something to improve himself or herself?

denkmoon 5y ago
Because it's not just about clothes. It's about the photoshopped silky smooth skin, with the perfect highlights/tones/lines, and the luscious lips, and just-the-right-amount-of-body-fat thighs and abdomen, which are unachievable no matter how much you dress nice and be fit. The subreddit "instagramreality" shows just how unattainable and unrealistic images on social media can be.
cm2012 5y ago
And 40% said it made them feel better about their bodies in the same survey. A wash at worst.
- tehjoker 5y ago
  Ideally technology that nearly everyone uses would mostly improve their wellbeing rather than impairing it for substantial fractions of users.
- danrocks 5y ago
  But hey you don't get to demonize social media by sharing positive news.
stevekemp 5y ago
If you look at /r/Instagramreality, on reddit, you'll see that people on instagram don't just look good, they use filters and editing to change their face-shapes, body-shapes, and almost anything else. There's zero way that people can look as "good" as many of the popular instagrammers.
tsol 5y ago
32% is huge. If we said one in three girls have mental disorders, that would be considered rather high. Pictures on Instagram are not only often of models with eating disorders, but are then modified with apps to further 'beautify' the picture by airbrushing skin and accentuating curves. It's not motivational to see unrealistic standards that half the population can't achieve.
- fortran77 5y ago
  > often of models with eating disorders Come on now. Don't bodyshame people are lean or fit.

bitwize 5y ago

Because it's just like the question about teenagers and sex: irrespective of whether we think they should, they're going to do it anyway. So all we can do is allow them to make informed decisions and urge them to protect themselves.

aidenn0 5y ago
Firstly, about half of all people in the US reach their majority without having sex; I suspect the numbers for social media use are less rosy, so assuming the two are similar, there's room for improvement. Secondly it's trivial to keep early teens off of social media, and (from my experience), the later that they start using social media, the less of an impact it has on their wellbeing.
- emteycz 5y ago
  12+ year olds will never be successfully kept off social media. You might think your child is "safe", but you're most probably wrong and your relationship with your child is damaged. 12+ year olds are fully capable of downloading a game from torrents and applying the crack, going to Facebook or Instagram is trivial to them. You could try not to give them a phone - and they will most likely try to buy or steal one. You could try to block the network and they will look up a Youtube tutorial about VPN apps - and now some Chinese company is reading their personal data...
  - aidenn0 5y ago
    I half wish my thirteen year old had enough initiative to buy a phone. She won't bike a mile on a sunny day to buy herself a smoothie...

908B64B197 5y ago

> thirty-two percent of teen girls said that when they felt bad about their bodies, Instagram made them feel worse. Another slide offered a blunter conclusion: Teens blame Instagram for increases in the rate of anxiety and depression. This reaction was unprompted and consistent across all groups. In 2018 "obesity prevalence was [...] 21.2% among 12- to 19-year-olds." [0] according to the CDC. That's one out of 5 being obese, not just overweight. And it has more than tripled since the 70's [1]. I have to wonder if it's related. > These revelations sparked a media firestorm. Instagram Is Even Worse Than We Thought for Kids, announced a Washington Post article published in the days following the Journal's scoop. "It's Not Just Teenage Girls: Instagram Is Toxic for Everyone," claimed an op-ed in the Boston Globe. Zuckerberg's public comments about his platform's effects on mental health appear to be at odds with Facebook's internal findings, noted the New York Post. I find it interesting to see the traditional media's position here considering... Facebook effectively beats them at their own game! Advertising revenues are down for every legacy news outlet while Facebook is growing its add business year after year. So of course they are not going to be thrilled about that particular company. > In a defiant post published on his Facebook account, Mark Zuckerberg pushed back, stating that the motives of his company were "misrepresented." The very fact that Facebook was conducting this research, he wrote, implies that the company cares about the health impact of its products. Zuckerberg also pointed to data, included in the leaked slides, that showed how, in eleven out of the twelve areas of concern that were studied (such as loneliness and eating issues), more teen-age girls said that Instagram helped rather than hurt. Especially with lockdown, I can see how social media probably helped teenagers. And that's the tip of the iceberg; for LGBTQA+ youth it can literally save a life. Also, notice how Zuckerberg is "defiant" when he contradicts large media conglomerates? [0] https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/childhood.html https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/childhood.html [1] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hestat/obesity_child_15_16/obesity_child_15_16.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hestat/obesity_child_15_16/obe...

suketk 5y ago

Social media by itself isn't all bad - if used correctly, it's an amazing way to connect. The problem can be isolated to algorithmic feeds [0]. They encourage consumption over action, take you in unwanted directions and induce FOMO through overchoice and unrealistic standards. If you can eliminate them, these services magically become tools rather than escapes. [0] https://suketk.com/feeds-considered-harmful https://suketk.com/feeds-considered-harmful

fsckboy 5y ago
the issue with teens is not algorithmic feeds, it's social pressures, bullying, etc.
- howie7 5y ago
  Yup. And the pressure accumulates and manifest differently. There are a lot of issues using the Like/View/Click/Upvote count as a feedback signal of what to learn, pay attention too and emulate. Also the whole imposed subscribe/follow model.
- chalst 5y ago
  My impression is that the optimisation of social media for engagement amplifies the impact of bullying and increases social pressure.
mgraczyk 5y ago
> They encourage consumption over action Unless "action" excludes things like "liking", commenting, and posting, this isn't true. Most feeds start out by trying to encourage "like" interactions because that's generally the easiest thing to directly optimize for. Next they encourage things like getting the viewer to post their own content, or leave a comment, or share the post. I'd be happy to write more about how these algorithms work if you're interested.
- Jcowell 5y ago
  I would be interested .

