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> I've got somewhere around 10 years, conservatively, until Instagram/TikTok/YouTube/Facebook/etc. try to get my daughter to kill herself. I plan to keep my ki

> I've got somewhere around 10 years, conservatively, until Instagram/TikTok/YouTube/Facebook/etc. try to get my daughter to kill herself. I plan to keep my kids of social media as much as possible, but I've never heard claims that these companies are trying to get kids to kill themselves. Why bother exaggerating when the truth (more social media use, especially for teen girls, is bad for mental health) is as bad as it is?

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micromacrofoot 3y ago
Because they knew what it was doing to teens (this was their own research) and chose to do nearly nothing at all. They've chosen profit over individual lives time and time again and yet people still think this is an exaggeration?
- gnicholas 3y ago
  There's a difference between trying to do a thing and doing a thing knowing that it will have a side effect in certain cases. For example, is the President trying to warm the globe when he flies around in Air Force One, with his entourage and protection detail? Or is he trying to do something else, but is aware that in doing so he is generating greenhouse gasses? There's a difference, at least in my book. And if you've lost me (HN-reading father of soon-to-be-tweenage daughter), then good luck convincing the average Joe.
  - micromacrofoot 3y ago
    They did the thing, observed and documented the side effect, and chose to continue doing the thing. They did this in Myanmar and they are still doing this to teenagers.
    - r3trohack3r 3y ago
      > I've got somewhere around 10 years, conservatively, until Instagram/TikTok/YouTube/Facebook/etc. try to get my daughter to kill herself. I've got around 10 years until she is a statistic, hopefully the statistic that survives. You make a fair point gnicholas. If you can reword this sentence in a way that accurately reflects what you think is happening while simultaneously not losing the conciseness of the waters I'm navigating as a parent when I say "in 10 years, Instagram is going to try to get my daughter to kill herself" - I'll gladly edit it and start using that instead. I haven't found a better way to express myself though. Sure apps aren't sentient. They don't have free will. They can't "try to do anything." But language is messy. You're right about losing people in the argument too, that's not a great outcome. Micromacrofoot is spot on as well, you have a generation of parents who understand well that social media is a root rot in our society and evidence showing the people building them _knew_ about the impact it was having on kids. "Bad for mental health" doesn't cut it. I reject any language that dulls the blade of kids committing suicide.
      - gnicholas 3y ago
        If you share the evidence you're referring to, perhaps I could come up with alternative language to reflect that. It sounds like you prefer to go for punchier language at the expense of technical accuracy. That's a valid choice to make in certain circumstances (advertisers and political campaigns do it all the time), but you just have to be aware that you will lose some people when you make statements like that.
        Timshel 3y ago
        Probably something along the lines of https://www.theverge.com/2021/9/29/22701445/facebook-instagram-mental-health-research-pdfs-documents https://www.theverge.com/2021/9/29/22701445/facebook-instagr...
- cmrdporcupine 3y ago
  I think it's more subtle. I think someone like Zuckerberg thinks the thing we interpret as the path to harm is actually the positive goal. What I see as atomization, isolation, alienation, detachment from the real physical-lived social world, the hyper-focus/engagement into the "meta" or "virtual" world, specifically geared around commercial / advertisement interests, the loss of privacy? All of this is turned on its head by people like him and represented as a kind of liberation, transcendence, a kind of connectedness. If you listen to him talk, he seems to actually believe this stuff. And all the harms that might come to youth along the way is seen as either not-their-problem, or "worth it" for that goal. Oh, and it just so happens to make them billions. Ideology is an amazing thing, and usually driven from the wallet.

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micromacrofoot 3y ago

Because they knew what it was doing to teens (this was their own research) and chose to do nearly nothing at all. They've chosen profit over individual lives time and time again and yet people still think this is an exaggeration?

gnicholas 3y ago
There's a difference between trying to do a thing and doing a thing knowing that it will have a side effect in certain cases. For example, is the President trying to warm the globe when he flies around in Air Force One, with his entourage and protection detail? Or is he trying to do something else, but is aware that in doing so he is generating greenhouse gasses? There's a difference, at least in my book. And if you've lost me (HN-reading father of soon-to-be-tweenage daughter), then good luck convincing the average Joe.
- micromacrofoot 3y ago
  They did the thing, observed and documented the side effect, and chose to continue doing the thing. They did this in Myanmar and they are still doing this to teenagers.
  - r3trohack3r 3y ago
    > I've got somewhere around 10 years, conservatively, until Instagram/TikTok/YouTube/Facebook/etc. try to get my daughter to kill herself. I've got around 10 years until she is a statistic, hopefully the statistic that survives. You make a fair point gnicholas. If you can reword this sentence in a way that accurately reflects what you think is happening while simultaneously not losing the conciseness of the waters I'm navigating as a parent when I say "in 10 years, Instagram is going to try to get my daughter to kill herself" - I'll gladly edit it and start using that instead. I haven't found a better way to express myself though. Sure apps aren't sentient. They don't have free will. They can't "try to do anything." But language is messy. You're right about losing people in the argument too, that's not a great outcome. Micromacrofoot is spot on as well, you have a generation of parents who understand well that social media is a root rot in our society and evidence showing the people building them _knew_ about the impact it was having on kids. "Bad for mental health" doesn't cut it. I reject any language that dulls the blade of kids committing suicide.
    - gnicholas 3y ago
      If you share the evidence you're referring to, perhaps I could come up with alternative language to reflect that. It sounds like you prefer to go for punchier language at the expense of technical accuracy. That's a valid choice to make in certain circumstances (advertisers and political campaigns do it all the time), but you just have to be aware that you will lose some people when you make statements like that.
      - Timshel 3y ago
        Probably something along the lines of https://www.theverge.com/2021/9/29/22701445/facebook-instagram-mental-health-research-pdfs-documents https://www.theverge.com/2021/9/29/22701445/facebook-instagr...
cmrdporcupine 3y ago
I think it's more subtle. I think someone like Zuckerberg thinks the thing we interpret as the path to harm is actually the positive goal. What I see as atomization, isolation, alienation, detachment from the real physical-lived social world, the hyper-focus/engagement into the "meta" or "virtual" world, specifically geared around commercial / advertisement interests, the loss of privacy? All of this is turned on its head by people like him and represented as a kind of liberation, transcendence, a kind of connectedness. If you listen to him talk, he seems to actually believe this stuff. And all the harms that might come to youth along the way is seen as either not-their-problem, or "worth it" for that goal. Oh, and it just so happens to make them billions. Ideology is an amazing thing, and usually driven from the wallet.