missinfo 5y ago

> in eleven out of the twelve areas of concern that were studied (such as loneliness and eating issues), more teen-age girls said that Instagram helped rather than hurt. That's a data point that seems to have gotten lost in most of the coverage. Although you might argue that data based on what teenagers report is dubious at best anyway.

jl6 5y ago
How did the study compensate for the incentive for participants to give the answers that are least likely to result in them having their Instagram taken away?

armchairhacker 5y ago

> Should they be using these services at all? Title should be changed.

notacoward 5y ago

“How did we ever let Instagram and TikTok become a large part of the lives of so many eleven-year-olds?” And yet again, YouTube somehow escapes scrutiny. Funny how that always seems to happen.

fartcannon 5y ago
I think it's that YouTube can be a nutritious meal (even though its frequently not), where as Instagram and Tiktok are both almost always McDonald's (with a few exceptions). Either that, or YouTube runs a better PR campaign, I guess.
- throwawayboise 5y ago
  There is definitely good, educational content on YouTube. A lot of garbage as well, so... I've never used Instagram or Tiktok so can't comment.
- selwynii 5y ago
  I hazard a guess it's the PR campaign. YouTube Kids does not look like it's anywhere near successful as it should be yet they didn't get article after article yelling at them like Instagram did.
- Larrikin 5y ago
  I think it's more that the adults that are complaining know about nutritional content on YouTube and don't know about it on the newer platforms. I'm sure there were people complaining about YouTube being nothing but trash when the easiest things to find on the platform were car accident videos and pirated Family Guy clips and you had to spend more than a few minutes on the platform to find the interesting content.
ok123456 5y ago
it's weird how many people's parents have been radicalized by youtube, yet tiktok is the problem.
- deleted 5y ago

ng12 5y ago

Should we be using them at all? Yes, probably. Being able to connect with my friends and peers digitally was a mindblowing experience in high school. The problem is social media has pivoted away from social connection and been entirely re-focused on media consumption. Honestly, at this point I want Myspace back.

irrational 5y ago
Wait, you are old enough to remember MySpace, but young enough to have had social media in high school (I assume on a smartphone)? I didn’t realize that those two things overlapped.
- throaway46546 5y ago
  We mainly used desktop computers.
- anchpop 5y ago
  I had a myspace in 1st grade (as did all my friends), and I graduated highschool in ‘17
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- monkeybutton 5y ago
  Not on smart phones because iPhone came out in 2007 but I remember when Facebook opened to the general public in 2006. I was in high school at the time and we were all still on Myspace when our older friends had graduated, gone to university, and were able to sign up for Facebook with their school emails. The FOMO at the time was real.
  - Talanes 5y ago
    My Facebook is on a separate e-mail because I first signed up during the period you had to have your high school network verify you. I had transferred into the school, so the first try through no one recognized me.

yumraj 5y ago

I think that this is incorrect framing, or at least incomplete framing. The question we should be asking is why are so many parents letting their young kids use these platforms. In fact, why are kids before high school getting cellphones? And even if they do, why are they being allowed to use these apps? I’m not saying the responsibility does not lie with these companies, but for some reason parents’ role seems to be entirely missing in all these narratives.

dartharva 5y ago
That devolves into the age-old debate of restriction vs regulation. What devices should children have access to, and what devices are a problem? A laptop can just as well be used as badly as a cellphone in this context. Video games on home consoles can have just as much of a psychological effect as hate-mongering social media. I have had similar opinions (even reflected them in a past comment), but upon some feedback and introspection I've come to realize that forbidding kids from accessing something as ubiquitous as cellphones can't be viable. There is no set standard where you can draw a line that an individual is mature enough to handle social media, and there's no set consensus about when and how harmful it is that it would warrant bans. A handful of researches and surveys show that a section of children may face self-esteem issues from Instagram, but that's really not much to go on. btw, I share the same bewilderment for children participating unrestricted in social media. I just don't have an answer to a practical standard of restriction. It seems like this generation's children will grow up having social media as a natural, integral part of society. So what it should boil down to, in my opinion, is to make social media spaces as safe, civil and habitable with laws, as you make the open world that children are exposed to. Regulate these platforms stringently, with constant supervision from public bodies, just as the police monitors real-life public spaces.
- yumraj 5y ago
  > It seems like this generation's children will grow up having social media as a natural, integral part of society. So, perhaps the same argument should apply to unfettered access to online porn as well, yes? If not, why not? Perhaps we should allow kids unfettered open access to porn as well. I fully understand that the above is a provocative argument and am not suggesting we do that, but IMHO there is only a very fine line between the two since both are very addictive and at a young age can result in psychological harm.

habosa 5y ago

Talking to friends is great and it’s normal for the medium we use to do that to evolve. Talking to strangers and to brands is pure poison. It’s the common thread between all of the problems on all of these platforms. Imagine social media where every account is private by default, there are no brand accounts, and a user can only have ~1000 “friends”. The feed would be a purely chronological list of their updates, no algorithm. Then it’s closer to a digital version of real life. Not an endless stream of ads and arguments.